Bucket Dramaturgy: Nir Paldi @ Edfringe 2016

Theatre Ad Infinitum present

Bucket List

WORLD PREMIERE

Pleasance Dome, Queen Dome, 3rd – 29th Aug 2016 (not 16th & 23rd), 3.50pm (5.20pm)

The internationally acclaimed Theatre Ad Infinitum bring to life the epic tale of one Mexican woman’s fight for justice. 

Created following conversations with close collaborator Vicky Araico Casas, Bucket List tells the story of Milagros, a Mexican orphan girl. 

When her mother is murdered for protesting corporate and governmental corruption, Milagros finds herself with only a bloodstained list of those responsible. Determined to make them pay, Milagros embarks on a passionate quest for justice - no matter the cost.

Nir Paldi (Director)  

How did you go about gathering the team for it?
The entire team except for our designer is compiled of artists with whom we’ve worked before. Ad Infinitum uses a very specific way of making work that is quite challenging both on the body, as the work is very physical, and in terms of the levels of creativity expected from everyone. We create through a long devising process in which everyone must chip-in with ideas and propositions. 

The work always looks at big political themes that we all feel passionate about so things get heated sometimes. We are very honest and direct, and the rehearsal room can switch from us bursting out laughing one second to tears a second later. The general atmosphere in the room is exposing and emotive and at the same time for this to work everyone needs to feel free to be themselves. That’s why I like working with the same people for years and years. We get one another and everything is in place to start working. 

Having said that, it’s always very refreshing when we get someone new on board. It makes you articulate the way you work and rethink it.  

How did you become interested in making performance?
There isn’t a particular moment in my life in which I decided to be a theatre maker. I always wanted to be one even before I knew how to give it a name. But by my early twenties I was already able to imagine running an independent theatre company.  

Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?
Very much so. It’s a long process of periods of devising in the room and sharing the work in progress with an audience and gathering their feedback. We expose the work at very early stages and we bring the audience into the making of the piece. 

Following a period of devising I spend time rewriting the text and coming up with ideas for staging, working with designers until we come back into rehearsal. Bucket List was made over fifteen weeks of devising (and many more hours of creation spent working on Bucket List outside the rehearsal room).

What do you hope that the audience will experience?
We always try to take a theme and conjure its complexity in the space. We want the audience to go through a journey in which, like the characters, they feel conflicted and witness the complexity of the subject at hand. Things are not black and white. There are many grey areas and we constantly need to navigate our way through them. We also always try to make our performances thrilling and completely engrossing. 

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?
Working in a room full of contemporary, critically thinking artists and exposing the work to audiences and integrating their feedback into the making process. Working in this way helps make sure that the theme you want to look at is actually being dealt with properly and that the piece is exciting and never boring.  

Do you see your work within any particular tradition?
Around 90 percent of the artists we work with have been trained at the Lecoq School in Paris. The pedagogy is at the heart of our theatre making.


Pleasance Dome, Queen Dome, 3rd – 29th Aug 2016 (not 16th & 23rd), 3.50pm (5.20pm)

Nir Paldi on Lecoq (The Ballad of the Burning Star)

It was the Fringe 2013. Theatre Ad Infinitum, who were probably one of the first companies to wear Lecoq on their sleeve, were presenting a new work: The Ballad of The Burning Star. Having become veteran successes through Translunar Paradise, artistic director Nir Paldi was going for his first explicitly political work.I got an interview with him, and inevitably ignored that obvious point, and asked him about things that only start to make sense now, as I seek out an instrument to critique devised and physical theatre that is not the same tool I use on scripted performance. 

GKV: What does Lecoq mean to you?
Nir Paldi: I think Lecoq means a lot to all who have studied his pedagogy. I'm sure it's different for everyone. For me I can say it gives you all the tools a theatre maker needs to make theatre. It challenges you to be an artist and to understand what that means. It gives you discipline, brings out creativity within you, and asks you to master what you practice while embracing chaos, and being lost in the unknown.

photo credit: Alex Bremner

It makes you understand the importance of doing. It gives you an appreciation of the world around you and teaches you to focus always on the theatre you're making - not on yourself, on what it is you want to make, say, and create.

GKV: Cabaret and drag - a new style for you, but do they link to the physical theatre styles you have used in the past?
As a company using cabaret and drag in an ensemble format is a new venture for us. But it's not the first time cabaret has come out of the work. In The Big Smoke, a one woman confession of suicide from the grave, sung A Capella by Amy Nostbakken and directed by Nir Paldi in 2010, cabaret played a significant role. Minimally staged, Nostbakken was dressed in a stunning pink dress and had only a classic fifties style standing mike with which to tell her tragic story. 

In Ballad, cabaret has combined with drag, clown and tragedy. One of the most interesting elements to Ballad's creative process has been discovering how clown and tragedy are connected - in this case through cabaret and drag. 

What's fascinating is pushing something comic so far that it becomes tragic - but also undercutting tragedy to uncover the unexpectedly comic: sometimes the two co-exist in a strange theatrical paradox as unlikely partners.

The result is a rather unpredictable an unexpected beast of a piece and were really excited about presenting it.

GKV: With this being a personal piece, does using a more visual theatrical style help you in making the work, and engaging with the audience?
We must just state that although the motivation for the piece is personal on the writer/directors part, the story is not Nir Paldi's autobiography. This piece uses text, as well as physical styles like gesture, dance, movement and the storytelling body, and song and music to tell its story - the visual mediums are crucial and certainly helpful. 
We always begin with the body in the space and build from that. 

Our company gives a lot of importance to the body because its the body, ultimately, that will engage, speak, visualise, and create theatre in the space and connect to the audience. Whether that is through text, image, movement, sound, etc...