The stuff performance is made of

If you’ve seen Is Joy II and Applause at Mladi levi this year, feel free to read on. If you haven’t but still plan to, somewhere, somehow, consider this your spoiler alert—assuming, of course, you believe in spoilers at all. And if you haven’t seen them yet but still want to follow along with this conversation, I suggest starting here and here, and browsing through this and this. Forgive the over-explaining—I’m sure you would have thought of doing that anyway.

Disclaimer: This conversation is entirely fictional; I have no idea what Applause or Is Joy II actually think or feel. I also owe them an apology for turning them into characters—how very un-postdramatic of me.

UB: With me today are two performances: Is Joy II, directed by Aljoša Lovrić Krapež and Applause, choreographed, perhaps rather surprisingly, by Beauty itself. Thank you both for joining us. I trust you were satisfied with the way the Mladi levi audience received you?

Is Joy II: Absolutely. They didn’t complain when I removed their chairs and asked them to stand. In fact, they seemed rather pleased. Suddenly free, they could move, wander, even dance to the beat.

UB: Well, well, well… I know a person who swore she’d fight for her chair until her dying breath. She was still recounting the tale over lunch the next day.

Is Joy II: Sure, that’s fine. It’s not like we’d punish her for it. We take our cues from people—if they can’t bear to let go of a chair, so be it. Whatever keeps things moving. I’m talking about the atmosphere as a whole. And she’s part of it too, with her stubborn refusal to budge.

Applause: Our audience’s clapping was positively energetic… occasionally even relentless. I must say, I was in excellent spirits that evening.

UB: You both rely on audiences. How would you describe that relationship?

Is Joy II: For me, it’s about shifting the balance. At first they are there to watch. But slowly they realise they’re already inside the performance. That gradual space where they get implicated—that’s what I love. And hey, I get that you’re trying to find the connective tissue, but we don’t lean on the audience that much. Remember the first part? The precision of our craft—making an inflatable banana align seamlessly with a drying rack and a set of ladders. That takes skill, and we take pride in it.

Applause: I, on the other hand, live entirely through the audience. Without their clapping, I barely exist. But once they start, I grow, I resonate, I carry them along.

UB: Do you feel you could be each other’s audience?

Is Joy II: I think Applause would make a wonderful audience for us—though their palms would be raw by the end. But then again, we’d be taking away their main element: the freedom to walk somewhere, instead of endlessly circling.

Applause: And I believe Is Joy II could be a fine audience for us. But only if we could get them onto the back of an open bus. The trouble is, they’d be too absorbed in themselves to notice the world passing by—so perhaps not, after all.

Is Joy II, foto: Nada Žgank

UB: Performance is often framed as ephemeral—though that notion has lost much of its force. Do you still worry about disappearing from memory?

Is Joy II: Not particularly. I linger in the body. Once someone has danced with me, even reluctantly, I stay in their muscles for a while. Also, who would forget the beauty of that engineering expertise.

Applause: Forgotten? Impossible. I echo in the ears long after the end. People may not recall every detail of what they’ve seen, but they remember me.

UB: Audiences, of course, are not always well-behaved. How do you deal with that?

Is Joy II: I invite mischief. If someone resists, that’s just another rhythm to play with. Besides, confusion can be its own kind of choreography.

UB: Ya, ya, ya, but I have to insist. What if there was someone in the audience who didn’t get it—or who deliberately wanted to undermine what we were doing? We knew we were going from Tabor to Mladinsko; Gregor told us it would take about 50 minutes. We wanted to help. I felt a certain social obligation, almost a social contract. And we also knew we couldn’t clap every five seconds—we’d never arrive. Plus, there was another performance at 9 p.m. that most of us were heading to and wanted to catch. But what if someone didn’t know, or refused to know, those conventions? Like a child—or someone who, for whatever reason, didn’t want us to walk at all, but to move as little as possible and clap at everything? And honestly, I could argue that everything is worth clapping for. In a way, everything is beautiful—that’s part of the piece’s foundation. And yet, imagine: there were so many of us that we could have covered 200 meters in fifty minutes, instead of two kilometers.

Applause: Well yes, but you’re being a bit of a bore now. What are you—into controlling people? If a child didn’t get the conventions, the adult with them would explain. Social rules are strong; Bunker’s audiences are well trained, after all. And so what if we hadn’t moved? Or only a little? Do you think the performative walk would somehow fail? Whatever happened—that would be the performative walk.

UB: Ha, okay, you got me there. Although, what does it mean - social regulations are strong? They are and they aren’t, depending on who you are talking to. And just to be clear, I am NOT into controlling things. Anyway, Applause, did you notice that while we were clapping at a beautiful object in the sky (I think!), there was a child on the backseat of a car, desperately turning around, trying to figure out what we were clapping at, why we were standing like that and clapping? He practically jumped through the roof trying to answer that question.

Applause: Well, if you noticed, I noticed too, we contain multitudes.

UB: That’s not entirely true, is it? We were a collective body, yes, but we didn’t share a collective will—or perception. Half the time, I had no clue what people were clapping at. Or to.

Applause: Well, yes, but all of these perceptions—that’s what I’m made of as the performative walk. It doesn’t matter if you sense a particular thing; it’s still part of you. Like your kidney—you don’t really feel it unless something’s wrong, or unless you’ve trained yourself to. Most people don’t even believe you can, but it’s still there. You know it’s there… unless, of course, it isn’t. I know people felt something, and the content of that feeling? I don’t really need to know the details.

UB: Okay, but don’t you want to know? I mean, wouldn’t you like to hear from us, who were there to witness it?

Applause: Well, sure—if you want to tell me, it could be interesting, of course. But it’s not obligatory. I don’t need to know; those moments belong to the audience.

Applause, foto: Nada Žgank

UB: Is Joy II… I don’t know, I guess I felt a bit excluded in the end.

Is Joy II: Excluded? But you were there—moving, active, alert.

UB: Yes, but… I had hoped the audience itself would get included in your installation.

Is Joy II: But they were included. I mean, you were included. By the end, everyone was taking part.

UB: But I wasn’t in the installation! Your performers were part of it—they found the gaps in the installation and filled them with their bodies. Why didn’t you make the audience do that?

Is Joy II: Do you really think that would have been a good idea? Forcing someone from the audience to squeeze between a vacuum cleaner and a washing machine? What would the person who didn’t even want to give up her chair have done to us?

UB: Well, okay, but maybe just opening the opportunity for someone who wants to do it? Also—why didn’t you let us bring our own things? Stuff we wanted to donate to you. Stuff we wanted to get rid of, for instance.

Is Joy II: Are you trying to prove you’re not into controlling things? It’s… not working very well. Want to suggest to Jon Fosse how to end his play too?

UB: You’re being a bit defensive. Okay, I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. Finally, what’s next for you two?

Is Joy II: I’ll keep liberating audiences from their chairs wherever I go. I don’t want to make that person angry, though, so it’s also okay if you don’t want to give up your chair. Or anything else, really.

Applause: And I will continue arriving precisely on cue. After all, I am the stuff performance is made of.