242

Ligia Lewis: Water Will (in Melody). 2.12.18, HAU 2, Berlin.

As we are sitting there in the dark we are taken on a journey to a dreamy performative world that challenges the established conventions and mechanisms of Western black box theatre. Lights, stage design, costume, the separation between stage and tribune/performers and spectators, sound, music, voice, speech, movement: all aspects are put under scrutiny, emphasized, parodied, dismantled and re-agenced. Not everything is given to see or hear at all times in this work: for example the performers repeatedly disappear in darkness or behind curtains while they perform, hence challenging the usual ideas around visibility on stage and asking: who in our societies gets to be seen and heard?

The relation between speech and hearing particularly caught my interest, as most of the text being spoken through audio recordings or live by the performers was either too low or blurry to be heard, or too scattered to be understood, therefore efficiently questioning the role of speech and language in the human expression of thoughts and emotions, in particular in a theatre context.

Darkness matters –