Cennarium Backstage Issue 3 - Promenade Festival Special Edition | Page 6
In Performance,
Latex Balloons
Become “Pop” Art
BY STEPHEN CHARLES SMITH
Photos by Blair Simmons
Two 72-inch latex balloons, human heads visible at the top,
hopping like bunny rabbits. It’s an up-down, up-down game, a battle
of wills for one balloon’s “posture” to seem taller than another. Then,
without warning, an explosive POP! Where the balloon was there is
now an actor in black tights, a mixture of lube and sweat glistening
under the lights, shards of latex wrapped like a collar around her
neck. This is Annie Hägg, one of two performers -- balloon-persons
-- in an experimental theater work called Staging Wittgenstein.
From the corner of the stage, calmly
even more genuinely surprised that the show
but urgently, Blair Simmons, the director and went on. Clearly there’s some fundamental
creator of Staging Wittgenstein, strides over to impediment to putting on the show. This
Hägg as a well-oiled, efficient process unfurls: time, as the play progresses, a sense of slow
Step 1: Simmons checks on Hägg’s well-being. violence, of landscaped tension, creeps into
She is stunned but physically fine. the subconscious of the audience.
Step 2: Simmons takes an uninflated latex
balloon skin and aids Hägg in stretching it to fit varied. Some audience members laughed.
around her waist. Some shook their heads. Some cheered. Some
Step 3: Hägg contorts herself, collapsing and worried for the actors. Simmons re-entered
After the third pop, the reactions
contorting her upper body down into the latex
and stretching it until it covers her shoulders
and hugs her throat.
Step 4: Simmons inserts the hose of a vacuum
into the neck hole and begins to re-inflate the
balloon. Hägg takes small steps, like a march,
to avoid popping the balloon as air fills it up.
Step 5: Simmons returns with the vacuum to
the corner of the stage—always present for the
next pop.
Step 6: The play resumes.
But did it ever stop? After all, tonight’s
audience for Staging Wittgenstein witnesses
this re-inflation maneuver four times. Following
the first pop, there is incredible shock, a
certainty that something must have gone
terribly wrong. Everyone wonders: has ever
happened before? Will the play continue?
After the second pop, the audience seemed
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