Lava Lounge

– an adventure of the senses

by Sigrid Merx

Lava Lounge is the latest production the Belgian theatre maker Guy Cassiers made with his company “ro theater”. For quite some years already, Cassiers has been exploring the possibilities of using technology in his performances. He uses video projections and live filming and music to create a very specific surrounding in which his performances take place. In this particular case of Lava Lounge he collaborated intensively with designer Peter Missotten. The text for this performance was written by Oscar van den Boogaard, who has been writing plays as well as novels.

A man, three women and an empty heart

In his stage directions Van den Boogaard describes the place of action as:  “A heart. A great heart. Great, empty, deserted. A waste land. The heart is under water. Has the heart been wrecked? Is there a leak? The heart is beating in the distance as a train passing a bridge.” And in this heart a man, Blitz, and three women are playing their games of dependency, jealousy and manipulation. Once they were a happy family. Then they split up with a bang, an explosion which shattered the family. And now Blitz has decided to come back.

            His mother, having a drinking problem, easily falls back into old habits. Correcting her son for not putting down the toilet seat, squeezing out his pimples, letting him pour her drinks, undress her when she is drunk and carry her to her bed naked. His sister, envious of the relationship between her brother and her mother, bombards him with all sorts of book, teachings about life. Ranging from a review of Anna Karenina and the impotence of Tolstoj and for that matter any man to understand female emotions, to an advice how Blitz should lead his life based on a theory of the zodiac signs. His lamenting ex-lover is still hurt by his leaving her. She keeps on telling him little stories which al have to do with being abandoned, getting disappointed, being short of love.

            The three women are all exclusively focused on him, being much alike in that sense, hardly paying any attention to each other. They don’t need to, because Blitz finds a way to give all three of them the attention they need, like a juggler who is throwing his rings. Until he can’t handle it any longer and tries to leave for a second time. The women start blaming each other for the fact that they are about to be abandoned again.

A sensory reality

Lava Lounge does not provide us with a clear notion of a linear story. The story I shortly depicted above is not literally illustrated on stage. It is in a combination of projected texts, images, music and acting that, by bits and pieces, this information is communicated. It is not until the end that we find out who is exactly who in this performance. You know – have you been reading the folder beforehand– a mother, an ex-lover and sister are involved, but who is playing who remains unsaid. Identities therefore are not fixed, and many times you find yourself changing your ideas about who is playing which part. Acknowledging to one’s self that it is, in general, impossible to be just “one” thing.

            It is this openness in meaning that is not only typical for Van den Boogaard as a writer, but also for Cassiers as a director. It is part of his intent to create space for the audience’s imagination. He wants his audience to make their own performance, to create their own images, their own associations, their own reality. And this reality, he strongly believes, is created by our sensory experiences. It is exactly this, these sensory experiences, which make Lava Lounge such a special performance.

Acting with sounds

We see a deserted stage. It’s flooded. It’s under water. In the back, on the left side a huge structure consisting of several copper plates is hanging. On the right there is a far smaller rectangular white projection screen. We hear voices through a microphone. Women asking, begging a man for compliments, for confirmation. “Do you love me?” “Do you love my hands?” “My hair?” “Yes, I do”, the man says. “I love your hands”. “I love your hair.” The man satisfies their hunger for his love. The voices seem to be very close; they fill the whole space with their sounds, their sighs, their laughs. You can hear how the actors position their mouths, hear their tongues moving; you experience language while it is produced. It is not what they say, but the way they speak which creates meaning. The voices flow over into one surrounding soundscape; an harmonious soundscape. In a distance we hear the sound of a beating heart. On the copper structure we see vaguely a pulsing image, a possible heartbeat. The sounds gets stronger and stronger, you can feel it in your body. Then it stops. Light fades in. The one voice is scattered. The actors walk into the water.

            During the performance we hear different dialogues between the man and the three women. Most of the time the woman are talking and the man is listening. They all try to bind him to them by telling stories, digging up memories, asking him questions, giving him advice. Patiently he divides his attention between the three of them. It is not, as far as I am concerned, the specific content of these dialogues which is dominant, it is the way these dialogues are staged. Most of them are spoken through microphones, which are hanging just above the water. Again this evokes a strong sense of intimacy.

            Although the different women take different positions on the stage, far apart from each other, by speaking in the mike they are connected. Not in the way of the beginning anymore, being invisible and only audible as one voice, but still clearly connected. Connected in the same urge, the same desire, the same longing and the same strategies to lure Blitz back into their lives. And it is this same use of the microphone that enables Blitz to be close to every woman without the need of splitting himself in three parts. The voice heard through the microphone has the ability to create a strong feeling of presence in different spaces in different lives.

            The amplification also has consequences for the acting. It enables the actors to act with their voice. They hardly act with gestures or big facial expressions, but express all kind of nuances by the way they treat their voice. They slow down, speed up, use high pitches, low pitches, whisper, breath, thus creating rich roles not in a psychological motivated but in a sensory motivated way.

            The effect of the use of the mike on the audience is huge. You feel close to the woman who is speaking, tend to sympathize with her, although she is not directing herself at you at all. You are captivated by her speech, as well as Blitz might be. But now and then, the actors suddenly speak without amplification. This sounds so unnatural that you feel an immediate distance and you feel the physical urge to lean forward to get closer to the actress on the stage, who all of the sudden seems literally to be so far away. As if the way she sounds influences her credibility.

Projecting texts, images and live action

During the performance we see stage directions projected on the white screen, referring to actions, which do not take place on the stage at all, to objects, which are nowhere to be seen, to thoughts of the man never being expressed in the dialogue. The words are projected at such a speed, that it forces you to focus on the reading, being almost unable to follow what is happening elsewhere on the stage.

            The text forms an almost autonomous world with its own specific appearance. Because it hardly bears any relation to what is be seen on the stage, it provokes you to perceive it as a world of its own. Reading and tasting the words you can create your own meaning and experience. The speed of projection forms a great contrast with the quite slow pace of the actors performing, thus adjusting a completely different timeframe and experience to the performance. After a couple of sentences sometimes an empty line follows. In the space of the projection it takes form as an empty spot, a temporarily white space without words, a short moment of rest in the process of reading. The audience can fill this blank space with thoughts of its own, using the short period of time it is given. Thus the absence of words means a possibility for reflexivity. This is not only an opportunity for the audience - even the actors sometimes take their time to read these texts.

            These texts alternate with projections of a vast snow landscape with snow endlessly falling down and a water surface with continuous wrinkles. Evoking a feeling of infinity and creating an outdoor variation of the desolate, empty sphere of the (indoor) theatre space, thus enlarging it and providing it with an almost universal, dimension. Does the space on stage mostly appears as a personal, inner world of a man and his relationships, these landscape projections relate this space to a non-psychological, natural world. Which is in one way, as I stated, an outdoor world, as it portrays nature as we know it. In another way however, even these landscapes have an internal dimension. This has to do with the way the projections have been manipulated. They consist of two identical images, mirrored, and linked together. As a result the water wrinkles for example are not moving to the sides, but to each other.

The snow is falling to a central point in the middle of the projection. Instead of spreading itself beyond the bounders of the image, the movement in these landscapes is sucked into an invisible disappearance point as if it were a black hole. The continuous movement hides the emptiness, or the filled nothing, that is underlying the surface. A state which may as well be applied to Blitz and the three women.  

            There is another kind of projection used in Lava Lounge. Now and then we see projections of live images of the actors in extreme close-up on the huge copper structure. Vague, raw, granular, images of their faces, which are live, recorded by small cameras hanging above the water. Sometimes the actors accidentally bump into one of the cameras or turn it into the right position. Being far from perfectly styled, slick images as we encounter them in television and film, these images, probably because of their imperfections, draw a lot of attention. Leaving room for, and provoking the audience into taking a real good close look.

We look into enormous eyes blinking, mouths moving. It is impossible to escape these images, they absorb everything, condemning the physical actors to a temporarily absence. These projections of the actors are disconnected from the actors speaking. They seem to live their own lives, expressing completely different meanings than the words spoken by their live counterparts simultaneously. And although just a projection, at those moments these images are so much more lively, emotional and intriguing than the ‘real thing’ on stage; expressing a loneliness and emptiness which is confronting.

The strength of water

And then this water. The presence of the water has a great impact on the performance. It influences your sight, your hearing, your thoughts. The sounds of people splashing through the water, drops falling from above, dripping into the water. The reflection of the actors, the projected images and words. The distortion of these images as the actors, by moving, set the water in motion. The moment that the man throws one of the women, who has until then been sitting in a wheelchair, into the water. The first moment he openly pushes one of them away, a moment of pure action, incomparable to everything that happened before. A point of no return. It is the water which gives the space this sense of decay. It is a sign of an old flood and a flood about to happen.

Concluding

All these media, the text, the projections, the sounds and the way they interact, form a rich environment in which the performance takes place. The special use of them provides us with unexpected experiences and associations and creates different layers of meaning. Sometimes it is just impossible to follow everything at the same time. As an audience you have to decide what you want to follow, you have to create your own story. Sometimes it is impossible to choose; being forced to look at the images which are so huge and extremely close-up that they drag you almost into the image; being forced to listen to the actor who all of the sudden doesn’t use a microphone. The result however is a performance in which it is not the story or the action that takes a central place. Lava Lounge shows us an inner world, in which we are allowed to wander around and experience the intensity of our sensory feelings on the one hand and the reflexivity of our thoughts on the other.