Theater review | Feminist secret society Encounters purify and sensitize

Culture|Theater review

Encounters. Regular performance at Studio Pasila. The performance is a part of the Nyikeisittsin otdikamö project. Working group: Laura Eklund Nhaga, Katri Naukkarinen, Amanda Palo, Olga Palo, Sophia Wekesa. ★★★★

Studio Pasila two performers who lend their bodies to anonymous voices arrive on stage: Laura Eklund Nhaga mixed Sophia Wekesa. Presenter Amanda Fire tells the audience how the evening is going. Two unknown people meet and talk about their chosen theme. Nhaga and Wekesa listen to their speeches and say them on stage.

Here’s how it goes the performance of the Helsinki Feminist Secret Society begins Encounters. The piece is an exceptionally well-chosen start to the performance season, as it cleanses and sensitizes.

The topic of discussion is whiteness and Nhaga and Wekesa lend their brown bodies to the anonymous speakers. Anonymity lets you get right to the point. The first question is: “When did you realize you were white?”

The speakers immediately begin to honestly unpack the moments when they began to become aware of all that whiteness made possible for them. We jump from childhood to the present. One of the speakers notices that he likes to talk over the top. The other listens carefully.

Although the conversation the theme is whiteness in general, I notice that I have become more sensitive to how whiteness takes up space on the stage.

Sonya Lindfors brought up last winter in the work Camouflage bringing out how the brown body is either hyper-visible or transparent on stage. Now there is a twist in the power layouts, which removes clear and familiar layouts.

Whiteness is made visible without actually giving it the power to be on display. Nhaga and Wekesa have the right not to say what the speakers say, so they also have decision-making power.

White anonymous speakers say many important things, including how understanding whiteness makes life more meaningful.

Chasing around one’s own whiteness is still a bit confusing, although of course it is really human and recognizable from one’s own behavior and that of those around you. We get stuck wallowing in our own feelings of whiteness instead of acting.

Previous The work of a feminist secret society Dating 2.0. took me into the discomfort zone because I heard very intimate revelations about people.

In this show, it’s rather the opposite: the speakers do speak sincerely about their relationship with whiteness, but the real observations are between the lines.

In a small twist, this performance is related in my mind to what I experienced last spring Lauri Mattilan and Klaus Maunuskelan Woyzeck Game -presentation, which also set the stage for the meeting, but helped to recognize the use of power. It is often argued that isolation and mechanicalness in human relationships are inevitable consequences of modern technology. In these works, the focus was on the possibilities it gave to create a different kind of bodily sensitization to encounters than what we could have reached without playfulness.

Performers immediacy and relaxation give the impression that everything is easy for them and the audience as well.

Encounters however, works in retrospect. The next day, I notice that it has sunk in much deeper and disturbed me more powerfully than I could have imagined at the time of the performance.

Correction 10.8. 18:08: Sophia Wekesa’s last name was previously misspelled as Wekese.