On a muggy Adelaide evening, a sell-out festival crowd was given the chills courtesy of a unique theatrical production by Netherlands company Hotel Modern – Kamp.
One enters the Space Theatre, to the sound of crickets chirruping. The lights are dim. Covering the length and breadth of the stage stands a world in miniature; a world immediately recognisable. What is not apparent is how it will be brought to life.
Over the next 60 minutes the audience bears witness to one of the greatest atrocities of the Second World War – life inside a Nazi concentration camp.
From the initial sounds of crickets, we move into the sound of hammers and saws, as the construction of the camp’s units is brought to life by miniature prisoners – cutting wood, hammering beams and carrying heavy loads. We witness the daily workings of labourers as they plough the earth under the watchful eye of armed guards in their towers. We are stunned by the arrival by rail of hundreds of Jews and their subsequent corralling in pens, like animals. We witness the horrific beating of an exhausted prisoner by a brutal guard; ultimately the prisoner is put out of his misery by a fellow inmate, before being carted away. We see the interior workings of the gas chambers – including the canisters of poison being poured and the frightened victims herded in – and the disposal of corpses in a row of furnaces. All this is juxtaposed by the rollicking and carousing of officers, in drunken revelry, to a bright-sounding oom-pah band.
The most captivating part of this performance is its players – three life-size human beings and miniature cast of thousands. Utilizing a fibre-optic camera, Maartje Van Den Brink, Menno Vroon and Trudi Klever move across the landscape and capture close-up imagery – broadcast onto the back wall of the Space Theatre – while handling the puppetry duties which bring the action and scene changes to life.
The miniature prisoners have individualized faces, reminiscent of Edvard Munch’s The Scream. With hollow eyes and open mouths, we can see the shock, disbelief and, at times, the terror at things to come. There is also ornate detail in the scattered clothing and personal items – the only reminder of the lives these individuals once lived. It’s like witnessing the Holocaust in a ‘day in the life’ documentary format, especially with its passive final moments, which were met with silence and stillness.
Kamp does not seek to traumatize its audience, nor trivialize (or minimize) its subject matter, but rather to show the enormity of the scope of this atrocity by compartmentalising each facet – the mundane and the extreme – and allowing the audience to draw their own thoughts together, without words, without actors, and without expectation. This recreation of the Holocaust is a nightmarish playground, like a child’s game gone wrong. It’s a game of war, based on a horrifying reality.
While this is a powerhouse of a performance piece, there is an issue of certain moments being overplayed and scene changes that drag on, dispersing the impact – but these are, in light of what is achieved, minor drawbacks.
It is rare to sit in a theatre and feel the silence, as if every member of the audience is holding their breath. This is the power of Kamp.
Rating: 4 ½ stars out of 5
Kamp
Created by Herman Helle, Pauline Kalker and Arléne Hoornweg
Producer: Cate Fittock – Blue Lane Productions
Sound Design: Rudd Van Der Pluijm
Performers: Maartje Van Den Brink, Menno Vroon and Trudi Klever
The Space Theatre – Adelaide Festival Centre
12 – 17 March
Adelaide Festival 2013
www.adelaidefestival.com.au
1 – 17 March
