Against the wall

Maybe the problem, problem, problem doesn't need solving. These are the words you can read on a pink canvas covering the stage in room 3 of the Barcelona L'Auditori. Vertical drums, electric guitars, an enormous cowbell and a few microphones make up the rest of the scene, and then the three band members appear. According to the title of the show staged by the Belgian Needcompany, they are going to perform the wrong way round. Once the three musicians are on stage, the concert begins. A theatre company, one of the most prestigious in Europe in fact, is putting on a concert at L'Auditori. Of course, it’s not a normal concert. Needcompany's career is well known, starting with theatre and continuing through a multitude of artistic disciplines, such as music, dance or cinema, always making the spectator feel quite literally disoriented and disconcerted. Or perhaps, directing them in a more genuine, less manipulated way than mainstream stage shows tend to do.

Concert by a band facing the wrong way is a co-production by Escenes_músiques en moviment from L'Auditori de Barcelona, the 2018 Grec Festival and the Malta Festival Poznań, with Needcompany. Founded in 1986 by Jan Lauwers and Grace Ellen Barkey, Needcompany is an energetic creative hub that combines theatre, dance and performance. Jan Lauwers and Grace Ellen Barkey are the two mainstays behind this project, their writing, direction and acting the perfect match for Maarten Seghers, an actor, performer, musician, artist and member of Needcompany since 2001. A creator of objects and installations, Seghers founded OHNO COOPERATION in 2006, together with Lauwers and the musician Elke Janssens, to create performances, videos, installations and music. OHNO COOPERATION also invites other artists and musicians to collaborate and present their projects at international exhibitions and shows.

Humour and the absurd have played a fundamental role in Maarten Seghers’s previous works, as has the questioning of dominant artistic practices. His intelligent, inimitable creations use beauty and humour to lovingly and brutally demonstrate the contradiction of the artist on the stage, dominated by his desire to please –– a desire that also determines the public’s attitude to his works, creating a vicious circle that is fascinating when viewed from the outside but impoverishing to the artist. This circle was the concept behind his earlier works What do you mean what do you mean and other pleasantries (2014) and O or The Challenge of This Particular Show Was to Have Words Ending In O (2016), further explored here, in Concert by a Band Facing the Wrong Way.

The author himself defines the work as a portrayal of a group of Western artists running endlessly forwards, without it being clear whether they are fleeing from the misery of the world or racing towards it. This lack of definition, full of effort in a tight nucleus, produces a pressure cooker effect, which bizarrely results in a disoriented exuberance where everything, not just the sound of the guitars and voices, is amplified. The band tries to communicate but it cannot. There is no focus, only a desire reminiscent of the words sung by Adriana Varela in Pasillo de la vida, the wonderful tango by Marcelo San Juan and Francisco Bagalá: “Corrientes flotando, pasada de pasión, triste porque sí, bien, pero mal también, porteña al fin, yo busco no sé qué.” (Floating currents, past passions, sad because yes, good, but also bad, a Buenos Aires girl to the end, I don't know what I'm looking for.)

The band plays and shouts, everything is audible, but is it understandable? The band, consisting of Maarten Seghers and Rombout Willems on guitar and vocals and Nicolas Field on drums, repeatedly collides against the wall in a constant effort leading to nothing, a portrayal of the powerlessness felt by the audience itself, who move from complicity in the comical moments to negation and discomfort. Each person must decide whether they want to look into this mirror or deny its existence. More than a few people left the room at the first opportunity, while the rest of the audience were left feeling disorientated, just like the band. The audience weren’t sure how to react, to the point that the laughs in the funniest moments were hesitant, and they didn't know whether to get up and applaud at the end of a song or not, looking around to see what others were doing. In this way the show worked perfectly, revealing the attitude of an audience in need of and accustomed to patterns of behaviour, wanting to know what to expect, which is detrimental to artistic creativity. It’s not just that the artist wants to please, but that the audience wants to be indulged and guided. Once again, fascinating.

With thanks to L'Auditori de Barcelona
www.auditori.cat