by Harry Martinsson
"Composing a Poem of a Poem"
A possible director's view
by Anja Susa
In my approach to the Martinson's book, I would like to start from the verse 40 which gives a better and more thorough understanding of the verse 41 that is the core subject of this research.
The poem 41. is called "Barnet" ("The Child") and it is a tragic story based around a character met earlier in the book, Chebeba, who was an enthusiastic dancer of the rituals. Her infant is dead and laid on a bier and Yaal, another performer of the rituals, says the infant is going home and that their prison is ‘Aniara-town’. Women come in and look at the infant lying on the bier with different reactions and Heba’s response, the last of the performers of the rituals, is only to look upon the infant, “asleep, afloat into the day of days / from Aniara-town” (Poem 41).
The symbol of a dead child is the most painful representation of suspended future which is one of the main motives of Martinsson's book as well as the unbearable symbol of the extinction of humanity.
When this, as it would turn out later, prophetic book was written in 1956. it was largely inspired by the growing tensions around the possible nuclear war as the most devastating threat of the Cold War.
The global nuclear war which was merely a threat at the time when the book was written has never been closer to becoming a horrifying reality than today. But, unfortunately, this isn't the only contemporary reference that this work can be associated with.
When we look at Martinsson's work from today's perspective, it awakes other, very tangible and less abstract associations.
In Aniara, set in a human future where space flight between planets is common and necessery due to a polluted and irradiated Earth and prevailing conflicts, the author digs deeper into the basic questions around humanity and humanism as a notion that is slowly evaporating right before our eyes.
I would, therefore, like to start from the Poem number 40 and create a possible conceptual; "landscape" around the Poem 41.
In Poem 40 the voice changes again to ‘The Space-Hands Tale’ who speaks of the packed transport ships and the terrible treatment of the immigrants to their new homes. The Space Hand remembers the time with Nobby as the “last spring nature was alive” as the nuclear war hit Xinombra and survivors became wild gangs of convicts who killed the less aggressive, as. “The unresisting souls on all our lands / died complaisantly of those rough bands” (Poem 40).
We live in the world burdened by numerous conflicts, the reincarnated threat of a nuclear war, the rising pollution and massive exploitation of natural resources but also in the world that turns a blind eye to one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the modern human history - the refugee crisis.
It seems almost impossible to me to think about Aniara from today's perspective and not to take into account the atrocities of the refugee crisis that has been shaking the fundaments of the European self-image in the past decade, giving a massive rise to nationalistic, right wing tendencies that pester political landscape of Europe pointing the finger of guilt to the "Other".
On 3rd of October 2013, more than 300 migrants and refugees, mostly from Eritrea and Somalia, drowned near the coast of the Italian island of Lampedusa. Unfortunately, only 155 survived their “Odyssey” across the Mediterranean Sea and managed to reach the European shores. This incident has been referred to as the “Lampedusa boat disaster”.
One of the most painful images that challenges the collective Western conscience, the image that was perpetually broadcasted in the Western media at the time, is the image of the dead body of the three-year-old Syrian boy Alan Kurdi. His image made headlines worldwide after he drowned in the northeastern Aegean Sea, trying to reach the Greek coast. The photograph of Alan Kurdi’s body, appearing all over the world media, caused a great deal of commotion at the international level.
Attached is the photo of Alan Kurdi after much contemplation about the ethical dimension of being a part of the Western "voyeurism with good intentions" that usually ends with sharing, posting, reproducing of images and by doing so, actually detaching from the actual tragedy. While looking at the devastating image of a dead child, I have ultimately decided to do what Jacque Rancierre defines as the emancipation of spectatorship.
Rancierre says: " The spectator also acts, like the pupil or scholar. She observes, selects, compares, interprets. She links what she sees to a host of other things that she has seen on other stages, in other kinds of place. She composes her own poem with the elements of the poem before her." (Jacques Rancierre. Emancipated Spectator. Verso, 2009 .pg. 13)
And that is exactly what I would like to do with Aniara.
I would like to use this poem to create my own poem which consists of numerous poems of other people who would make this project possible.
I would like to think of the staging of Aniara as of anti-staging, or anti-theatre. I would like to suspend the traditional institutional theatrical scenery in order to get closer to the fundamental meaning of a theatre act.
I see it rather as a community project which would test the ability of theatre to return to its' origins, and to ritualize the community around the painful historical events that we are being a part of while simultaneously observing them.
I would like to stage Aniara in various community based refugee centers in Europe (starting with Sweden), and by collaborating closely with refugees (instead of offering a ready-made performative frame), try to re-invent the concept with every new encounter.
I would like Aniara to become a meeting spot for healing the community and maybe even healing the theatre.
Aniara would be used as a material that should be understood as a referential material, a conceptual frame for the performance that would be in a constant move, prone to changes and inputs that would come from the co-creators of the (non)performance.
I would like to use the frame of Aniara as as starting point in telling the stories that rarely find their way to big institutional theatres or other cultural institutions in Europe. Or if they do - they end up being a polished, sanitized versions of a storytelling suitable for the Western sensitivity. I would like to find a way to force the sub - narrative or the under current of the European culture into the mainstream narrative of the so called "elite" culture.
I see my role of a director as the one of a facilitator rather than the author. I would like to test my ability to start the process from listening and observing. I would like to practice steering rather than leading the process.
How?
I would like to start with sharing the material of Aniara with each group. I would encourage the participants to adopt the material of the book and own it by applying their own narratives to the main narrative of the original work. This is how they would compose their own poem using a poem before theirs (Rancierre).
During the workshop stage of the project, I would collect the materials, and document them in various ways. Each new version of Aniara would have a different outcome that would not be decided by me but the owners of the story. It could be turned into various types of presentations or public events, or even stay behind the locked doors, which is again decided by the story owners and facilitated by me.
Ideally, Aniara could function as a performance with traditional role playing, as well as a more open performative structure. It could be a "pop-up" street theatre, or a filmed material that could be shown separately.
I am also contemplating the stage version of Aniara that could only be performed in European National theatres with the workshop participants (i.e. the story tellers) staging the audience to perform their stories in the time frame of a regular performance. In other words, the traditional theatre goers would be exposed to as much theatre as they are ready to produce. That would shift their usually passive spectatorship into a more active act of performative collaboration. My usual role of a theatre director would, of course, fluctuate and evolve according to the given circumstances. I can't know how exactly at this point, but the purpose of this research would be to find out if theatre directing can be understood outside of a traditional frame of pre-conceptualizing.
The goal of Aniara would be to explore the community around the performative act, to reconstruct it, to heal it to make it whole. Another goal would be to make people hear and see one another through theatre and by theatre and possibly but not necessarily in theatre.
The entire profit of this project would be given to the participants/owners of the narrative who would be given complete liberty to decide how they want to use it.
Kommentarer forskningsprojektet och Anja Sušas text.
Anja Suša beskriver väl hur högaktuellt Martinssons verk är idag, 2024, i dessa textrader; “In Aniara, set in a human future where space flight between planets is common and necessary due to a polluted and irradiated Earth and prevailing conflicts, the author digs deeper into the basic questions around humanity and humanism as a notion that is slowly evaporating right before our eyes”. Hon tar utgångspunkt i flyktingkrisen från 2000-talets mitt och Jacques Rancierres bok “Emancipation of spectatorship” och vill göra ett community projekt med flyktingar/flyktingcenter runt om i Europa. Föreställningarna ska komma till genom deltagarnas egna berättelser (their own poems with elements of the poem before them), med Aniara som ram.
Idén, ur en producents perspektiv, är både inspirerande och utmanande. Producentens arbete med att skapa kreativa och välfungerande förutsättningar för att realisera verket på olika platser, måste starta i ett delat ledarskap med idégivaren för projektet. De måste arbeta nära varandra i planering, organisering, finansiering och hitta samarbetspartners, med vilka de tillsammans skapar relationer, partnerskap och överenskommelser med. Anja skriver: “I see my role of a director as the one of a facilitator rather than the author. I would like to test my ability to start the process from listening and observing. I would like to practice steering rather than leading the process.” Det förhållningssättet blir bärande för projektidén och således även för producenten, precis som förhållningssättet blir viktigt i all kommunikation om projektet. Projektets vision, mål, organisering, planering, kommunikation och finansiering är avgörande för att attrahera de samarbetpartners som krävs för att projektet ska gå att genomföra.
Producenten ska i samband med projektets uppstart göra en planering och budget där hållbarhetsperspektivet finns med ur fler aspekter än det givna sociala. Producenten ska tillsammans med teamet på varje plats skapa en ekonomisk, social, kreativ och klimatreducerande hållbarhetsram att arbeta efter. Fokuset på hållbarhetsarbetet utgår från varje teams behov, vilja och möjlighet.
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Anna Ljungqvist
Lektor i scenkonstproduktion