How can you be fictional and stay true to your documentary source material? How can you interpret intensely personal stories/tragedies in theatre without becoming utterly tedious? How can you change the perception of what is known and taken for granted only by shuffling some facts around in an immersive performance?
In this lecture I talked about and showcase theatre performances that were based on true facts and documentary material and the ways these facts were presented and shifted into fictional imagery and back. I pinpointed some elements of these performances (narrative techniques, dramaturgy, directorial choices, etc.) that on one hand helped distancing the audience from the raw facts in order for them to be able to feel comfortable with perceiving the oftentimes serious base material, and on the other drew them back into the narratives in an organic, non-intrusive way. In the lecture I used the examples of the performances of Oliver Frljić and András Urbán to set up the framework for some of the possibilities of this type of theatre, and then dived into a theatre trilogy where through their visual, choreographic, and dramaturgical solutions we could recognise different levels of interwovenness of the real-life and the theatrical, without losing the very personal touch inherent to these performances. I finished my lecture showcasing an immersive audio-performance, which intensely used real-life facts and locations to create a fictional world of a hidden city.
Attila Antal is a theatre, film director and composer currently living in Novi Sad, Serbia. He is interested in a wide range of theatrical expressions from puppet theatre through socially engaged theatre to contemporary dance. He is working on his PhD thesis at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg, Austria, on the topic of the political in postdramatic theatre in the post-socialist Hungary and the former Yugoslavian countries. He has worked on performances and films in Hungary, Serbia, Romania, Croatia, Slovenia, etc. His current work involves expanding the borders of what is considered theatre into virtual realities and site-related immersive performances.