NO SHADOW

LALISH THEATRE, AUSTRIA

5 November, 20:00 h, Place:
Modelarium- Hall of the Faculty of Architecture and Engineering

Artistic Director: Dr. Nigar Hasib / Research Director: Shamal Amin / With: Nigar Hasib and Shamal Amin

NO SHADOW

With the research-project “no shadow” (2006-2009) and the continuing research “Songs as a Source”, Lalish Theater laboratory dedicates itself, in performance, to today’s mostly forgotten archeological search for the human voice, its individual and cultural origin and its direct impact.

Nigar Hasib and Shamal Amin seek to discover an original, intermediate and artistic language, outside of the conventional linguistic symbolism. This new, non-linguistic language consists of syllables, sounds, tones and possibly still other vocal expressions, stemming from various different cultures.  All this leads to a new way of communication in performance and special work on their own composed experimental Voice- and Singing techniques. Voices and songs become the source of rhythm, of physical presence and also the source of action. Shamal Amin aptly named this new phase in the work of Lalish Theater laboratory the “Awakening of the Abstract Solemnity”:

“We create a flowing space, wherein voices and songs turn into pleasure. The voice resembles an action which always allows one to discover something new.”

This new, non-linguistic language in the performance work of Lalish Theater laboratory therefore distinguishes itself fundamentally from today’s so-called artistic languages of world theatre, which primarily deal directly with representation, with things, subjects and stories.

Shamal Amin and Nigar Hasib always try to create an empty space, which then becomes filled with voice and movement. A space in which the surroundings turn into an “Everywhere and Nowhere“, into a ritual-space and time transforms itself into an “Always and Never”, into a ritual-time.

LALISH THEATRE

Lalish Theater laboratory is an experimental centre for the research of rituals and inter-cultural performance activity, which deals with the issue of the “presence of the body in time and space” and “sources of celebration”. This theatre was founded in 1998 in Vienna (Austria) by Shamal Amin and Nigar Hasib, two extraordinary artists from Kurdistan, who previously from 1985 to 1991 and from 1992 up to 1999, discovered various techniques of ritual, singing and culture performance in the Near East and in Europe. In this context, in the experimental and ritual performance activity of Lalish Theater laboratory, songs and sound are not used to make the work more dramatic, nor to link two scenes together or to enrich the contents of a song. Nor do they sing specific songs for relevant situations. “The song as source” in Lalish Theater laboratory goes beyond borders and deconstructs such techniques. The research projects of Lalish Theater have taken place in Kurdistan, Iraq, Egypt, Tunisia, Austria, Germany, Holland, England, France, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Greece, Kosovo, Ukraine and Japan and with various institutions, international artists, dramatists and ethnologists, and is considered a new path toward making rituals out of the process of performance. The methods of work deriving from the Lalish Theater laboratory, such as “the activity of ritual performance” and “songs as source” together with all the techniques used, continue to inspire great international interest.