The sounds of the gamelan or Loreto bells accompany the nameless heroes’ stumbling journey into darkness or their getting stuck in routine activities. The project’s main means of expression is sound, connected to light and minimalist action, during which the heroes sometimes struggle towards impossible goals and then always freeze in the unchanging gesture of the figures from the astronomical clock. Burial containers, rabbit feeding bowls, tramp mess tins, Tibetan bowls or a tsukubai hand-washing vessel – all of this forms a sound and light system triggered by stick blows or by an algorithm. In Bowls we observe a kind of psychedelic astronomical clock on which secular figures parade, taking on some aspects of traditional saints or functioning as “non-player characters”, a population of characters without will, inhabiting the vast worlds of modern video games. The protagonists of the production spin the squirrel wheels of their specific activities until they collapse from exhaustion. The begging bowl is filling up. With this production, the ensemble returns to its beginnings, during which it experimented with cryptic stage compositions.
Non-verbal
About the artist:
The artistic ensemble Handa Gote Research & Development has been working with the mixture of theatre, contemporary dance, visual art, music, performance and conceptual art since 2005. The group is interested in the concept of post-dramatic and post-spectacular theatre, non-linear ways of storytelling and applying the experiences of contemporary music and visual art in theatre. In all their works, they creatively use technologies, both old and modern. In most of their projects, they work with media archaeology and in works approaching documentary theatre, they intensively deal with so-called small histories.
