RELUCTANT BLOGGER 7 Revival

My job on this show here in Bolzano is that of Revival Director. The original production was directed by Yoshi Oida, an iconic Japanese performer in his seventies who, as well as being a trained Shinto Priest and having studied with a Noh theatre master for ten years, was one of Peter Brook's collaborators at the International Centre for Theatre Research in Paris. A true theatre legend. He has quite some pedigree, and I am supposed to fill in for him on this one!

Of course you can never be someone else, work in their pattern, or offer exactly what they offer and I have had to accept that I can only bring to this production what I can bring and hope that I don't lose Yoshi's approach in the process. I also did not work on the project originally so have, in essence, learnt the physical production from a video. It is possible to recreate that physical production exactly. But would this yield the right result?

This opera, Alex Brücke Langer was premiered seven years ago and, as I explained in blog 3, has significant political relevance here. Since its first performance, Europe has changed dramatically and the composer has revised the final scene to increase the political edge of the piece. In my mind this is a laudable aim. Europe has become bigger, financially and politically more stable, and more influential in the last seven years - certainly since Alex Langer's time in the late 90's. But with this stability comes complaisance – politics becomes instead bureaucracy and we forget that people were fighting and dying for this freedom and stability.

This has left me with a couple of difficult questions to ask myself – to revive the original blocking, which ends the piece very beautifully in a poignant and touching human way, but which now just feels to rub against the new vibe of the score; or to create something new but which will, inevitably, be more me than Yoshi.

I can only trust that by following the creative process here and now with the performers in the rehearsal room, we will do something honest of which Yoshi will approve. When you feel something good come together in a rehearsal room, you can't ignore it.

Reviving someone else's work is a very tricky process. You have to be true to their vision, respectful of their work, and recognise their ownership. However you also have to keep the process fresh and creative for your performers, respond to their input and, to an extent, own it yourself. If you don't invest something of yourself into it, it will be hollow.

What the master will think... we will see!