http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/08/theater/review-germinal-sheds-a-light-on-creativity-and-all-creation.html
Review: ‘Germinal’ Sheds a Light on Creativity and All Creation
Under the Radar 2016: Halory Goerger and Antoine Defoort - Germinal
[excerpt:]
The evolution here is that of human awareness. The progression goes from thought to nonverbal communication to spoken language to ever-expanding consciousness of self, and the place of self in relation to everything else. And, oh yes, along the way something that feels like art emerges as a means of giving order to that big disordered mess that is life.
This creation team does have a lot of sophisticated technology at its command that was certainly not at the disposal of its ancient ancestors. From within what seems like a blank black space, the cast members discover pickaxes, computer-control panels, microphones and sound equipment that allow them to give form to their discoveries. (The show’s technical conception is by Maël Teillant.)
Thus supertitles are projected (the spoken dialogue is mostly in French), but in diverse ways that ingeniously suggest how humans come to know and claim their own thoughts.
Projected words and diagrams also play a significant role when the team decides it’s important to organize the phenomenology of all they are encountering. (Material objects fall into the classification of things that go “pocpoc,” when they are struck; abstractions and feelings are grouped under things “that do not go pocpoc.”)
Such a dichotomous sensibility, from the culture that gave us both René Descartes and Marcel Marceau, may sound too preciously Gallic for some. But “Germinal” operates in the very best French tradition of combining whimsy with profundity, and a double consciousness of precise, egoistic individuality with anonymous universality.
I defy anyone not to be thrilled by this production’s conclusion. By that time, our band of four has embraced the higher rules of physics and metaphysics and come to understand notions of catharsis, thermodynamics and even karmic bliss.
It’s been a long haul for them — eons — and they’re now starting to realize that everything, material or otherwise, must end. New concepts like depression, anger and resignation come to the fore.
But so does transcendence, the kind that four people with voices and rhythm and a blessed sense of the importance of ritual can deliver. In creating a world, they’ve created a play, a thing of rippling, radiant light to be savored before the darkness closes in once more. --
By BEN BRANTLEY, New York Times
Under the Radar 2016: Halory Goerger and Antoine Defoort - Germinal
