DON JUAN. WHO?
directed by: Anna Furse
performers:
Damjana Černe
Željko Hrs
Marko Mlačnik
Tanya Myers
Matej Recer
Giovanna Rogante
Marie-Gabrielle Rotie
text written by: Damjana Černe, Anna Furse, Željko Hrs, Tibor Hrs Pandur, Marko Mlačnik, Tanya Myers, Matej Recer, Giovanna Rogante with contributions from Maruša Geymayer-Oblak and Ruth Posner
edited by: Anna Furse and Željko Hrs
translation to Slovene: Tibor Hrs Pandur
translation to Italian: Giovanna Rogante
dramaturg: Željko Hrs
language consultant (Slovene): Mateja Dermelj
scenography: Anna Furse
realised by: Sandi Mikluž
costume design: Mateja Benedetti
composer and sound design: Nick Parkin
lighting design: Mischa Twitchin
video: Janez Janša
executive producer (for Athletes of the Heart): Mik Flood
project manager: Diana Cezar
producer (for Mladinsko Theatre): Tina Malič
stage manager: Mitja Trampuš
lighting engineer: Matjaž Brišar
We would like to thank Matjaž Berger, Peter Hulton, John Kirby and Flowers Gallery, Dušan Ojdanič, Nataša Recer and Marjeta Skoberne
Don Juan. Who? A Working Manifesto
by Anna Furse
May 2007
• Theatre is poetry
• Physical theatre is a state of mind
• The terms ‘dance’ and ‘theatre’ become meaningless distinctions when the performer is embodied, expressive and
scenographic
• We will thus call our work ‘theatre’ though to some it will seem more like dance or dance-theatre and we will not care for
the definitions
• The actor is a creative artist
• Language is visceral
• Characters are formed on stage in front of the audience
• We have to manifest our differences
• We have to manifest our similarities
• The Chorus is a perfect strategy for ensemble ethics
• The Chorus of individuals struggling for consensus is a model of democracy
• We are always representing and showing that we are playing at pretending
• No theatrical illusion that isn’t at the same time prepared to reveal it’s mechanisms
• No décor, only scenography
• From the functional and the essential the poetry of the theatre is forged
• Resist the literal. Look instead for how our minds are really working
• Be prepared to sweat, jump, run, fall, cry, be naked
• Love irony
• Strategy: Seduce the audience letting them know all the while that you know and they know what’s going on
• Let the body reveal the subtext
• Let the imagination run riot
• Find the passion
• Enjoy the joke
• Play the game
• Learn the cha-cha
The Don Juan Legend
Don Juan is a legendary fictional libertine, whose story has been retold by authors of plays, poems, novels, operas, and films over five centuries. The name is used figuratively as a synonym for “womanizer”, and thousands of websites will attest to the idea of a Don Juan as a virile seducer. As an Existential anti-hero he represents Man for whom conventional morality and religious authority hold no sway, hence his irrepressible need to escape marriage and reproduction. Psychoanalytically he is the puer aeternus (eternal boy) who can never let intimacy mature into relationship and who has a compulsion to keep returning to the seduction game (repetition neurosis) where he can replay out his opening moves, always in control. He arguably survives most vigorously in contemporary popular culture as James Bond, a high-tech version of the swashbuckling hero – sexy, adventurous, invincible – and always on the move.
In the Don Juan legend, he seduced (or raped) a young noblewoman and killed her father. Later, he invites this man’s posthumous stone statue to dine with him. The statue/ghost father agrees, then appearing as the harbinger of Don Juan's death. The statue offers to shake Don Juan's hand, and thereupon drags him to Hell. There Don Juan meets The Devil who tells him that everyone in Hell is cast in a role, and presents him with a Jester's suit, telling him that he would make an excellent fool. Don Juan, insulted, protests that he is unrivalled as a man who has made a thousand sexual conquests. Intrigued by this claim, The Devil tells him that if he can correctly name one conquest, he would not have to wear the suit. Thus begins a parade of women not one of whom Don Juan can name one correctly. Finally, one woman stands before him in tears. Struck by her true love, he looks into her eyes, turns to The Devil and takes the suit.
The legend has spawned many versions over the centuries, too numerous to include all here. But to give some idea: most authorities agree that the first recorded tale of Don Juan is the play The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest by Tirso de Molina (publication date uncertain, 1615–1625). Molière’s comedy Dom Juan ou Le Festin de Pierre was written in 1665, and in 1736 Goldoni wrote Don Giovanni Tenorio, Ossia Il Dissoluto. Another famous eighteenth18th century version is of course Lorenzo da Ponte’s libretto for the Mozart opera Don Giovanni (1787). In the nineteenth19th century the Romantic poet Lord Byron’s famous epic version of Don Juan (1821) is considered his masterpiece, though it remained unfinished at his death. Other significant versions in that century include: Pushkin’s play The Stone Guest (1830) and Alexandre Dumas's play Don Juan de Maraña (1831). In 1843 the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard discusses Mozart's interpretation of Don Giovanni in Either/Or, in which he dialectically opposed ethics as boring and dull to the irresponsible bliss of aesthetics. In 1861 another poet takes up the theme: Baudelaire in his Don Juan Aux Enfers. At the dawn of the twentieth20th cCentury George Bernard Shaw's play Man and Superman (1903) includes a substantial text Don Juan in Hell in Act 3. In the same period we have Guillaume Apollinaire's novel Les Exploits d'un Jeune Don Juan (1907) and in 1910 Gaston Leroux's novel Phantom of the Opera, which includes an opera called Don Juan Triumphant. The Second World War period re-examines the figure in relation to war – Ödön von Horváth’s Don Juan Returns from the War (1936) – and existentially – Albert Camus representing Don Juan as an archetypical absurd man in the essay The Myth of Sisyphus (1942). Interestingly in this same period two women approached the theme, though lesser known: Sylvia Townsend Warner's novel After the Death of Don Juan (1938) and Suzanne Lilar’s play Le Burlador (1946). Ingmar Bergman's play Don Juan in 1955 was followed by his 1960 film The Devil's Eye. Other cinematic versions of note include: the 1926 silent film Don Juan starring John Barrymore, Adventures of Don Juan starring Errol Flynn (1949), and in 1934 The Private Life of Don Juan, Douglas Fairbanks Senior's last film, thatwhich we have quoted in this production. Other films include Jan Švankmajer's animation version Don Juan in 1969 and Roger Vadim’s gender-reversal If Don Juan Were a Woman starring Brigitte Bardot (1973). Contemporary film versions include Don Juan De Marco starring Johnny Depp in the title role and, also starring Marlon Brando (1995) and Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers (2005) in which the middle-aged, crumpled, Don Johnson protagonist, mooches on his couch watching the Douglas Fairbanks movie. Finally in this non-exhaustive list, we might cite among others Peter Handke’s 2004 novel Don Juan (As Told by Himself), Joni Mitchell's song and album Don Juan's Reckless Daughter (1977) and most recently in 2007: Douglas Carlton Abrams's novel The Lost Diary of Don Juan. All of which suggest that as an archetype, whether as macho rogue/seducer/careless lover/immoralist/free spirit/existential hero/marriage breaker/sex addict or just the stuff of erotic imagination, Don Juan remains in our minds …
Welcome to the DON JUAN. KDO? / DON JUAN. WHO? blog
Our production was gestated in our "Cyber Studio", a virtual space that harnessed various programs to create a venue in which live encounter as well as archiving of all kinds was possible. Our topic was Men. We have explored gender relationships today, in our so-called post-feminist culture, when you remove the veil of political correctness. We explored our own psyches, fantasies, dreams, assumptions, experiences, etc. via the Don Juan archetype as manifest in so many literatures, movies and the millions of web hits in his name. Our weekly masquerades, live online, lasted 18 months. From 3 different countries, directed writing was produced. The Cyber Studio became a space of confession, of cheating, lying, pretence, cross-dressing, mimicry - in short, a highly theatrical location in which we all found immense freedom of expression. Our production was created by distilling what had culminated into 500 pages of text into a highly physicalised "dance theatre" work performed by an international ensemble of 7 actors and dancers.
Writing live together online means yielding individual authorship. It means allowing yourself to be interrupted. It means experiencing the joy (and frustration) of not being in control of the production of meaning.
We invite you now, as our production at Riverside Studios in London in November approaches, to address our theme in your own words, here. We are interested in your own thoughts about that knotty issue of male-female relationships today, and most particularly, who is the Don Juan in your mind?
We love quotations, anecdotes, stories and reflections. We are sure you will stimulate each other and so, in the democratic spirit of our project, we now hand the reins over to you...
Thursday, September 13, 2007
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