It is here, among the Mediterranean towns and villages of their native Catalonia, that the wildly innovative men and women who call themselves the Comediants draw their inspiration for the folk-based avant-garde theater they will bring to Chicago, beginning next Saturday.
Chicagoans are bound to be in for a surprise, and perhaps even a scare or shock, mixed with the Comediants` dominant note of jubilation, as the troupe makes its first foray into the United states for the International Theatre Festival.
Piled together for the last three years in their rambling mansion on Spain`s northeastern coast, the 22 performers have boiled down their individual impressions of Mediterranean myths and culture into high-energy productions that, on the surface, are strikingly exotic.
The two productions to be presented in Chicago, ”Ale,” which is Catalan for ”breath,” and ”Demonis,” which means ”devils,” are prime examples of the Comediants` hallmark use of their own, peculiar notions of good and evil, the sacred and profane, and fun and seriousness to dress up and make over some of the theater`s oldest issues.
At ”Demonis,” to be enacted at Navy Pier next Saturday evening as part of the festival`s free opening party, there will be no spectators, in the traditional sense of the word-at least if the Comediants manages to run the event as usual. Instead, those who attend will be greeted by an invitation to frolic in a smoky, carnival-like procession led by rowdy, fun-loving devils.
As befits such red and orange, horned creatures, the main props are fireworks and torches, which the devilish Comediants wield with appropriate glee and mischief.
In fact, the danger of the flames is only apparent-part of a meticulously worked-out act that the Comediants has performed at theater festivals throughout Europe for many years. But, as in any scary movie worth the popcorn, that appearance of danger is what makes the show.
”We all have an ancestral feeling about fire that you try to awaken in the participants,” said Jin Hua Kuan, a member of the troupe. ”The idea is that you make them a bit afraid, but they still want to get involved.”
”Ancestral feelings” may be a good place to start in order to explain events like ”Demonis,” and even the why and wherefore of the Comediants.
In Catalan towns like Canet, where the Comediants have lived since 1975, the history of demons goes a long way back. The legacy of dragons, devils and giants that are a staple of the Comediants`s casting reaches back to influences of pagan Greek culture, according to Jaime Bernadet, one of the Comediants.
Over the ages, such figures crept into later Christian ceremony, surviving to the present in some Spanish towns on holidays such as Corpus Christi, when townspeople don masks or giants` outfits, and are permitted to walk at the back of the religious street procession.
A few years ago, however, the Comediants got the idea of bringing the devils and other mythical characters back to the foreground. The group began acting in small town celebrations throughout Spain, and they now say the ideal number for the event is about 10,000 people.
”Our philosophy is that the fiesta is a way of understanding life,”
said Bernadet.
For the Comediants, the challenge of modern theater is, in part, how to mine what they see as these ancestral, Mediterranean feelings and myths, and bring them back to the surface again.
The group`s production of ”Ale,” which runs April 26 to May 8 at the Park West, goes a few steps further than ”Demonis” in that quest.
Although ”Ale” is performed in a theater, and so is less spectacular, its outrageous, comic treatment of the Creation and the history of humanity plays even more provocatively on the tension between pagan myths and the group`s own religious tradition.
”(Most of us) had Catholic educations, especially under Franco,”
Bernadet said, sitting at a long dining table as other Comediants buzzed about, readying for their tour. ”This is a satirical view of life, and an optimistic view of death-a criticism of our religion`s tendency to put fear in people of where they will go when they die.”
In the course of the performance, the public surrounds the world as it is being created, and the angels offer man as a gift to God. But the devils also do their bit of creating. ”We turn it all on its head-the demons are the good guys, because they`re lively. The angels are bad because they`re boring,”
explained Kuan.
By the conclusion, the Comediants have sketched a grand outline of human history to 1988.
It is all meant to seem easy and spontaneous. Beneath the playfulness, however, lies a very serious commitment to a new type of theater that has effectively absorbed the lives of this troupe.
The group`s so-called ”first generation” originated with a handful of 19- and 20-year-old students at an alternative theater school in 1969, when the winds of creative rebellion were reaching Catalonia via Paris.
Six students decided to form their own group two years later, said Paca Sola, a founding member who is now the troupe`s director.
The new theater was to have three aims: Take performance out of an enclosed box stage, employ fresh text, and make use of live music. Gradually, the group adopted other principles, including acting with, instead of in front of, the public, and ”appealing to the five senses to create more complete theater,” Sola said.
After more than a decade of work, the Comediants received Spain`s National Theater award in 1983 for originality of performance and for making use of space not usually meant for theater.
Nowadays, true to their take-the-act-outside philosophy, new ideas for performances can be tried out anywhere on the troupe`s expansive, walled-in grounds, complete with manicured garden and goldfish pond.
If unsure that a sketch is working, the Comediants occasionally will try it out on local children-keen judges of spontaneity and humor.
The only drawback, members say, is that ideas can come at any moment, at the dinner table, for example, which means that it often feels as if there is no time off from the job.
”This is a little like being a nun, but instead of dedicating your life to God, you offer it to the theater,” Paca Sola said.
– ”Demonis” will be presented at 8 p.m. Saturday at Navy Pier. Admission is free, but by ticket only. Free tickets are available in advance at the Auditorium Theatre box office, 70 E. Congress Pkwy., or through Ticketron outlets (where a service charge is collected). The show is not recommended for children under 12. After the approximately one-hour performance, food (pizza, hot dogs, pasta, pastries, spinach pie, sorbettos), drink (beer, soft drinks and champagne) and dancing to two bands will be on hand in the Navy Pier auditorium. Tickets for this event are $25 at the door, or $20 in advance from the festival office, Box 3567, Chicago, IL 60654.
”Ale” will play April 26-May 8 at the Park West, 322 W. Armitage Ave., with performances at 7:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, 6 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday. Tickets, at $18 to $22, are available at the Auditorium, 70 E. Congress Pkwy., at the Park West or by phone from 644-FEST.
