Insights from Manuel Harder
I lie down on the floor. I’m not feeling particularly well. Because it’s break time, I’ve laid down where I was just standing. I hear the footsteps of the others. And then – tripp trapp tripp trapp! – Antigone sits down next to me, opens her lunch box and starts eating. And then – tripp trapp tripp trapp! – Ismene joins us and snuggles up to her sister. And then – tripp trapp tripp trapp! – the messenger also sits down with our silent group. Without a word, he takes my little finger, rocks it back and forth, moves it, plays with it. From the outside, we probably look strange, a curious still life on the floor. At that moment, I couldn’t have wished for anything more soothing. I wouldn’t even have thought of it in the first place.
I’ve recounted this scene from the rehearsals for “Antigone” time and again when asked what it was like to work with RambaZamba. “With my colleagues”, I would usually emphasise. Although I was immediately embarrassed by this emphasis, because it was so obvious. Or perhaps not. This special form of attention was not at all a matter of course. The loving, humorous, imaginative presence. This created the feeling that something very important was taking place, something that was genuine, without much fuss. A matter of course! Everyone knows more or less what the acting process makes possible in terms of encounters. When rehearsing in the theatre, you sometimes lose sight of the actual encounters: timings and texts have to be right, scenes have to be created and agreed upon, and it is not uncommon for images of others and oneself, egos and vanities to be both available and in the way.
In our joint rehearsals, all of this seemed to be – not gone, not disappeared – but changed, weighted differently. The encounter became more important than the fulfilment, the waiting richer than the process, the perception more conscious than the delivery, the struggle and the attempt more eloquent than the goal, the challenge more loving, more direct, stronger, more alert than the agreement. And this without it being a concept. It was simply natural. One’s own performance was responded to differently than usual. And led to other responses of one’s own.