Chilean IK generation seeks revolutionary art at @hollandfestival

Holland Festival

Six actors, four years in a bunker. One is dead. Those are the details we have to make do with in Tratando de hacer una obra que cambie el mundo. According to this title, the actors are trying to create a play that will change the world. The characters have locked themselves away in an underground bunker and receive occasional provisions via a packet. On the walls many sheets of paper with ideas and books scattered all over the floor. Once in a while there is a burst of creativity and the actors whirl across the stage with suggestions for their all-encompassing play that will shake up the audience. For instance, a bunch of starving African children complete with flies opposite a frenzied wedding cake, a poodle and gymnast Nadia Comaneci should send the audience into shock. The condition is that one of the actors actually dies on stage. Not surprisingly, the beautiful plans just as often end in an argument where all ideals are momentarily forgotten. Insults are hurled about intelligence, fascist traits and how the only woman in their midst is also a vegetarian and practices yoga, so cannot be taken seriously.

In these fast-paced discussions (in Spanish with Dutch surtitles), you will be impressed by the interplay of these five actors; down to the second, they take the audience into bizarre trains of thought that rise like a raging whirlwind and just as quickly subside again during a quiet song or monologue.

The performance is about a generation that has experienced nothing but has great ideals. The Chileans relate this to their own country where today's young people live in relative freedom and economic prosperity and know dictatorship only from the history books. So what struggles remain to be fought, what remains to be overthrown? We might as well relate these sentiments to the current generation of IK in the Netherlands. World War II may be longer ago, but Dutch youngsters too are falling into the lethargy called freedom of choice. There are so many possibilities to make the world a better place, but which one to choose? Young people get burn-outs or flee into yoga or a world trip that is supposed to bring them closer to themselves.

The five incarcerated actors don't get out either, literally and figuratively. Indeed, before they finish the ultimate masterpiece, they receive word that Chilean society has become a paradise in the meantime; wealth is distributed fairly and healthcare, education and housing are provided for all. There is no more crime, because there are purely free rich citizens. And because everyone has a good job, social classes have disappeared. Resistance is now unnecessary, revolution unnecessary. But instead of coming out of their hiding place in joy, there is disbelief among the actors: this must be a conspiracy.

Does the theatre group La Re-sentida mean by this that committed theatre is dead? That is just the question. After all, the actors in Tratando de hacer... also call themselves "the ultimate delirium of the last romantics". They give ammunition to both the camp that still believes that art can actually contribute to a better world and the opponents who see art as a leftist hobby. Because what is worse, believing that society is finished and must be preserved according to precise rules like in a dictatorship, for instance, or realising that nothing matters and you'd better start making art?