“Theatre is Body – Body is Poetry” is the title chosen by Willem Dafoe for his first edition as artistic director of the Venice Biennale‘s International Theatre Festival, which kicks off May 31 with the European premiere of the revival of the Wooster Group’s “Symphony of Rats.”
The lineup assembled by Dafoe for the fest – which runs through June 15 – stems from his own experiences and influences, and ranges from a Whose Who of big experimental theatre names such as the Odin Teatret, Italy’s Romeo Castellucci, Germany’s Thomas Ostermeier, and Switzerland’s Milo Rau, to emerging talents like Afro-Belgian multidisciplinary artist Princess Bangura who will present two solo shows: “Oedipus Monologue” and “Great Apes of the West Coast.”
Dafoe speaks to Variety from Venice about assembling his lineup and deciding to personally participate with a homage to late great New York experimental theater guru Richard Foreman, who died in January.
What are some of the discoveries that are part of your program?
One is Davide Iodice’s “Pinocchio – What is a Person,” which I saw in Naples. I mean, it’s by someone who is very accomplished. But I wasn’t familiar with his work. Then there’s also some emerging artists whom I simply did not know. Between the Biennale staff and the people who are working with me, I was led to some of those people and got educated.
Talk to me about this “Pinocchio“
Naples is a great theater city. But I’ve never been amid an audience where I felt like they are so much with the performance. One of the things that’s special about the piece is it’s beautifully designed, beautifully made, and most of the performers are children with special needs. Because Jodice runs a school, among other things. He makes beautiful theater, but he’s also an incredibly committed individual. And I’m just starting to get to know about him after I saw this beautiful piece. He’s a person that has worked with non-traditional communities making theater. And there’s a kind of directness and simplicity, and everything is devoted to the action. That’s a place you want to be as an actor, as far as I’m concerned. That’s what I learned at The Wooster Group.
Speaking of The Wooster Group, the opener is the revival of “Symphony of Rats,” the Richard Foreman play from 1988. It’s 40-year-old piece, but obviously quite timely.
It may have been written 40 years ago, but it was just recently remade with a different production. And Foreman, before he died, said: “Do whatever you want with it. I don’t want to recognize it.” So it’s a very different production.
At a very trivial level it’s about a U.S. president getting messages from outer space. Does it remind you of Trump at all?
[Laughs]. I didn’t even notice that until you said it!
Seriously, can you talk to me about the timeliness of this piece?
I’m more interested in the aesthetics and the effect of the theater than I am about the content. It’s going to mean different things to different people. It’s not didactic, it’s not an interpretation. It’s a theater piece that really opens you up to experiences beyond your experience. That’s what I’m interested in. For anybody to interpret it, or talk about the content and what goes on in it, that’s not what I’m involved in so much. Even as an actor, that’s not what I’m attracted to.
Speaking of you as an actor, it’s great that you are going to perform a homage to Richard Foreman, called “No Title.” Can you tell me more?
Richard, the year before he died, said: “When you come to New York, I’d like to do a recording with you.” I got there. I showed up at his loft. He wasn’t well, he was in a wheelchair. In fact, he passed in January. And he had these cards where he had printed little phrases. And these were phrases that he had been accumulating for a long time. We shuffled the cards. I took half, he took half. And then we alternated reading them. And it was interesting because sometimes they came together in conversation. Sometimes it was totally abstract. And it had to do a lot with different variables. What the text was, of course. But also our trying to contact each other, or to make some sort of connection; sometimes rhythmically, sometimes psychologically. It was very interesting to see how something random can form itself and make sense, and then fall from sense. Make sense, fall from sense. So it was quite powerful and I was quite struck by it.
And then when I got this appointment, I thought something should be done with that. There’s an Italian actress, Simonetta Solder, and I’ll do it with her, basically. We have the same cards, the same phrases. We’ll shuffle them. We’ll do a round. We’ll shuffle them, we’ll do another round. Same words, but in different configuration. And then we’ll do a round in Italian. So that’ll be an experiment. But I’m excited to do it because when I did it with Richard, it was really pleasurable.
Back to the emerging artists. One that caught my eye is Evangelia Randou, who has worked with Yorgos Lanthimos, and her Garage21 company. Did you meet her on a movie set?
Yes. I actually got to know Evangelia quite well because I was working with her on a film [Miguel Ángel Jimenéz’s upcoming “The Birthday Party”] as a choreographer. And I was quite taken with her relationship to the body. She has an incredible background as a dancer and as a creator. I just felt great affinity when we were working on this quite complicated dance piece for the film. It was a natural thing to invite her because she’s someone I’ve felt very close to in a very short amount of time. She came and visited Venice. Her piece is going to be site-specific.
On a random note, talk to me about your choice to include the Istanbul Historical Turkish Music Ensemble, the whirling dervishes, in the program
I’ve always been interested in the dervishes. I’ve always been interested in the marriage of performance or some involvement with the body with a spiritual impulse. The way they use their body, this interests me.
Is there a mysticism element?
Hey, that’s part of it. But really I wanted to find some people that had a physical discipline that was performed in public that involved the body. It just made sense to me.
