Who talks about soul anymore?

Alvis Hermanis, the director of the performance “Sonja” (based on Tatiana Tolstoy’s story) shown on 22nd September at Bitef, thinks that the reality exists only in the real life whereas theatre is an illusion, mimicry. In this performance, he shows the “hoax” by the means of an actor’s explicit transformation in front of the audience. Male actor is in the role of Sonja – a woman. Hermanis already presented his attitude in the performance we saw at Bitef several years ago, “Long life”, also dealing with problem of time, personal development and ageing. The metamorphosis takes place on the very stage where the actors are being masked into their own fathers.
However, giving a female role to a man confirms yet another Hermanis’s belief – that actors are much better in playing a thought, concept of a woman whereas actresses put in too much of the personal and get involved into psychological analyses. The transformation of the man into Sonja, who resembles a sad clown, serves simultaneously as an allusion to the experience that people go through in the course of altering their real identity. Wishing to create something new, they dismantle it to the point of destruction.
The other line of the performance follows the tragicomic tone of the fabulous story. A person who indulges in any kind of sensitivity receives punishment, is exposed to ridicule, and turned into a clown, a tragicomic character. While he is reading the text from a love letter written by an unknown person Sonja is in love with (as a victim of a prank) the other actor is brutally laughing. The permanent contrast between the main character’s sensitivity (albeit clumsy) and the cynical mockery of it, creates an unusual amalgamate which turns tragic – by the means of comic – into a nauseating experience. The hilarious scene itself in which the narrator gets smudged with a cake seems shocking. In that scene, Sonja is stuffing a chicken, putting her hands deep into its inside, taking intestines out; the sight acquires symbolic power: the repugnance of the world in which Sonja is not the only inhabitant.
However, this shock and brutality, at times – where the director uses hyper-realistic details after an ironic severance from the reality as well as the fact that he lures the audience by the space and non-verbal expression – create the astonishment offered to the audience of Bitef as a unique experiment.

Ana Isaković