International Theatre Festival of Kerala (ITFOK) 2014: A state sponsored experiment with hits and misses

Deepa Punjani

TRANSFIGURATION (France)

Director: Olivier de Sagazan


	TRANSFIGURATION

Yet again a solo piece, Olivier de Sagazan's TRANSFIGURATION comes number two on my list. Depending on how you view it, it can be a soul-stirring experience. It certainly requires intimacy with the performer and quietude, which was lost in the stagings at ITFOK owing to management issues and very irritating cameras that went click click. Clearly not for the impatient viewer, the act is a modern ritual resonating with our primal nature and our deeper psychologies. Dressed in a black suit, the artiste transforms himself with wet clay, black and red paint, and other ancillary materials like straw. He transforms himself almost minute to minute in the performance; each 'mask' a variation upon the former but deterministically different. One could marvel at the actor's ability to do this wondering how he might have figured out the process in rehearsal, not obviously being able to see his own transformation with each blob of clay he flings to his face and with which he proceeds to add the black and the red colours. The implications of the act in totality are mesmerizing and visceral. The act also leads us to ponder on the question of identity. The changing face of the artist while assuming bizarre proportions and bordering on the ludicrous is effectively challenging our more comfortable and conventional notions of identity.

Visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-S862p69B0

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International Theatre Festival of Kerala (ITFOK) 2014: A state sponsored experiment with hits and misses

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