A painful joke

For this experiment, the stage of Antwerp’s Bourla is turned into a playground at a park, which tends to be the kind of place where (small) people run around led by intuitions, less afraid of chaos. The scenography by Sophie Durnez is composed of a green screen – a touch of “nature” perhaps – with several raised platforms in a sort of stretched out staircase arrangement in front of it. In the middle of this construction stands a silver slide. Next to it, a bright pink dancing pole. On a screen above the slide, a succession of extremely corny nature images floats by – lavender, trees, moss, mountains and lakes all get their moment with the occasional idyllic lens flares. In a park like this, you obviously need to be prepared for any weather circumstances. The people in charge of light and music are thus positioned on the left side of the stage, underneath a tent like the one you would see in the backstage of an outdoor production. A witty contrast to the grandiose look of this theater, and perhaps hinting at Rodriguez’ previous working contexts that were slightly less institutional. 

While the audience walks in, all of the performers except for Rodriguez herself are at the back of the stage. Martina Calvo, Vincent Focquet, Anna Franziska Jäger and Robert Steijn are performing a sort of collective lymphatic drainage massage on Simon Van Schuylenbergh. The whimsical, relaxing music is fitting for a massage salon. My friend whispers they are actually enacting the ‘elements massage’, a commonly used technique to help your colleague-performers relax before a show. When Anna Franziska and Vincent (they call each other by their first names so I will do the same) move the massaging to the front scene, they start talking about where their disappointment is located in their body, what they can ‘be for each other today’, and how their last appointment at the acupuncturist in Saint-Gilles went. The chakras are just about flying around – although it remains ambiguous how serious Anna Franziska and Vincent take themselves. ‘Erupt!!’, they jokingly shout while running off. 

Time for Sophia Rodriguez to properly introduce herself. She does so by hopping on stage stark naked, running around as if in search of something. Sophia gallops across the scene, with her hands formed like little cups into which her breasts flap up and down. After taking a brief moment to rub her body against the ornaments of the scene of the Bourla, just below the other (half-naked) historical women statues above her, Sophia suddenly pulls out a microphone out of nowhere and greets us enthusiastically. ‘Do you know what it means, ‘bourla’ in Spanish?’, she continues with a big smile. ‘A joke that hurts!’ Within the following three sentences, we are immediately informed she is a mother, and her own father was absent. Sophia has to leave us though – to breastfeed her kids, who will naturally turn out to be the other performers. 

Dead, dry wood 

One wonders if this show wants to say something about being real, being pure or honest. The nudity, the usage of the actor’s real first names and the ‘oversharing’ of the characters seem to imply so. On the other hand, there’s a lot of deliberate overacting happening, a larger than life approach to this realness. What they are telling us, might not revolve so much around being real as it does around being, to the fullest extent. Being too much or too dry, being too sensitive or too apathetic. Sophia Rodriguez refers to this show as ‘hyper soap-opera therapy’. She seems to aim for a therapeutic effect by enlarging characteristics, allowing individuals to be idiosyncratic to a comical extent. As a consequence of their individual struggles, however, all of the characters at one point or another go through some form of ‘eruption’, small or big. Trauma, loneliness, repressed sexual desires. All sorts of things come bubbling to the surface.  

During Vincent’s ‘eruption’, we get a glimpse into all of the characters’ (and maybe performers’?) ideas about each other. After freeing himself from what looked like a horrific bee attack by fleeing into the audience, Vincent walks around and asks aloud if ‘Robert only wears earth colours to camouflage his dominance?’ Clearly enjoying himself, he adds more analyses about others and himself, ranging in depth. ‘Simon changes his hair colour every week because he’s afraid of actual change.’ ‘I think that Anna Franziska thinks I cover up my boring existence with interesting theories.’ The most brutal judgment is whispered into an audience member’s ear, but is amplified, of course, by a microphone: ‘Sophia believes she’s the mother, but she’s the absent father.’ The other characters join in, fiercely analyzing each other and themselves through the others’ eyes. As painful as these observations may be, the communal aspect of this ritual does feel like ‘hyper therapy’, going against the individualism driving us apart. 

The synopsis of this piece reads that ‘In FRICTION, individual beliefs and identities rub together as if they were pieces of dead dry wood.’ It is surely no coincidence that at about halfway into the show, all performers come together to make a campfire around Vincent, by stacking branches onto him in the form of a pyramid while he looks around quietly, motionless. The angelic lighting on Vincent’s presence ensures we don’t miss the importance of this tableau. However the campfire is never lit, even when Anna Franziska tries to by creating sparks with flint stones. The idea seems clear: the friction that causes these sparks, does not lead to fire.

“Somehow, FRICTION manages to employ pleasure, irony and complete earnest at the same time.”

Too good to be true

It is of course tempting to judge the ‘success’ of a show with a one-word-title on the presence of that phenomenon in the actual show. If we consider friction in the sense of a sensation of strangeness or tension, there’s certainly a lot of it in this show, ranging from absolutely bizarre dialogues to more subtle technical and dramaturgical interventions. For example, in the lighting above the audience staying on for an unusually long period, before slowly starting to fade out at a seemingly random moment. Or in the atonal a capella singing about horrible life-altering trauma: ‘I was abused by my acupuncturist. He put his needle IN.’ Rodriguez even manages to create an uncomfortable tension between the audience members and the associative text that is being screened, in the first place by splitting the sentences and words up to the point of absurdity. Somehow, this show manages to employ pleasure, irony and complete earnest at the same time. 

Where I’m struggling to find the promised friction, however, is in the individuals on stage. While these characters are definitely unique, their ‘cultural differences’ are not that substantial. And I’m not only talking about the characters; the same goes for the real people that are behind/inside these characters – which is extra relevant in a piece that uses their own names and thus implies a sense of overlap. Sure, these performers have different professional backgrounds. They vary in nationality, in experience, in fields of expertise, in generations, and apparently in level of spirituality. But in the interview with Rodriguez that was published before the premiere, she herself talks about the ‘liquid connections’ that led to her working with the people involved in this show. How organically this all came about, is not exactly an example of using friction as a method of bringing people closer together; in fact, it sounds like the opposite. Would that mean friction was more so the theme of this performance, rather than the method? But can and should those be pulled apart? 

© Wannes Cré

© Wannes Cré

© Wannes Cré

Perhaps Rodriguez wanted to start her experiment small, with just a little bit of friction? Perhaps this is a more ethical, caring way of experimenting with it? This similarity between the people on stage is however connected to a bigger problem of the piece, that is clearly demonstrated in the evolution in the last scenes. After what looks like a big ayahuasca session at the unburnt campfire, the apotheosis of FRICTION takes the form of a communal eruption. As a gigantic fabric entity, the size of a room, starts inflating itself on top of the silver slide, all performers are jumping around, summoning their peers and shouting absurd desires into the space. And while what now turns out to be a huge tongue starts bouncing towards the audience, those desires turn into boisterous requests to collaborate. ‘Robert, can you rub my nose with the hand of my father?’ Or: ‘I wanna swing on Vincent’s balls!’ These previously lonely erupting individuals, with their own desires and issues, have found a way to communicate their (absurd) needs to each other, and actually attempt to fulfill their requests. After a spectacular rebirth that brings ‘mother’ and now baby Sophia back to the group, all of the performers end up in one energetic mass of collective panting. They sit down in a circle, literally molding a big bowl together. This ‘happy ending’ of absolute cohesion almost seems too good to be true – and it is.

FRICTION raises some deeply aesthetical, political and moral questions, that are reminiscent of contemporary thinkers like Claire Bishop and Chantal Mouffe. How and to what extent can we allow friction, in society and in the arts? Does friction inevitably lead to fire and thus, irreparable damage? It is commendable that Rodriguez dares to tackle these themes today. In the current realm of performing arts, the establishment of inclusive and safe spaces has become an indispensable cornerstone. Care, consent and respect for every individual’s boundaries are seen as pivotal considerations; and rightfully so. But it is precisely as a result of this positive evolution that we should also continuously create space for dialogue and politics, instead of becoming divided by careful distance. 

The issue is that Rodriguez believes that we need friction between people not to ensure the possibility of politics, but to build a loving and accepting community. The very teleological evolution of this show instrumentalizes all potential friction to reach a satisfying resolution, a nice compromise, and smooth communication between all. Very therapeutic indeed. But is this ‘smoothness’ not exactly what Rodriguez was trying to break open? This desire for a mini-utopia explains why there wasn’t and couldn’t be that much friction between the characters on stage – but also between the performers and the audience. Because in reality, there are people and ideas we do want to engage with, for the sake of our democratic ideals, but we wouldn’t necessarily want them in our own little circle of love and friendship. 

In the political theory of post-Marxist Chantal Mouffe, friction (or agonism) is not at all a tool to reach the goal of ‘bridging distances’ and creating proximity. In fact, Mouffe stresses that this is impossible. In a functioning democracy, the differences between people can and should never be fully resolved or dissolved – that’s the whole point. Aiming for harmony as the end goal, inevitably means excluding certain people. What we should strive towards, is ‘agonistic pluralism’. Art historian and critic Claire Bishop was heavily inspired by Mouffe when writing her famous critique of curator Nicolas Bourriaud’s ‘relational aesthetics’. Rather than making art that is simply helping an incrowd of art lovers feel good about their ability to communicate with people that are very alike them, Bishop argues, we should be creating work that actually highlights our differences, and allows non-identification – that is the true aesthetical and political challenge. 

At one point in the performance, Anna Franziska shouts that ‘research will help!!!’ The character seems to mean it, but in the performance it functions ironically. While I understand the potential paralysis of never-ending research, and the desire to actually experiment, it is still useful to look into the theoretical history of the statements you make about the mechanisms of a political community. Unfortunately, Friction undermines itself by losing sight of its own ambition: to hold space for friction.