James Bond Takes His Shoes in the End

corpus: "Flatland"  is a story about a two-dimensional figure that wants to become three-dimensional. In your performance you install a flat screen in the space of the theatre in order to project a virtual book onto it. So, the three dimensions are mainly at home in the virtual space in your performance – until the projection-wall is moved aside at the end and the assumed two-dimensional man turns out to be "real". How do you consider the importance of technology used in your pieces?

Portela: Specifically in our case, it was the only way to do it, I think. The whole idea of a flat man who perceives the 3-D-people in a different way is about that. A flatlander is talking about 3-D. It was very important for us to give a real impression of flatness on stage. But in a more general context, I think that technology is unavoidable nowadays. We don´t live without technology, so, it´s just a very natural way of working. The reason for the specific choice of a projection was the dramaturgy – it had to be flat.

corpus: Are you performing "Flatland" mainly in the frame of dance-festivals and dance-institutions?

Portela: Yes, mainly. The dance-field is more open to projects that experiment with different kinds of formats, more than the theatre, I think. That´s why we perform mainly in a dance-context. Another reason is that the subject of the first part is a lot about movement. It deals with movement as one thing that distinguishes us from beeing two-dimensional. The concept and the attitude in dance is much more open for something that crosses boundaries. It´s true, yes, it´s mostly in dance-festivals that we perform.

corpus: This is interesting regarding the fact that language is a main tool that you use in your performances.

Portela: There is no dance, no. There is no movement - in the sense of physical movement. No. But it is a lot about that.

corpus: It is a dance of letters, of images, of words...?

Portela: Yes, and that´s quite choreographic. I think it was made in a very choreographic perspective.

corpus: Would you call yourself a choreographer?

Portela: No, not at all. That´s a mistake. My background is scenography. I took some lessons in dancing but I was never dancing professionally, so, no, I am not a choreographer. "Flatland"  is not a dance-piece. It´s a piece. It´s a story. It´s a book.

corpus: When did you start to write – in general?

Portela: At the age of 26. It was a little accident because I was doing scenography and I did the master of arts in scenography and dramaturgy. I was very much into the dramaturgy of space. My final thesis in dramaturgy of space, let´s say, was a space that was not built. It was just suggested by text. And the space could be transformed by the text and the characters - which is basically just a very twisted way how to do a play. And I think "Flatland"  is a little bit like that. There is a lot of images in it but it´s a lot about what is not there and what´s not presented. One of the most beautiful moments for me is when James Bond takes the shoes in the end. This is nice because we don´t do any special effects but in fact it´s like magic. So, it´s more about suggestions than about presenting something. If we speak about the texts, yes, I think language is a very visual thing. And that´s how I work, mostly. That´s how it started – again as a mistake.

corpus: Let's take a short walk through Flatland: Are there any authors or texts you relate to?

Portela: Of course, a lot of them. The piece started as a combination of three texts. One is called "Flatland", written by Edwin A. Abbott who is a mathematician from the 19^th century. It is about a triangle meeting a square. It is about geometry. Then I really had a big wish for doing something about a character who suddenly becomes alive and who is not just a character any more. This was one of the main things in the beginning. So, I connected it with the story "Tausendundeine Nacht" which is basically "Flatland 2". In this story Sheherazade tells a story every night in order not to be killed because the king always wants to listen to the rest of the story. If I tell you stories all the time I do not disappear. In "Flatland" James Bond finds out that when he speaks all the time, when he produces images all the time, he is watched by the 3-D-people in the auditorium. So, he extists in the 3-D-world. The third important text was "Le paradoxe sur le comédien" from Denis Diderot. There is a very nice idea of the spectator as someone who watches through the keyhole. This is a very old idea, but I like it as a kind of a basis of how we actually perceive images and how one reads them - as someone who is not there but there. So, these were the three main texts that I worked on in the very, very beginning. Back then it was more like an essay. Furthermore there is a lot of references about books on perspective. That´s my big passion! The three texts that I mentioned are the big references and then, according to the writing process other texts jumped in. For the book I read a lot of books about books for example. That was a nice experience.

corpus: So this means, that you start writing a text and then you think about the visualisation etc.?

Portela: The concept is first, then there is a text which is not the final text but it sets the frame. The next step is that we decide how we want to work: if it´s visual or not etc. And then the collaboration with people from video and sound and with the actors starts. From that point on it goes to all directions simultanously.

corpus: How did it come to the collaboration with Ivan Lucia who did the animation of the letters in "Flatland"?

Portela: That was again a coincidence. I met some people that are collaborating with him. They are mainly working on big films, postproductions etc. And then I just asked. And they said yes. So, I wrote a storyboard and they translated it into flash-language.

corpus: If we make a look into future: Do you think that in 50 or 100 years dance and theatre will mainly take place in virtual spaces?

Portela: No.

corpus: In other words, do you think that theatre houses, for example, will be an antiquated idea?

Portela: I think that theatre houses are already quite antiquated, honestly. We will have more mobile spaces that are able to get all sorts of projects. But I don´t think that there will be only one type of things. It´s the same with the newspaper – because of having internet we didn´t loose the newspaper and because of having television we didn´t loose the book. And actually our virtual space is just the building of a big book. We like this kind of mixing, the simultanity of different layers...technology as a book. The book was our first technology. That´s why we think. That´s why we produce all the things we produce...because we can write and this was one of the important reasons for using a book and not another surface. We don´t use internet and we never mention internet in this trilogy although we talk about media and about technology all the time. But it is always about the idea of producing meaning through different media. But theatres are definitely antiquate and they need to become more flexible. I mean, we don´t just need the soundsystem or the lightsystem that we have in the theatre. We need something more flexible and I think this will be very different in 50 years.

corpus: A lot of choreographers or performances are concerned with the topic of fake nowadays. James Bond is in a way a fake-existence as well. Are you interested in this topic?

Portela: I think my first projects were more about reality and non-reality and the border of what is real and what is not real, which is inevitable, it´s not a big issue in the 20th century. What´s reality, what´s simulation, what´s there, what´s not there... At the moment I am not so interested in that but in something which is connected to our perception. How do we perceive things? I don´t think that it matters if they are real or if they are fiction. "Flatland"  is mainly about that. It´s not about a fake-existence because for him it´s real. And that´s why he thinks that his own life is fake and James Bond is real. So, he wants to become real and that´s why he becomes fake. I´m interested in how we are perceiving things and in what makes us do things. Yes, this is connected to the topic of fake and reality but I am more concerned with our perception, how we mix things and how we produce things from that.

corpus: Which connects to the other parts of the trilogy?

Portela: Yes, "Flatland 2" is mainly about that. It is the next step of "Flatland 1", so it takes place in the three-dimensional world and it´s about switching roles. This depends on our perspective. It is like asking: "Who is the enemy?" This depends on our perspective. It´s the guy on the other side but for the other side I am the enemy. How far do we go with switching roles that we become many people? Because, I think, that´s what we are now. There is no good guys or bad guys, there is no fake TV or real TV. Where do we stand? Which part do we take, and for whom? It depends on the role we are playing, for whom we are playing and who is observing us.

corpus: In "Wasteband"  the audience is explicitly part of the whole performance. The people in the audience are members of a scientific conference, there is no spatial separation of the performer and the audience. Which role does the audience play?

Portela: The relationship with the audience is always very important for me. In "Flatland"  the members of the audience are the other ones, very clearly. We wanted to be in the theatre and they play this role while we play that role. But in "Wasteband", I think, they are all the characters of the performance. I am talking to the people sitting around the same table with me, and they look at each other, and they don´t look at each other and they, and they wait and they don´t wait. So we are all partly the same. They are the wasteband. The wasteband is a space where nothing is happening. It´s about lost time, "Wasteband"  is a lot about loosing time. In the minute they are sitting around the table they are loosing time because I am not going to give what I said I would give. And that´s very clear from the beginning on. I´m selling a virtual play which is going to be the first ever made, and you inscribe it in a card that you can take home in order to put it into a machine and so on... It´s just a story. So, of course it is virtual – on a meta level – because you have to imagine it. It depends on the people who are there and on how they are listening. It is like a puzzle story with a lot of scientific data. So, in that sense, they are all part of the team. You talk face to face and sometimes people answer on what I say.

corpus: What is significant for me in "Flatland" and in "Wasteband"  is speed as a main dramaturgical method. In both pieces text and images sometimes are running so fast that it is almost impossible to catch all of it.

Portela: It´s a physical experience, in both pieces. In "Flatland"  you have to choose because you don´t know where the next sentence will appear and then there is an image, but you also want to read. At the same time he is saying something different. So, it´s a physical experience which is very typical for reading. When you reading you do your movement as a spectator. Both performances are a lot about this overdose of information that we are living with daily and we somehow seem to work fine with it. But in the minute you put it into a performance context we have the idea that we should be very aware of every detail and that we should be very conscious about everything. At one point I try to make that impossible. Especially in "Wasteband"  I wanted to make it impossible that you reach everything. If you cannot choose, your head chooses for you. And that´s the virtual performance because in the end you have a piece of image and a piece of story and a piece of something else and you put it all together. It´s very nice to listen to people after the performance because people depending on their own personal interests read a totally different story in the performance. And that´s exactly what I´m interested in. The speed of information, the overload. That´s just how it is, and I think we can live perfectly with it. If we either make a choice or if we find our own trace through the information. And then it´s no longer an information, it´s more an environment. 

corpus: It´s more an associative kind of thinking than a linear one.

Portela: Yes. Compared to: "I´m going to tell you this..." I´m not so interested in that because I think you can follow things without following everything. In Flatland, for example, you know that he has his own logic. You jump from one point to another and somehow it makes sense. That´s how you create an environment: when it´s logical for you even if you don´t necessarily understand it. It´s not so much about presenting a concept and telling you: "This is this and this and this..." For me that´s not challenging. "Wasteband", for example, keeps changing according to the audience. Sometimes they find meanings that you never thought about at all. You have a kind of feed-back in real time – people are talking to you even if they are not talking to you.