EAR at the Fringe Festival: its own little world of music, dance and needle & thread

"I don't have a theatre background, but I know what I like." These words from Cammy Mai Tran are typical of a trend among young theatre-makers. They find the walls between different art disciplines to be oppressive. Increasingly, we see them walking right through those walls. And when the blow is over, new inspiration swirls richly over them.

Cammy Mai Tran started out in the visual arts. Now, several years later, she is working with three musicians and two dancers/mimes on her performance EAR, which will soon premiere at the Fringe Festival. Not only music and dance, embroidery is also an ingredient in this performance.

,,When I did the preparatory year at the Rietveld Academy, it was compulsory to engage in more than one discipline. Besides painting and sculpture, I was given digital media. That came down to film. Moving images have always fascinated me."

Choosing unusual means was encouraged at the Rietveld Academy. ,,We had to make something based on a poem using photography and one other means. For me that became: adhesive tape. For Jan Willem Anker's poem 'Over de heuvel' (http://www.dbnl.org/gedichten/index.php?year=2005&gedicht=200501_anker.php), I made a landscape out of tape on a wall. In front of that landscape, I had a model move. Then, for example, she would make a jump and I would photograph her foot with a hill of tape in the background."

,,What I did with that tape project was: create my own little world, different from the everyday world. With EAR, I'm doing the same. I tend to create my own world to evoke an atmosphere of safety. I like to enclose people and objects in a world of their own, so that the feelings evoked by this little world can remain within it. In such a separate little world, the viewer can let their feelings emerge more easily than usual."

And feelings: that is what EAR is all about. EAR is a performance about human communication and the difficulty we have in revealing our true feelings and thoughts to each other in social life.

,,I have often noticed that people slow themselves down in social interaction. We often think something is not allowed. Or we let what we do depend on what others like. If someone compliments us, we think we should do at least as well next time, or preferably better. This is how we get caught in perfectionism. You set the bar so high for yourself that you can no longer meet it, because of fatigue, or because you are too busy, or whatever. That's when you confront the other person, who has expectations of you and gets disappointed or doesn't understand you. That's what I make happen in EAR."

Embroidery is something Cammy did as a child. Later, she embroidered portraits and soft toys for friends. For her, the step to incorporate embroidery into EAR was not a big one.

Its own little world in EAR is the story of two characters and six embroidered dolls, which, however, are not finished. The task the pesonages have to perform is to complete those dolls, to stitch them off. One character, Grania (Jantien Fick), is dominant. The other, Magnolia (Cynthia Wiemers), is subservient. As they fulfil their mission, propelled by music, they go through three emotional stages: joy, frustration/despair and anger.

,,These emotions are the starting point for improvisations by the three musicians. They are directed by Joeri Verdegaal. When writing EAR, I was inspired by music myself. I give the musicians and Joeri some of that. Joeri and I let the musicians improvise on this. Joeri directs them to hold on to something or go in a different direction. Because dance and music are created simultaneously, you get a real interaction. Joeri is very important for this project. He has a background in Composition & Music Production and is therefore very much at home in the field of music and sound. I direct the dancers by trying to bring out the emotions in them. With frustration and anger this went quickly, but with joy it was difficult. It turned out that joy quickly evoked the association with cheerful happiness. Very extroverted, in other words. I meant more subdued. That's why I finally chose the word 'satisfaction' instead of 'joy'."

,,It was quite a puzzle to evoke in the dancers the satisfaction I had in mind. Sometimes art requires you to take unfathomable paths. One such unfathomable path in this case was that I told two stories, which are actually very 'wrong'. But it worked. They got the emotion of satisfaction from it, so why not! The first story I told at the moment Magnolia sticks the embroidery needle into the canvas. It was about what a person feels when the drug syringe is inserted into the body. Then the feeling 'how delicious this is!' meanders through your whole body."

,,The other story was even more 'wrong'. Once in China, I experienced looking out of the hotel window at five in the morning. There were washing lines hanging with women's underwear. Quite a pretty sight, all those lines of colourful laundry. Suddenly, a man comes out of the bushes grabbing those women's pants all high. He caresses and kisses them and smells them and looks so happy! He took a few and in doing so, his body moved as if he was injected with something. It was beautiful and repulsive at the same time and, of course, there is also something comical in it. I told this to the dancers and somehow they translated this into the satisfaction I want to show in EAR."

Cammy Mai Tran ramps up the intensity of emotions in EAR. Yet she opts for restraint because that is how she thinks she can best appeal to the audience's feelings.

,,I am convinced that emotionally you do not react to what someone does, but to the tone in which someone says something. If someone laughs or cries: you always react to it. That's why the show is called EAR, because you are constantly hearing, or listening, or maybe even: obeying. That's why music has such a strong presence in EAR."

Credits
Concept, Art Direction & Directed by: Cammy Mai Tran
Play: Cynthia Wiemers, Jantien Fick
Music direction: Joeri Verdegaal
Musicians: Michael von Villiez (double bass), Sjimmie Veenhuis (percussion), Yi-Chang Liang (recorder)
Light Design: Willemijn Ottevanger
Illustration: Loes Faber
Hats Designer: Jessy Germs
Hat maker: Lisa Kaimer
Embroidered work: Cammy Mai Tran

EAR, Cammy Mai Tran, Fringe Festival 2013:
Mon 9 Sept, 9.30pm, Castrum Peregrini, Herengracht 401, Amsterdam
Di 10 Sept, 9.30pm, Castrum Peregrini, Herengracht 401, Amsterdam
Za 14 Sept, 6.30pm, Castrum Peregrini, Herengracht 401, Amsterdam
Sun 15 Sept, 6.30pm, Castrum Peregrini, Herengracht 401, Amsterdam