What children do in their room during the night is not known. But it might happen that the director of a small provincial Swedish theater, father of two children, breaks into his children’s room due to the great noise, finds them awake and decides to tell them the fantastic story of the chair he holds in his hands. It might seem part of the common room furniture, but the truth is that it is an illusion: built 3000 years earlier for the birthday of the Chinese empress, it’s the most expensive chair in the world and emanates a mysterious light, which grows from inside. It shines in the dark. It then happens that children plunge into that vision and, paying heed to that invention, contemplate a silent marvel, to the point of defending it tooth and nail.
The work of the UnterWasser research group (Rome), made up of Valeria Bianchi, Aurora Buzzetti and Giulia De Canio, seems to evoke this small family scene told by Bergman in the film Fanny and Alexander. Attending their shows, the view must get used to the dark, refine and finally submerge into the white screen to perceive the shimmer of the stories that this company brings to light. The projection on the screen returns to the eye the exhumed and silent shapes of the silhouettes of the objects that the company brings to the stage and stimulates with the help of flashlights.
Inspired by these images, I meet Valeria, Aurora and Giulia on the Zoom platform to let them tell me about their work. During the conversation, they reveal to me that their will in the theater is to explore the deepest cavities of what surrounds man, learning not to be afraid and to observe all those elements that are generally submerged, as if hidden from the eyes and covered by water. While children are more capable to believe in those visions and know how to tame this type of language, adults, perhaps, struggle more. In UnterWasser’s shows, a universe of table objects and puppets unfolds on the stage, like musical instruments, ready to perform a live arrangement through which the three animators give life to a real cinema. Three-dimensional shapes of moving objects are captured by the light and returned to the screens in the form of silhouettes. A profoundly material practice such as that of puppetry changes skin, giving us the negative image of objects reduced to magical simulacra or fatuous shadows, profoundly eloquent in the final images.
UnterWasser's is in fact a "visual theater", thus renamed by the same company also to circumvent the prejudice that exists on puppetry, almost never present in the seasons of institutional spaces and aimed only at a specific age group and sector specific, that of the children's theater. A definition that also proves to be an opportunity to broaden the pool of spectators and participate, with shows that use puppetry techniques, in heterogeneous programs and reviews for adults. A great victory for UnterWasser, distinguished by many awards and excellent reception by the adult public, in a country like Italy, where those who work with table puppets and objects to maneuver, reducing the use of word on stage, pay an unreasonable price or risk being marginalized. Even the scarcity of training courses linked to puppetry and accessible to the youngest - admit Valeria, Aurora and Giulia - contributes to a dry field, resulting in a small number of works attributable to these techniques. In the course of the conversation, however, they add that the birth of an annual course such as Animation, curated by Teatro Gioco Vita, Teatro delle Briciole, Teatro del Drago, and the presence among the finalists of the last edition of the Scenario Infanzia 2020 award of five shows that revolve around the techniques of shadow or puppet theater, but also of theater on black or objects, it can give hope.
UnterWasser perhaps becomes the witness of a small change within this type of theater, stimulating a renewed interest in the extraordinary possibilities of scenic and dramaturgical experimentation that the combination of different media allows. Two significant stages of this process are certainly the conquest of second place at In-Box 2019, with the show Maze, and the invitation by Antonio Latella to participate in the latest edition of the Biennale Teatro with a new production.
Before going into the story of these latest works, the girls reveal to me how the UnterWasser adventure was born. Valeria, Giulia and Aurora met in 2012, working together on the production of the show EHI !, directed by Ivan Franek. The group was then formed in 2014 for a real need: to leave behind the paths that up to that moment each of them has carried out to develop a common imagination, thus defeating a loneliness, in some cases suffocating and frustrating, and gradually taking over. of an increasingly strong and lively artistic identity. The will to unite also fixes some peculiarities of the collective: the lack of a leader, the refusal of specific tasks and roles, taking care of the genesis of the shows and the construction of the scenic elements in total agreement, and finally the enchantment of climbing all three on stage. An autarchic and prismatic character of their work practice, which is even resolved in the decision to drag the entire technical system onto the stage to control it live.
With their first show Out, among the finalists of Scenario Infanzia 2014 and winner of the 2016 Aeolus award as "Best puppetry show", Valeria, Aurora and Giulia cross the length and breadth of the entire peninsula, also performing in China , Croatia, Germany and Spain. To tell this coming-of-age fairy tale, the initiatory journey of a child in search of a bird that he keeps closed in his cage-chest, almost a double of his or an extension of his body, UnterWasser uses poor materials such as papier-mâché, polystyrene, wood, steel, wire and recycled fabric. The intent is to create a show capable of speaking to the world of children and that can also be represented abroad, using only sounds on stage.
If in Out and in Amarbarì, an installation of lights and sounds built inside a room and conceived for the Roma Europa Festival, the aesthetics are more "sweet", in Maze the work on shadows gives an almost sketchy flavor to the shapes, as emerged from a sketchbook. The shadows of wire sculptures on the ground or suspended, illuminated live and projected on a large screen, are the protagonists of a fragmentary and deeply poetic narration, which proceeds through isolated paintings with a subjective vision. The show, which marks the transition to a puppet theater made especially for adults, debuts at the end of 2018, after a work of about and the creation of masks, then abandoned to prefer research on shadows. Filiform, fragile, metallic, light and tangled silhouettes burst onto the screen, the result of Aurora Buzzetti's interest in the production of Alexander Calder's portraits.
The latest Untold work, which debuted last September in Venice, broadens the spectrum of the poetic and expressive possibilities of the collective's experimentation. The technique used and still in-depth is always that of the shadows cast by bodies modeled in iron and other objects, but this time between the light source of the moving lamps and the screens, the human figure insinuates itself. The visions in Untold are constructed through zooms in and out that frame the wire elements on the stage, with which this time the details of the bodies of Valeria, Aurora and Giulia also interact. Greater attention is given to the scene, clearing it from time to time of objects and reducing the number of lamps to illuminate. The hands, the faces, the lips are also sucked by the light, they cross the screen to be returned as deceptive simulacra to the viewer's eyes. The machinist who holds, drives, pulls, fixes and governs objects in front of the public, revealing his actions and his tricks and reinforcing the invitation to play and the pact with the spectator, ends up being immortalized by the frame and his movements are repeated twice, on stage and on video. Attending the works of UnterWasser, the enchantment can also arise from the movements of the three animators: in the dim light we distinguish a choreography characterized by small steps, shots, curves, interlocking arms and hands, twists and statuesque poses.
Today perhaps it is increasingly rare to meet interpreters, authors, directors and performers who decide to get together, to create a stable work group. The choice to do so pays Giulia, Valeria and Aurora and encourages their stubbornness. They reveal to me that they consider themselves lucky for the choice of teaming up, directing the research that each of them continues to carry out in a common artistic path. "We are lucky for what we have set up on our own and for the rules we have found", concludes Aurora. I abandon the seabed and re-emerge from the water. My eyes are red. I see nothing.
From 2 to 5 and from 9 to 12 May, the Argot Studio Theater hosted the review "Over-emergenze theater", a space dedicated exclusively to young talents of the scene still unexplored.
On the evening of 11 May, Maze was staged by the UnterWasser company, a research group founded in 2014 by Valeria Bianchi, Aurora Buzzetti and Giulia De Canio, which investigates the mutual contamination between visual theater and contemporary art.
As stated on their website, "the group undertakes work on two parallel tracks: on the one hand the performative one, on the other the exhibition / installation one.
UnterWasser's theater is a mobile installation to be enjoyed in the evolution of the scenes, in the fluidity of their flow. Matter transforms in front of the viewer and perspectives change according to the principle of cinematographic editing. The protagonists are the artistic object, the image, the sculpture, the moving matter. The performer is at the service of the object and becomes its animator "
Right after the show, we met and interviewed the company.
Let's start from the beginning. How did you meet and what prompted you to work together?
Although our paths had already crossed, the real meeting took place in 2012 during a workshop aimed at the realization of the puppet show “EHI!”, Produced by Fattore K, directed by Ivan Franek.
Each of us had at least ten years of rich and demanding professional theatrical experiences behind us, we came from different and perfectly complementary training paths.
We got to know each other again and immediately felt a great affinity between the sensibilities, tastes and creative needs of each of us, so much so that we decided to start our own independent artistic project. Thus the UnterWasser company was born.
What does theater mean for you?
For us, doing theater is first of all a need. We consider the theater a tool, a language to communicate, to express, to investigate aspects of the human starting from ourselves and our experience.
The research we carry out, in continuous evolution, represents the slow definition of our artistic identity, made up of meticulous selections, influenced by extraordinary encounters and fueled by our studies, our imagination and constant experimentation on the subject.
Each of us, in different ways, has landed in puppetry, falling in love with its poetic and evocative potential. We believe that this language has the extraordinary ability to give shape to thought, opening windows on the stage, lyrical glimpses that lead the audience into poetic, dreamlike and fantastic worlds, empty canvases on which the gaze of each spectator can project meanings and evoke memories, emotions , images. If the paradox of the theater consists in the tacit agreement between the actor and the audience, according to which the spectator decides to believe in the fiction that takes place before his eyes, in puppetry this paradox is brought to its maximum expression, especially when the animation "on sight" (when the actors, that is, do not hide their presence while animating the figures).
The maximum of illusion comes from the maximum of artifice. The enchantment is created by the unveiling.
The word Theater comes from a verb that means to look, to be a spectator, to marvel. To do theater the necessary thing is that there is someone willing to watch what someone else is doing, here and now. The viewer's gaze is fundamental, as are his listening and his imagination. We firmly believe in the active role of the public. The author is a guide but it is the spectator who composes the show within himself.
How was Maze born and how long did you work on it?
We started imagining this project in the summer of 2017 and we worked a year and a half before seeing its birth. Our works always begin with a phase of pure experimentation and elaboration of ideas and suggestions, a sort of magma that includes on the one hand the issues we would like to address and on the other the research on techniques and materials. The beginning is always confused and takes shape as the work progresses. In this phase it takes patience and time to experiment, an open mind to be surprised by unexpected results and effects and a lot of courage to abandon the ideas that are not working even if on paper they seemed decisive. To host the first working session of Maze was a museum of contemporary art: the CasermaArcheologica di Sansepolcro. The connection that was created between the place that hosted us and our research led to the creation of some installations of sculptures and shadows that gave a fundamental imprint to the subsequent work, suggesting the form that the show would later have.
In December 2017, one of the installations was transformed into a performance (The Wire City) and was presented at Carrozzerie n.o.t., in Rome, during an evening dedicated to contemporary art.
In the following months we continued to work alternating construction periods in our laboratory with residences in theatrical spaces, such as the La Licorne Theater in Dunkirk, the Teatro del Lavoro in Pinerolo and the Città delle 100 Scale festival in Potenza (which then hosted the debut as of December 2018).
Maze is a live performance in which the shadows of three-dimensional objects and sculptures are projected live on a large screen. The technique we use is an evolution of shadow theater that comes from our personal research: we do not use two-dimensional shapes but three-dimensional sculptures mostly in wire, whose shadows produce a graphic effect that resembles a film of animation. We use light sources as cameras, creating the illusion in the audience of watching a cinematic film shot in subjective. The show is structured like a book of visual poetry. The dramaturgy is fragmented but the eyes that look at the world are those of a single person. We needed to give shape with images to some salient moments of our lives, moments in which we felt connected with ourselves and with what surrounded us, moments of full presence, from here and now. Moments of lucid illumination, strong emotions of pain or joy. The intention was not to tell episodes of a specific life, but to outline the sensations evoked by some significant moments through images and sounds, so that each spectator could complete the empty spaces with their own experience. As often happens in our shows, many of the scenes are taken from our dream world, because dreams in themselves possess a strong symbolic and allegorical potential.
The reading and study of the work of poetesses and artists such as Mariangela Gualtieri, Wislawa Szymborska, Emily Dickinson, Etty Hillesum, Laurie Anderson contributed to enriching our imagination.
We did not use words to accompany the images, but an original soundtrack, which is intertwined with them becoming an integral part of the dramaturgy. The music, created by Posho, was composed simultaneously with the creation of the scenes, in a continuous exchange of suggestions and influences.
All the props are the result of your meticulous work. How does your creative process develop when you build a show and how important is the space?
In our work, the artisan aspect of building objects and experimenting is fundamental. It is a part of the process that we deeply love and that allows us to always learn something new. It is the moment in which we share our manual skills, learn from each other and study together what we do not know. Experience has taught us that it is difficult to impose a pre-established idea on "figures": objects have their own soul and their own breath, they need to be observed and known, and that time is dedicated to them for experimentation and 'improvisation. For this reason it is impossible for us to follow the chronological process typical of the phases of the creation of a show (conception, dramaturgy and staging). Our dramaturgical writing is carried out in parallel with research and study of materials, the craftsmanship of the manufacture of sculptures and objects and improvisation, in a relationship of mutual contamination. Our shows often refer to the work of contemporary artists. In the case of Maze, we drew inspiration from the vast wire production of the artist Alexander Calder: portraiture, toys, "mobiles". With the research we realized that the sculptures and the wire portraits create particular graphic effects in the shade that recall animated drawings, sketches, dynamic hatches.
The stage space of Maze was built responding to technical and dramaturgical needs and appears to be a black box in which the constructed objects become small installations under the spotlight.
Everything on stage has a specific use and is indispensable, nothing is pure decoration. We three performers are "on sight", we move on the stage with movements functional to the show, without hiding the artifices with which we create illusions on the screen. Our actions are deliberately shown to the public who have the possibility to move their gaze between us and the screen freely.
For our latest production Amarbarì (a show that comes from the evolution of the homonymous installation created ad hoc in the Ex Mattatoio in Rome for the RomaEuropa Festival 2018) we experimented with a different use of the stage space: the show is dedicated to 20 spectators at a time. , who are invited to sit inside a cube of white fabric on whose walls shadows are cast from the outside. In this case, we performers are hidden from public view so as not to break the immersive effect.
Puppetry, visual, shadow, poetry and music. The lack of words is only apparent…. but it makes your work absolutely universal. Did you have this in mind when you started?
Definitely yes. Our challenge is to offer multiple levels of reading and to address an international audience. Words often delimit too precisely, guiding the viewer towards a single interpretation. The images and sounds are highly evocative and leave the audience the necessary space to fill what they witness with personal meanings.
Does taking as much time as you do to prepare a show help or harm a company compared to the logic of the market? From this point of view, how important are contexts such as Over theatrical emergencies and In-Box for you?
We are aware that we do not work according to market logic. The reasons are manifold. On the one hand, there is the will to create shows only when a real need arises, when certain topics are pressing to be addressed. On the other hand, there is the research on techniques and materials and the craftsmanship of the scenes, which require a lot of time and do not allow us to keep up with the production rhythms that the market imposes. Our productions are aimed at different audiences (OUT is tout public while Maze is for adults) and to a different number of spectators (Amarbarì is for 20 spectators). For these reasons we are not easily cataloged according to the ministry's terms ... Contexts such as Over and In-Box are absolutely fundamental for us to get in touch with operators who do not yet know our work, also because, not having a production behind them, the he only way to make ourselves known is to run our shows.
UnterWasser means underwater, Out, a previous show, out, Maze labyrinth. What unites these names?
What unites them is the reference to aspects of the human soul, to the path of self-exploration, awareness, and momentum towards the world and the other. Water is an element that is very dear to us. To go under the surface you have to dive, go deep, search within yourself. Under the water there are scary things and incredible things, it is the world of the unconscious and the oneiric. We must have the courage to go free diving, to lose for a few moments the reference points that reassure us in order to reach the bottom. Out is a show about the ability to keep oneself open and permeable by overcoming the fears, obstacles and cages that we very often build ourselves. Maze represents the labyrinth that is our life, that succession of doors and corridors that we must necessarily take and cross without knowing where they will lead. After starting work on this show, we came across a wonderful poem by Wislawa Szymborska that perfectly expresses this thought: LABYRINTH.