Human figures

What happens when we authentically give our mind and soul and body as it is to creating? Not to theatre, because we know how that ends, but to quietly observing the world around us and without shouting „Fuck the system!”, creating something, regardless of the genre, with full empathy, and without trying to aggressively prove a point.

That was the first thought that popped into my head after watching Invisible Lands (Lvismedlet Theater, Finland). The fifty-minute performance thematized the journey of refugees from their homeland to a country where they hope to just live a normal life, and to be able to decide whether they want to die or not. Of course, it isn’t black and white, like anything that surrounds us. Because of cultural, religious, and political differences, they are usually not welcomed in every country. Even in the cases of countries that welcome them, for example, Germany, there are many discussions about how bad of a decision it was, „We said so!” So in the end, countries who refused to welcome refugees proved their point. When I hear the word „refugee”, there are a lot of associations that come to my head, opinions that are mostly not mine, but borrowed from a global discussion, from social media, from the common talk. What was refreshing while watching Invisible Lands, that these borrowed opinions didn’t even cross my mind, because the creators focused on the journey of fleeing, on the difficulties of surviving the road, on the accidents that can happen, on the deaths that can happen on the way. They were focused on the humans, not only on the political discussions surrounding them.

They chose to show this journey with the help of their own bodies, meaning that the performers’ bodies were the landscape, the road that they had to take, the mountains that they had to walk on. And also with the help of miniature figures who walked on this body-landscape. What moved me the most was the contrast between these miniature figures and the human body. That first we see a miniature figure lying dead, and as this figure comes to life, we see the performer’s still body. At first, it’s a game, but then it becomes real life. Similar to how we sometimes see politicians portrayed in movies (or maybe in reality too? I don’t know), standing at a table and making decisions that affect human life while moving little figures, in this case, refugees.

Marton Orsolya

Photocredit: László Beliczay