Amsterdam, 1999. Studying Theatre Science, first-year theatre analysis class. I sit with notepad and pen clutched in fingers, taking indecipherable notes. Halfway through the lecture Sjaron Minailo (Tel Aviv, 1979) saunters in, dressed in a huge fur coat, with big Gucci sunglasses and dreadlocks. With a sigh, he plops down in the back lecture bench, hears three sentences of the dishevelled lecturer's speech, and shouts, "But that has Tadeusz Kantor done years before, right?!" Followed by: "I don't get ANY of it!" The teacher doesn't let up: "Maybe you should have joined a little earlier." I laughed my ass off. It was the beginning of a good friendship.
The flamboyant Minailo had moved to Amsterdam a year earlier, had mastered rudimentary Dutch, and emerged in our first year at university as the director of Het Verdriet van de Zeedijk: the wildly experimental movement-theatre group we had created as over-confident theatre students, and which would die a gentle death after a number of odd performances.
With his graduation project Khadish - a video artwork mixing the visual language of MTV with contemporary opera - Minailo really found his niche: musical theatre and contemporary, experimental opera. Twelve years and countless productions later, Minailo now works as a director with the Chamber opera house.
In that capacity, he will soon present the show Persona, an adaptation of Ingmar Bergman's eponymous masterpiece from 1966. The show will be performed in The Overkant: an old shed on the former Stork site on the North IJ bank, and will premiere 15 August at the Canal Festival in Amsterdam.
"I have seen Persona twice as a theatre production," Minailo explains. "It is an absolute Bergman classic and one of my favourite films. But I often didn't find the theatre versions that engaging." The story depicts two women who rely on each other: the actress Elizabeth no longer wants to speak, while her nurse Alma tries to break the silence with a torrent of words. In a remote house by the sea, the two women fight a psychological power struggle.
Minailo decided to make Persona into musical theatre, with the permission of the Bergman Foundation - which was enthusiastic about his plan. "In Bergman's film, the silent woman - through the beautiful camera work, and the silent acting - is just as, or perhaps more powerful than the speaking one. But on stage, the Persona often reduced to monologue. That doesn't do justice to the nuances of silence."
Mezzo-soprano Ellen van Beek gives shape to the 'silent' Elizabeth with wordless vocals, playing together with actress Mira Helmer, cellist Eduard van Regteren Altena and a soundscape by composer Anne La Berge. Former history of The Netherlands Opera, Winfried Maczewski came up with the musical concept. "I'm looking for a new way to express the character of Elizabeth," says Minailo. "If I had been a choreographer, I would have made her dance."
Persona is a very layered philosophical story. "It's about the contrast between the mask people wear, and their soul. Sometimes almost literally. Because the name Alma means 'soul,' and Elizabeth is an actress who has had to keep changing masks. But what happens when these characters start mirroring each other? Furthermore, the story asks the moral question of whether you have the right to turn away from life and reality. As Elizabeth does."
In terms of atmosphere, Minailo was inspired by the disruptive Mulholland Drive (2001) by director David Lynch - incidentally, a film that is itself an homage to Bergman's classic. In the rehearsal room at the Ostada Theatre, the ensemble is tinkering with scene five. "This will be the most difficult scene so far," says musical director Winfried Maczewski. Minailo exclaims, "This is where the madness really has to come out. One big fragmentary chaos - like a séance - everything dissonant and off-beat."
Persona. Studio Minailo. Premiere 15 August, then tour.
www.studiominailo.com /// www.grachtenfestival.nl
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