PETAR MILOSHEVSKI

Fringe Review - an Interview with Petar Miloshevski

Fringe Review, London

20/08/2011

What is the title of your show?



Hope.
 

What is it about?

Hope is the story of a lone character who is involved in a very peculiar love-triangle that takes him on a journey of fear, intrigue, darkness and eventually murder.
 

What is new and different about it?

Anyone visiting the theatre in the last ten years on a regular basis has become aware of the increasing use of technologies – both visual and acoustic – that in different ways 'mediate' the theatrical experience. In "Hope" nothing of this exists. Just the actor with a huge solid-wood dinning table only (which eventually assumes not just the role of a table, but the shape of a stage, prison, dancing spot, execution stake - according to the particular states the character is going through), and two different chairs symbolising each lover. As if suggesting an underlying reference to 'the last supper'. Everything starts, develops and finishes on, or around the table.

The 'invisible nexus' between the parts that form the storyline of the only character of "Hope" are represented through certain gestures - the hands as a centre-point and a basis from which all the happening evolves and makes its own progress. Hands that stroke, hands that hug, hands that are capable to give love, hands that hold a knife, hands that commit a murder, hands that are trying to get rid of the blood stains on them, hands that would eventually hold a drink and a cigarette, hands that would cover the face of their proprietor - as a sign of shame, a sign of anguish, a sign of non-existence.
​

What would one of your rehearsals look and sound like?

I had chosen kind of a 'secretive' rehearsing process for this show. Having the task to direct myself, something that I haven't done before in a full-scale show, it was totally necessary for me to create a space and surrounding that would be absolutely cleansed of outer presence and energy. I needed an absolute concentration and dedication to every single moment - trying to be a person so far away from my own personal life experience. Paying attention for every detail - even the most trifle one - because everything is essential in this show, the movement of the small finger has its own story to tell.

​What is the story behind this season of work and how did it come to be?

Determined to develop a solo performance, I started browsing through a wide range of dramatic texts, trying to find the 'proper' way of representing myself as a practitioner and of conveying my understanding of theatre. But strangely, the more I read, the more a totally different idea began unconsciously to take its own shape and meaning.

Exploring these different texts as if I ignored this constantly progressing notion about a person, that is involved in a very peculiar love-triangle and eventual murder.

I started taking excerpts from dramaturgy I had read to compile a brand new script. In the same way as a person constructs a letter - a collage of newspaper-cuttings, with its own meaning, its own storyline.

The script was designed to take us through the character’s journey towards an absolute breakdown of his inner personality, eventually leading to a fatal outcome for him.

​What is your favourite theatre show, excluding your own of course?

I  admire theatre that is 'free-minded' enough to take me to other dimensions, other worlds, other states of the humanity, nature, reality, that I don't know they exist.
I could be a fan of any kind of theatre, starting from Ancient Greek, through Shakespeare, Chekhov, down to the 'sculpturing-like' theatre of Bob Wilson, the eclectic notions of Pina Bausch... - so long this theatre is honest, first to itself, and then to the audience.
If I can point a few examples, that would be Julie Taymor's staging of Stravinsky's opera "Oedipus Rex" in Tokyo - an ultimate theatre fest, incorporating so many elements: ancient theatre detail, puppetry, masks, costumes and set-design that go beyond everything known, body motion and stage movement so captivating, that could provoke a kind of a 'trans' in the audience...
Of course, I wouldn't forget Pina Bausch's "Rite of the Spring", "Cafe Muller", "Kontakthoff - for lady and gents over 65"...

Generally, telling simple stories which stand above our known surrounding. Because that is the point of theatre - to represent its world at least one idea higher above the known reality.