Performance “b o n e r”.
By and with: Iggy Malmborg.
Technical solutions and dramaturgical support: Maike Lond.
Photos: Maike Lond, Tani Simberg.
Co-producer: Kanuti Gildi SAAL.
In collaboration with : Baltic Cricle Festival (Helsinki), Inkonst / Works at work (Malmö / Copenhagen).
Premiere: 12.11.2014, Baltic Circle Festival, Helsinki.
b o n e r is a performance by and with Iggy Malmborg. The Swedish performer presented his piece at Kanuti Gildi SAAL in the little black box on the 8th, 9th and 10th of December, 2014.
A table and a chair – both WHITE – are placed in the right corner of the stage. Two speakers, a microphone and a little black box complete the picture. The minimal aesthetics of the stage supports the piece, which can be easily associated with post-dramatic theatre, letting the text and the material situation (and not the drama) speak in order to produce an effect on the audience.
Firstly, the objects are performers. Each one of them gets a chance to talk. Explaining, assigning, entertaining and arguing with each other. After a while you completely forget the fact that objects can’t talk for real.
Secondly, the performer is an object. He is told by speaker 1 to use his body for acting purposes. He is asked to generate tears, an erection and to blush. In order to show the network between the objects present and the situation, which they are part of, these acting parts are repeated. In the second occurrence another “object” is added to the situation. It increases the physical reaction (more tears, a better erection, a stronger blush). Malmborg uses the word phenomenon.
Furthermore, the audience is put in a position of creating, on the invitation of the performer. This is how the show becomes interactive theatre. The audience is an object in itself, acting on the phenomenon.
The performer is giving. This generosity comes from his position of being an agent, as he calls it, being assigned to do things. He includes the audience, going back and forth between “traditional” theater and a more improvisational theater. At this moment, you are able to feel the performer’s background in classical theater education. As a bonus, Iggy brings an interesting aesthetic to the process.Surely, the body has an essential place in Malmborg’s work. What a person can make his body do, how he can control it. Among other things, he has also defecated live in front of an audience as part of the duo WHITE ON WHITE with his partner Johannes Schmit (Berlin). On one hand it seems he got stuck in the phallic stage. But questioning the position of objects in our life situations, Iggy pushes the limits of perception and understanding. We are not alone and omnipotent anymore. We might start considering the surrounding world as being as important than our own self.
