Melting into global emotions
I’m late. On the bike on my way to the theatre, I briefly think about what I’m going to see there, and almost get hit by a car – again. Yes, we could all do with an “extra life” sometimes, what a great title, by the way. And, of course, the emphasis is on “extra”, because the performance has received so much praise and so many festival invitations that expectations are pretty high. As I approach MuseumsQuartier, still on my bike, I curb my enthusiasm a little because too high expectations usually end in disappointment.
But then I take my seat in Halle G and I’m immediately hooked. The only thing spoiling the enjoyment: the emergency exit lights. But they are necessary, so I ignore them away, which turns out to be surprisingly easy over the next 110 minutes because there are so many “extras” this evening.
Extra lights, for instance: like a camera shot, it feels like zooming in, fading in on a car that slowly emerges from the darkness. I am caught in a horror road-movie mood in an instance: a broken-down car in the middle of a forest, perhaps a post-accident scenario. Then there’s the flame of a lighter and, bit by bit, two bodies become visible inside the car, a seemingly unrestrained conversation after hours with chips following a party of non-stop dancing, plus scraps of segments on the radio. There is joking about aliens and UFOs but also about time jumps, blackouts and memory lapses, and it dawns on me that remembering and not remembering will be central this evening.
The light cones of the car headlights point to somewhere outside, directing my gaze to the floor covering, the fog, and my eyes fix on the light again. It seems to be breathing, acting just as autonomously as the three performers, but somehow shifted as if it was following its own temporality, more fast-paced than the conversation between the siblings Felix and Klara in the car. A person appears and disappears in the beam of the headlights. A mirror of the two siblings or perhaps a vague memory that pops up briefly, only to disappear again immediately.
The conversation between the two people in the car resumes, and soon it is put into words: the abuse by their grandfather. But you can’t dwell on these words, the scene must be cut – and, given that we seem to be at an after-party as well somehow – preferably with a favourite song from the radio: Glitter by 070 Shake sweeps over the stage. Just like the fog, that only manages to roll over the ground in such a precise and controlled manner in films but never on stage, right? With all its unpredictability, its fickleness. But EXTRA LIFE is an improved film. Because it takes place on stage. Because it’s an event. Because it makes me feel like I’m taking part in something brutal yet liberating, like both time and movement were tangible as Felix moves across the landscape lunar-landing-style, weightlessly reclaiming space or exploring unknown terrain.
Littered with debris and covered in fog, the floor has an attractive and at the same time threatening quality for the bodies on stage, being sheltered or swallowed up seem to be lying close together here. Light, sound and fog even test gravity, and for a moment I lose track of what might be up and what might be down. The scene is upside down, the thoughts are suspended for a moment, but then there is the laser that everyone attending the Ruhrtriennale has raved about. Once more, this translates to “high expectations”, and again there’s no disappointment because the laser operates as Katja Petrowick’s on-point counterpart and not just a “special effect”. She plays with and at the same time fights the shackles of light and the walls created by the laser light, constricting and taking up space – once again, all at the same time, always in motion. Being stared at, being pierced comes to mind when these fine laser beams hit the bodies, impaling them point by point. Similar associations again later, when Petrowick melts into the cone of a single spotlight, and the “haze” mixed with the “gaze” only illuminates parts but never shows the whole. Yet another global emotion I recognise here: the sensation of being pushed to the ground, without apparent pressure, until the body disappears into the ground fog, floored by an invisible force; or a release. An ambivalence that flows through the entire evening, in waves.
Then: a hard cut. We are sucked into a nightmare scene in red, the three performers are crammed into the front seat of the car. Around them, the red laser network is drawing closer: the thread that holds the plot together, which you may or may not have wanted to piece together quite so precisely, but now there’s no escape. The horror comes to a head, memories, perhaps revenge fantasies and projective identifications are briefly exposed. The three bodies take away the emotions of the others, pushing violence, anger, grief, helplessness, this conglomerate of world, into the spotlight, finally allowing them to melt into the fog.
Adèle Haenel takes up this sequence in the artist talk, calling it “melting into global emotions”, and as I get back on my bike, I think to myself: “Yes, that’s exactly what happened here tonight.”
Anna Laner is a dramaturg and director. In her theatre work, she has shifted her focus on queer-feminist historiography and intersectional-feminist discourses. Following her employment as dramaturg at Schauspielhaus Wien from 2015 to 2019, she has been working as a freelancer since 2019, increasingly in collective work processes for theatres such as Schauspiel Stuttgart or Hessisches Landestheater Marburg. Moreover, she has been co-curating the season programme at Vienna’s Kosmos Theater since 2020.