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| Beyond the Scenes with Mr Freibergs Vilnis Vējš Andris Freibergs is the pride and ornament of Latvian theatre. It seems that such an assertion would raise no objections among those who know Andris Freibergs as the central figure in a process that transformed the best traditions of Latvian set painting (the style of decoration upheld by old masters Jānis Muncis, Ģirts Vilks, Ludolfs Liberts and Arvīds Spertāls) into an artistic expression in accord with the present-day concept - scenography. Of course, art historians might find in his works qualities characteristic of his teacher Spertāls and his colleague Zemgals, and with his own numerous pupils Freibergs has always enjoyed a mutually stimulating coexistence. To seek the axes around which continuity in the principles of scenography rotates would really be exciting. This time, however, the subject is different: with unremitting intensity, Freibergs still offers stage designs for performances in Latvia and abroad, which both follow current tendencies in the visual language of the theatre and also indicate future directions of development. He is the only such figure in Latvian theatre. | |
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However, with regard to Freibergs, I would not want to submit to that urge characteristic of Latvians to pride themselves collectively in the achievements of one particular outstanding figure, invoking such phantoms as “Latvian theatre” and “our artist”, since his undeniably successful creative activity crosses the bounds of local processes and regularities and is influenced by a chain of very fine causal relationships – fortunate meetings and painful partings.
In order to comprehend the scope of the great changes during the “Freibergs Era”, one needs to be reminded of the essential principles that determined the differences between the stage design of the second half of the last century and the laws of stage setting known previously. There was a significant re-evaluation of the decorative artist’s relationship with three fundamental issues in the art of stage design – the “picture”, space and time. Namely, the “picture” or image that appears to the viewer from the semi-darkness of the auditorium is, according to modern scenography, not simply a substitute for the “real” setting described in the play, it does not depict a place somewhere outside the theatre building where the action is purported to take place. The field of action is not located in an interior, close to nature or in some fantastic place, but rather it is in front of the viewers, and no attempt is made to conceal this. It may remind one of some other location or space, but it is itself completely sovereign. Thus, transformation and development over time of the performance space is subject not only to directions in the script as to where each act should take place, but is also in accordance with a common artistic vision on the part of the artist and the director, it is subject to real performance time and to the constructive logic of the stage design. A simple example: the production of Rainis’ “The Golden Steed”, at the Youth Theatre in 1976, thanks to the efforts by the director Ādolfs Šapiro and Andris Freibergs, beautifully manifested the idea that even such a work, which has a accreted a mass of cultural-historical assumptions, can live a life of its own on the stage, dependent only on the force of imagination and sense of dramatic logic instilled by the creators of the performance. There was no Mountain of Glass, nothing of the sort, just white hillocks with magical signs and a large rectangular opening in the back wall of the stage. Nevertheless, people who know say that the presence of Rainis could be felt close by. It is not without reason that I have chosen to mention this early production. The fact is that, although during the whole of the 20th century the theatre has sought to free itself from the role of re-enacting events occurring “somewhere, at some time” and has aimed at instilling in the audience the conviction that the action is taking place “here and now”, this aim can be attained completely only in performance art – an entirely different form of art, born, moreover, not in the theatre, but in the visual arts environment. The theatre is still telling stories – usually with a beginning and an end and a script, which cannot be exactly identical to the reality of events on stage. The theatre, including stage design, operates with the premise that the viewer sees and feels more than the walls of the theatre permit and, most important, that the viewer believes in the unbelievable – he or she has witnessed entirely real feelings, relationships, innumerable passions and deaths, which should, if brought to their logical conclusion, leave piles of bodies behind the scenes. Thus it is that already in the long-gone production of “The Golden Steed” (which, according to the press of that day, followed not very long after the first noteworthy stage achievements of Freibergs – “The Legend of Kaupo” at Valmiera Theatre in 1973, “The Children of Captain Grant” at the Youth Theatre and “Boris Godunov” at the Leningrad Youth Theatre, both in 1974) we see Freibergs’ unique ability to operate not only with the visible reality of the stage, but also with the viewer’s imagination and layers of emotional experience. Just as in “The Golden Steed”, so in Freibergs’ work in 2003 – “The Flying Dutchman” at the Latvian National Opera and “Raudupiete” at the Daile Theatre – an essential component in the composition of the stage design is a special zone of emotional tension – a transition from the real set to the invisible area entrusted to the viewer’s imagination, from which the characters emerge and where they go. I would like to dwell in particular on the limitations of the stage space and its potential extension in the productions of Freibergs, although it is clear that such a direction of contemplation has been chosen arbitrarily – one could just as well consider Freibergs’ absolute sense of taste, where the most noticeable component is a restricted, finely nuanced colour scheme encompassing everything seen by the viewer’s eye, or the polysemous character of the attributes that he chooses for his set designs, their metaphorical poetic character, as Silvija Radzobe would say. However, to my mind, it is precisely the presence of the immaterial, perhaps purely metaphysical space that represents one of the cornerstones of Freibergs’ scenographic language, permitting him to generate laconic, but capacious stage images which are not in danger of sliding into the inanity of past fashion or outdated visual signs. One can’t help noticing that most of the performance space in Freibergs’ productions is not filled up, envisaging sufficient space (both physical and conceptual) for the bodies of the actors and their movements. Where limiting elements are present, they have a clearly discernible aim – to provide the actors with conditions of existence on stage that allow one to better perceive expressions of the characters (as in Valmiera Theatre’s 2001 performance of Chekhov’s “Seagull”, directed by Māra Ķimele, where the whole performance area and the walls are covered in a mat resembling a fringed tapestry or haystack). The frame of the performance area, which in the works of many artists is a functionally inactive zone, seems to Freibergs worthy of heightened attention. This is clearly expressed in the 2002 production of Verdi’s “Masked Ball” at the National Opera (directed by Gintaras Varnas), where the role of the traditional wings was filled by multiple copies of the opera’s proscenium arch. Earlier too, in Handel’s “Alcina” at the opera (1998, directed by Kristina Wuss) the main role in the decoration is played by flats modelled as columns in line with baroque theatrical tradition. However, the characters of “Masked Ball” are provided with no other living space than the apparently unrealisable plans for the building of ever new theatres (technical drawings are literally floating in the air), while the fairytale figures of “Alcina” act in an environment linked by complicated, but beguiling routes to an invisible outside world. Upstage, within a heavy imitation brickwork wall, there is a mysterious labyrinthine passage, activated by gleams of bright light (virtually analogous with “The Golden Steed”). One is aided to reach the limited environment of the columns by the classically theatrical waves of the sea, (Freibergs is an emphatically Postmodern ironist, no matter how earnest he may seem at times!), and huge balloons, standing for clouds, descend from the fly floor. But more important than the presence of the clouds is a side effect brought about by their swaying: the anticipation of approaching rains. This no longer relates to the stage, but to beyond-the-stage (not to be confused with the backstage that is enveloped in semi-darkness). Freibergs’ relationship with the perimeter of the stage is tense in every production, and in more than one it is broken by a lit up rectangle – an upstage window. But endless variations are possible on this theme. In Chekhov’s “Cherry Orchard” at the Daile Theatre (1998, directed by Mikhail Gruzdov) there are shadows of the crowns of trees swaying in semitransparent material behind the window, reminding one of an earlier production at the same theatre – Ibsen’s “Rosmersholm” (1992, directed by Māra Ķimele) with clumps of reeds against a white infinity. In a quite new production, “Raudupiete” by Anna Brigadere (2003, directed by Mikhail Gruzdov), a semitransparent backcloth spanning the whole stage shows a landscape with a field of rye. Of course, it signals the ripeness of a hot summer, of the rye and of emotions – but is it earnest or ironic? A romantic would find such imagery sufficient, but not the refined Freibergs. He organises an illusory attraction, making the characters doomed to the play’s sad ending dance above the field behind the backcloth in a weightless outer space. And at the end, the rye all disappears, while above the characters the shadows of the trees in the cemetery sway at an unnatural scale (remember the “Cherry Orchard”!). The walls of the stage design for the opera “The Flying Dutchman” (2003, directed by Andrejs Žagars) are high and almost blind – broken only by narrow windows. The dramatic effect of the white window is absent here, although there is an unusual self-quote by Freibergs from this series – on a wall painted with wave patterns, in place of the portrait of the Dutchman, we see a scene of the same sea, painted at a different scale. However, the beyond-stage and the super-world breaks into the production with rarely matched effect. In the first place, within the laconic performance space limited by three walls, lighting and projections have been used to instil such an vast amount of cold, wet and wind that these elements have no beginning or end. Secondly, the ghost ship of the plot (which in the previous opera production was made simply of cardboard) is depicted by no more than a fantastically terrifying play of light. And no less than that, since the unsubstantial apparition of the ship is the most impressive effect seen in recent years on the Latvian theatre stage. The sailors of the ship appear suddenly, when a horizontal gap simply opens up in the wall of the stage at an impressive height, transformed into an unbelievable vision through a lavish application of light and colour. Freibergs places his trust entirely in the viewer’s powers of imagination, with regard to the size and appearance of the ship and the character of the supernatural forces. And, since he is a professional, he is not disappointed. Not always is the link with the reality outside the stage as clear and direct in Freibergs’ stage designs as it is in the above examples. But nevertheless it does exist, since the artist’s personal universe is an essential precondition for the creation of art, from which the particular work not only cannot but also must not become entirely independent. One of the most popular productions of the Šapiro period (between 1973 and 1992 Andris Freibergs was chief designer at the Youth Theatre, where in collaboration with director Ādolfs Šapiro he created many works that enjoyed a wide resonance) was Brecht’s “Fear and Misery in the Third Reich”. In keeping with Brechtian indeterminateness, the space had neither definite walls nor windows, and the acting area consisted of an amusing little stage and bicycles placed on unusual pediments. At the time, there was much discussion of how the character of the age had been neatly captured, since the bicycles in question really were a reminder of the reality of life in 1930s Germany. However, even in photographs, attention is drawn to the dynamic placement of these means of transport within static structures, creating a physical urge to move them. Since it seems that the questions “where from?” and “where to?” entail the need for the presence of a wider space, but the only answer given by the stage set is “on the spot”. In the 1996 Daile Theatre production “Thérese Raquin” (directed by Mikhail Gruzdov) in line with the scope of the drama, the earth literally opens up at the feet of the characters, i.e. through lowering the stage. In Freibergs’ art, this can perhaps be regarded as one of the most radical and depressive attempts at extending space. A similarly tragic feeling, through at a much more intimate level, has been programmed into the most recent collaboration between Freibergs and Šapiro: Turgenev’s “Fathers and Sons”, shown at the Tallinn City Theatre in 1992. The heavy concrete supports of the performance space – a basement – are covered in by real butterflies, motionless and unable to fly away. And the fluffy floor covering, which also encloses the lower parts of the supports, is transformed by special lighting into a cemetery scene, though very different from the Latvian-style “Raudupiete”. Freibergs’ beyond-the-stage imagination is often joined with a fascinating sense of otherworldliness. Of course, the presence of Freibergs’ subjective world in his approaches to the stage presents a series of conditions for his collaborators, in the first place the directors, actors and institutions with which they are connected. His partners’ sense of the world and their imagination cannot be less intensive or productive, for otherwise Freibergs’ transition from the stage to the reality that surrounds it will lead only to the dusty area behind the wings or the theatre staff buffet, as occurs in most of Latvia’s theatres. It seems that the relationship between Latvian theatre and Freibergs, mentioned at the outset, is more complicated than would seem at the first instance, since the traditions of realism and the coordinate systems of reality as translated into the artist’s personal language are too diverse. Most of Freibergs’ finest works have been created at the Youth Theatre in collaboration with Šapiro, and later at the Valmiera Theatre together with former Youth Theatre director Fēlikss Deičs. However, the identity of Latvian theatre, for most viewers and critics, is connected with the National Theatre and Daile Theatre. Here, Freibergs’ talent has rarely been applied, unless we pass off the fruitful meeting between two people, himself and Mikhail Gruzdov, as an example of cooperation between an artist and an institution. Of course, it is wonderful that Freibergs has, since the early nineties, worked intensively at the Latvian National Opera. This suits him in view of his reputable mastery and is in accord with the opera’s progressive artistic programme. The opera works mostly with guest directors. Freibergs is a good “product” when international teams need to be created, as shown by his collaboration with the Moscow directors Roman Kozak (“Dance of Death” at the Russian Drama Theatre, 1996) and Alla Sigalova (“Yellow Tango” at the opera, 1998; “Nights of Cabiria” at the Russian Drama Theatre, 2003). Among the opera’s guests, Freibergs has maintained creative links with the Lithuanian Gintaras Varnas, culminating in the critically acclaimed productions at the Kaunas Drama Theatre (the most recent being Lagar’s “Far Country”, 1992; this year they are working on Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”). In Estonia, Freibergs often works in tandem with Estonian ballet choreographer Mai Murdmaa, and the set design for her production of “Mary Magdalen” received the highest international acclaim – a silver medal at the International Scenography Quadrennial in Prague, 1995. (By the way, this innovative design approach – a gigantic mass of water suspended in a transparent sheet above the heads of the dancers – is a variation on the theme of the outer world, this time through the taming of the element in the performance space.) Unfortunately, works created for Latvian theatre have earned Freibergs only recognition at home. Very few of the students of Freibergs, among which there are two Prague award-winners, work in Latvian theatre. For his production of “Fathers and Sons”, Freibergs received the title of best set designer at the Tallinn City Theatre in 2002. He is often a guest in Moscow too. The Shakespeare “Chronicles” were staged at the Taganka Theatre (director: J. Lubimov, 2000), and now together with Estonian director Elmo Nuganen he is working on “Mr Hamilcar” at the Lenkom Theatre, for actors Inna Churikova and Oleg Jankowski. Mr Freibergs’ beyond-the-stage is broader than regional fame or a national school, since it belongs to him alone. | |
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