Berlin’s Zvizdal (Chernobyl—So far So Close) by Berlin, Cathy Blisson

Abstract

Reviewed by: Berlin’s Zvizdal (Chernobyl—So far So Close) by Berlin, Cathy Blisson Inga Meier BERLIN’S ZVIZDAL (CHERNOBYL—SO FAR SO CLOSE). By BERLIN and Cathy Blisson. DiverseWorks at MATCH, Matchbox 2, Wortham Foundation Theatre, Houston, Texas. February 15–16, 2019. First opened in 2015, the Midtown Arts and Theatre Center Houston (MATCH) was conceived as an alternative to the city’s largest and most well-funded arts organizations. With venues for dance, theatre, film, visual art, music, or any multidisciplinary combination thereof, MATCH is a performative multiplex. It is therefore perhaps not surprising that such a space elected to produce Zvizdal (Chernobyl—So Far So Close), the second-to-last show in BERLIN’s Holocene (the geographical era) Cycle. Billed as an “immersive hybrid of documentary film and theatrical installation,” Zvizdal stakes out a position somewhere between the two forms. That position is more cinematic than theatrical to be sure, but it also one that offers a fresh vantage point from which to approach the relationships between film and theatre, and between liveness and the mediated image. From that perspective, Zvizdal reveals that the membrane separating these modalities is far more permeable than it often appears from either side of the disciplinary divide, suggesting that an analogous hybridity may be formulated when theatre serves as the point of access. Click for larger view View full resolution BERLIN’s Zvizdal (Chernobyl—So Far So Close), 2016. (Photo: Frederik Buyckx, courtesy of the artists and DiverseWorks.) Like the other parts of the Holocene Cycle, Zvizdal maps out its geography through personal narrative. In this instance, the story is that of Pétro and Nadia, an elderly couple residing in Zvizdal, one of roughly ninety towns and villages evacuated in the aftermath of the 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl. In their sixties at the time of the disaster, the couple refused to evacuate and were still living in their home between 2006 and 2011, the period documented in Zvizdal. When my fellow audience members and I were collectively ushered into the Wortham Foundation Theatre (Matchbox 2), we were instructed not to sit in the space’s regular proscenium seating. Instead, we were guided to the area that would, under different circumstances, have been the stage. Within this new configuration, there was an enormous screen running along the middle (from upstage to downstage), with tiered seating facing both sides of the screen. In this regard, the screen served as a focal point for both sides of the audience, who each saw the film projected on their respective side. This configuration provided a reasonable approximation of the intimacy of a shared theatrical experience, but because the screen itself constituted (or was staged as?) a physical barrier between one side of the audience and the other (albeit one that was raised a few feet off the ground—just enough to see the audience’s legs on the other side), that intimacy was never fully achieved. Whether I position that lack of connection as intentional or as a failure however, is less important than the effect of being “so far so close” (as suggested by the title) that that lack of connection evoked. In fact, “so far so close” not only fittingly describes the distance between one side of the audience and the other, but also between Pétro [End Page 88] and Nadia (equal parts Grey Gardens and Waiting for Godot, often talking at, but not to, each other), between the couple and the world, and between their finite lives and their mediated representation. Click for larger view View full resolution BERLIN’s Zvizdal (Chernobyl—So Far So Close), 2016. (Photo: Frederik Buyckx, courtesy of the artists and DiverseWorks.) Directly underneath the screen but raised above the ground were three models of Pétro and Nadia’s farm, each situated within transparent, oversized petri dishes. Because BERLIN’s and dramaturg Cathy Billson’s visits to the couple often occurred months apart, each petri dish marked a time of year: spring/summer, winter, and fall. Running above the models but below the screen was a camera gliding between them, at times transmitting and superimposing images of the models onto the documentary footage being projected...