Møtet

Documentation from performance “Møtet”.

Welcome to Sansesentralen.

Our mission is to make your daily life more sensuousness.

Since our daily life has become more the same, we can make the small moments more memorable. Even though we can not be that physical close, we can be close.

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In April all Norwegian theatre's was close. During this period Oslo Teatersenter (Oslo Theatre Centre) invited artists to join a lab. The lab centered on creating theatre in the period of a pandemic. Artists would create and perform performances that complied with the national Norwegian health and safety restrictions. It meant that only five people allowed in a room at a time with 2 meters distance. The project called #Kunstellasjoner. It was performances every weekend from end of April to end of May.

I had long wanted to create a performance with only one audience at the time, and it could not been a better time for it. I also wanted to create a performance with combining experience design. I collaborated with the visual artist and experience designer Rasmus Ottesen Stride. We wanted to create an experience from the moment the audience came in to the space and left the space. Le Théâtre du Soleil and Ariane Mnouchkine focus on taking care of their spectators. This they give with focusing on the experience around the performance. They greet the spectators when they arrive and give them food and blankets. We wanted to take care of our spectators, creating a wholeness experience. First the spectator met a receptionist. The receptionist greeted the spectator as receptionist would do. He prepared the spectator for the meeting with questions. He wrote down their answers in slow pace.  

How many times do you wash your hands during the day?
When you wash your hands, do you a) do it automatically b) do you get irritated c) do you do it with joy?
Do you notice your skin when you wash your hands?

The receptionist lead the spectator into a room. Here they met a woman sitting in silence at a table holding two buckets of water and two soap dispensers. The woman invited the spectator to sit down. The space between the performer and audience was two meters. The performer welcomed the spectator as if she was expecting the meeting. She explained the meetings agenda.

1) Body scan

2) Get to know our hands

3) Wash our hands together

Everything is voluntary.

In silence. With slow pace.

In the performance the spectator is being invited to feel their own body. Instead of watching a performance with a distance. To invite audience to sense their own body needs time for the spectator to ground in their own body and to slow down. The performance group Sisters Hope invites audience to slow down in the Sisters Academy # 6 The Boarding School. Sisters Hope invited spectators to a 24 hour performance. The audience became students at the Sisters Academy to learn about sensuousness. The audience came to the school alone on different time schedules. Before they entered the Boarding School, they were being prepared with slowing down. This happened in a meeting with a receptionist. In the performance “Møtet”, this happens in the encounter with the receptionist and a body scan in the meeting. As a performer I could feel that it took time for the spectator to slow down. Spectators could find it uncomfortable in the beginning to slow down. It was important to do it because it seemed easier for the spectators to sense their hands. It was as if I could sense a shift in the tempo to the audience. 

It smells of Palo Santo in the air. The light is falling in through the window. Lights on the white walls and the water. Reverberations of sounds from the outside. Reflections from another world. In this room it is the world of sensuousness and intimacy. You can hear the silence and sound of heart beats. The lukewarm water waits for soft hands to touch it. A stranger will share an intimate moment with another stranger. Sit down. I am looking at you in silence. I ask you to feel different parts of your body. I ask you to wash your hands with me. How will this experience resonate in your body? Will it feel uncomfortable, comfortable, strange, or as a longing?

In the performance “Møtet” I invite audience to wash their hands together with me in silence. We share something intimate and almost sacred together if I am able to create a trust to the audience.  If the trust is not there the audience becomes a spectator instead of a participant. I prepared myself between each performance by meditating. I am inspired by the performance artist Marina Abramovic. She prepare herself before a performance with meditation over a long period. She calls it emptying herself to be present.

Inviting people to slow down and be in contact with their body, I find scary when people have not asked for it. The encounter feels like a real time and real human encounter. It feels I have no frames to hide behind. It is both vulnerable for me as a performer and the audience. It is a big responsibility to hold this space.

We laughed and giggled washing our hands together. We created lots of sounds in our hands with the soap.

He did not want to stop washing his hands. He´s astonished and in his own bubble.

Fascinated.

Watching instead of participating.

An interesting experience to get to know her hands.

Annoyed.

She did not want to stop. In her own bubble. She's fascinated by sounds, bubbles and the feeling of water.

Talked all through the performance as we were two humans sitting in front of each other.

We could have kept for hours.

Watched in silence.

Each experience is different. Each person is different.

I am inspired by performances that break with a conventional theatre frame. Performances that have unclear line between spectator/performer and reality/fiction. Adrian Howell was a performance artist that created intimate experiences. He created performances with intimate one-to-one encounter with real people and real life. In the performance “Foot Washing for the Sole” (2008) he washed the feet to one spectator at the time for 20 minutes. Andy Field write about his experience as an spectator to Howells performance. He explains that Howell created performances that could been uncomfortable intimate. His generosity gave audience trust and the simple interactions became extraordinary. 

Howell prioritised interpersonal connectedness and created a transaction of confessions with audience. I am interested to continue working with having a dialogue with audience. I want to create a space for reflection with audience. Because of Covid-19 lockdown of society, I felt it was too intimate to create a dialogue with audience. That being together in a space was intimate enough. I did not feel it was the time to reflect over the encounter together. All that we needed was to be together in the space.

Another theatre maker that inspires me is Fernado Rubio. He is a director, playwright, and visual artist that make intimate theatre. He founded the company INTIMOTEATROITINERANTE in 2001. His performance “Everything by my side” invites spectators to lay down in a bed with a performer. The project is exploring intimacy in public spaces. The performer speaks to the spectator as “you” to create an intimate experience. Rubio takes recognizable elements in a new context to create reflection. In the performance “Møtet” we used washing hans as a recognizable element. We wanted to recreate this recognizable act in the pandemic to a sensuous experience.

After the meeting, the spectator was lead outside and greeted with a gift. The gift was a piece of soap wrapped in paper with poetic words from receptionist. Words based on the previous encounter. This was the experience could continue after the performance for the spectator.

What is intimacy today?

When the we are less in contact with others, does it feel more intimate to be close to another human?

I was lucky to have the experience to perform when other theatres kept closed. The experience was unique at the time, and it felt as we met people coming out from their homes for the first time. Because of the circumstances, the experience felt more intimate and sensuousness. Interaction with audience felt as an intimate and real meeting between two humans. Having a performance about intimacy and sensuousness could not been at a better time. The encounter felt as we prepared audience to meet intimacy and sensuality again. Or as we were giving something that had been a loss.

Intimacy today could be washing your hands in silence with another person. Sitting in silence together with another person. Sitting close, but not to physical close. Looking someone in the eyes. Sharing something. Feeling your hands touch water. Feeling your hands touch your own hands. Interacting today can feel more intimate than one year ago.

The performance stretched over 2 days. Sansesentralen was not part of the original performance. After the first day of performance, we felt the performance needed a story for the meeting. When we did not have this story, it felt as real meeting with two people. Very intimate, but also a big risk for it to be too intimate and uncomfortable. We instead  created the metaphorical tale of “Sansesentralen”. A firm that exists to offer sensuous experiences. This way we added a bit of play which generated more safety. We created a fake Facebook page and promoted the page in the poetic gift given to each spectator.

After the two days of performances we decided that our fake firm should be our company name. Sansesentralen is Norwegian for Sense Central.

Read Norwegian theatre critics of the project #Kunstellasjoner here.