Focus Tg Stan (Eng.)

Kaaitheater bulletin May 2003English

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‘Art soon deteriorates, my child, if the artist is negligent or allows himself to be confused, even if he is negligent for one single moment.’

(Thomas Bernhard)

 

Tg Stan.

Tg stands for ‘toneelspelersgezelschap’ (actors company) and Stan for ‘Stop Thinking About Names’. Their story is similar to that of Dood Paard, but Stan was there first. In 1989, a rebellious drama class consisting of Jolente De Keersmaeker, Damiaan De Schrijver, Waas Gramser and Frank Vercruyssen graduated from the Conservatory in Antwerp. One of their teachers was Dora Van der Groen. For their two graduation projects they demanded that they be allowed to decide with whom they wished to work, and this was granted. Their choice was Achter de canapé/ Yvonne op, based on Prinses Yvonne by Witold Gombrowicz, with Matthias de Koning of Maatschappij Discordia as coach, and Jan, scènes uit het leven op het land, based on Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, with Josse De Pauw as supervisor.
From the very start, this group of young actors made it quite clear where and how they saw themselves in the world of theatre in the Low Countries. The group was soon joined by Sara De Roo, who graduated two years later. After several seasons, collaboration between Waas Gramser and Kris van Trier resulted in the founding of Maten, an organisation which, after merging with other actors, now operates under the name De Onderneming.
Within a short time Thomas Walgrave began to work with Stan as a full-time designer, technician and production manager. In its public relations, it became customary for Stan to list the names of all its members (including administrative staff and others) under the heading ‘a performance by...’. Stan regards every production as the work of a collective, in which each person has a certain responsibility with regard to its content.

 

‘The sovereignty of the actor should be recognized unconditionally. … The actor totalizes within himself and reveals outwardly the innumerable forms of a burgeoning life.’

(Herman Teirlinck)

 

However, for the audience this collective is above all a players company. But a special one. In the collective as defined by Stan, the personal growth of each member of the group forms the basis for the development of the collective. The stacks of plans and ideas for performances that are discussed at Stan sometimes result in projects where the four actors – supplemented or not by other actors – are all on stage together, but often solos or duos are produced and each of the four actors also quite regularly participates in productions with individuals or companies other than Stan. These ‘outings’, the exchange of experiences with outsiders and kindred spirits, is an essential component of Stan’s method of working and a guarantee of the preservation of the group’s vitality. In this way, over the years, a privileged cooperation has developed with other groups such as Dito’Dito, Maatschappij Discordia, Dood Paard, Compagnie de Koe and Rosas. Moreover, in addition to and interwoven with the path followed by the group, Sara De Roo, Frank Vercruyssen, Jolente de Keersmaeker and Damiaan De Schrijver have their own course to follow and they embody the slowly growing tradition in Flanders of the actor who is an independent spirit, the individual and emancipated dramatist who decides for himself which project to do and whom he wants to do it with.

Sara De Roo often works with the Dutch group Dood Paard, but has also done projects with Steven van Watermeulen (ro theater) (such as Lucia melts by Oscar van den Boogaard) and with the film-maker Dorothée van den Berghe. Jolente De Keersmaeker has collaborated very closely with her sister Anne Teresa in dance performances combining words and movement (such as Just before and I said I); she also writes plays. Damiaan De Schrijver often appears on stage with Matthias de Koning of Maatschappij Discordia and with Peter van den Eede of Compagnie De Koe (for example in My dinner with André and vandeneedevandeschrijvervandekoningendiderot). And Frank Vercruyssen acts in films, creates his solo, or near solo, political performances in the Stan stable, as well as working in Stan and Rosas coproductions such as Quartett.


However, Stan is far more than just the sum of the contributions by its various members. Sara De Roo’s interest in relational matters, as well as what could be described as ‘female’ issues, the clear, politically-engaged voice of Frank Vercruyssen, Damiaan De Schrijver’s interest in the roots of hilarious comedy acting, the dramaturgical contribution by Jolente De Keersmaeker in which language can also be the language of movement, are constantly ‘shared’ with the three other members. Moreover, they are united by the inspirational spirit that emerges from the group’s artistic self-management, the search for nourishment in all sorts of texts (the world repertoire, newly written works, material of the most diverse origins), by looking critically at what is happening in the world and a constant questioning of artistic practice and the work of the actor in particular. The body of work built up by this theatre group is characterized by directness, intelligence, critical awareness, alertness, doubt and an open, frank approach to the audience.

 

‘The actor’s ideal is to appear unprepared. This is both his greatest fear and his greatest strength.’

Jan Joris Lamers

  

Stan’s working method can be compared to that of kindred spirits like Maatschappij Discordia and Dood Paard. In a conversation with the Wooster Group actor Ron Vawter just before his death in 1994 (Theaterschrift 7), Frank Vercruyssen summarized this working method as follows: ‘If a play is going to be used, it is first discussed with the whole group of actors; we compare various modifications and interpretations. That takes about seven weeks: it is during this period that patience is important, patience with one another. We can, for example, spend a whole hour discussing just one word, deciding which of several ways to translate ‘hardly’. We end up with a text we think is good, one that serves the author and has shed all except what is essential. This leaves us with two weeks. We read the text seated around the table until four or five days before the opening performance; by this time we know it by heart. At that moment the most important aim of the working process is to do just enough work so as to preserve the element of freshness.’ Of course, anyone who is involved with a play in this way knows the whole work by heart, not just his own part (the casting is often only finalized in the last stage). Once you are on stage the key is not to ‘anticipate’, but to listen to one another as closely as possible, to read the ‘other actor’ in the way that he is, speaks and acts at that particular moment in time and to allow the audience to share that moment.

 

‘The ultimate consequence of making something is that things always turn out differently to what one thought. It is terrible if it too closely resembles what you thought it would be. It then becomes superfluous.’

Jan Joris Lamers

  

In Stan’s working method there is a great awareness of the history of theatre, both in its written documents and in the quality of its acting, even if it were just for the fact that about fifty years ago the actors in our theatres had to learn a new play every week and were therefore forced to appear on stage in a situation that was not fixed, but improvised; they simply did not have the time. Working around the table, all the Stan contributors are dramaturges, on stage they are director, actor and mouthpiece for the writer.
A part of this historical awareness of theatre is also a powerful consciousness of the potential subversive power of the actor; since the theatre is essentially the art of the moment, the possibilities include sudden and unexpected communications from the stage and from the audience. This directness is not something Stan tries to avoid; on the contrary it seeks it out, also in its choice of plays. It was no accident that in 1993, when Antwerp was Cultural Capital of Europe, the bastion of the mayor Bob Cools, it staged JDX- A Public Enemy, based on Henrik Ibsen’s play An Enemy of the People, and that the whole audience translated the characters on stage to fit their own political reality. In addition to Gerardjan Rijnders, Oscar van Woensel, Finn Iunker and Wanda Reisel, whose plays written ‘today’ obviously comprise what is ‘topical’, there is a clear preference for writers such as Thomas Bernhard, Anton Chekhov, Oscar Wilde, Georg Büchner, etc., whose work can be used to say a great deal about modern society. The question ‘why do this play now?’ is one that is always asked at Stan, even though the reasons sometimes only become clear later. For example, De Misantroop, staged in 1998, will only receive full recognition for its value as a preliminary study in the light of the present major Molière project, Poquelin.

 

‘When he is acting, the actor cannot allow himself to stop ‘creating’, even for a moment.’

(Herman Teirlinck)

 

It is part of the ‘tradition of the actor’ that he is also a traveller. Molière’s encounter with the travelling Italian actors who introduced him to the commedia dell’arte and other things, was essential for the development of his own work, while he too toured all over France with his ‘L’Illustre Théâtre’, before finally settling in Paris and associating himself with the court.
In recent years Stan has increasingly become a company with an international sphere of action, with performances in several languages. For example, as an ‘avant-garde’ company they performed Oscar Wilde in English in England. In Toulouse they set to work on the French repertoire: in Les Antigones they adapted and performed material by Jean Anouilh and Jean Cocteau, in French. A workshop in Lisbon resulted in cooperation with Portuguese actors: together they performed Point Blank, an adaptation of Chekhov’s Platonov, in English. In Oakland (California), they worked in close association with the black community and created One 2 Life, a performance based on the prison letters written by the Black Panther George Jackson. And so on.
As far as Stan is concerned, there are no limits; not between countries and their languages, not between the stage and other artistic disciplines and not between the actor and the audience. Openness and freedom of movement, unlimited round-table discussions and the freedom to make on-stage decisions: the values Stan upholds in its artistic practice mirrors its attitude to the world in which it claims everybody’s right to be treated as responsible human beings.

 

‘Never forget that the actor is an emanation of the audience.’

(Herman Teirlinck)

 

(translated by Gregory Ball)