Битеф
performance of small acts. It is a large-scale production: the audience surround us on all sides in a 30-metre circle. This performance provides the principles for our new style of spectacle. From now on we play on a round open area with twelve or so tall white flags on one side to mark the rear of the stage. They mark it off without hiding it: the audience can see between the flags (we are street players, and we have nothing to hide). The spectacles consist of six main scenes: high-speed astonishment, panic, humour, music and poetry for 75 minutes. We begin with a garden in which two gardeners are arranging all kinds of objects; we finish with a fire spectacle. In between a blue head that is on the loose undergoes a brain operation, a dance is performed by two people on stilts, dressed in stiff fan-shaped skirts each made from 20 square metres of material, and a manned paper bird explodes in flames. We play spectacles like this for
three years in ten different countries. As we do so, we develop in the following ways. We make larger scenes, by combining the acts we used to play individually into blocks of three or four, in which one act serves as an introduction or background to another. In other words, we learn to compose with acts. We develop a much more static style of performance: if you are on a large area with a couple of other players, you have to be able to stay on your spot. As a player, you must know how your position fits into the total effect and be very exact in the changes and shifts of tempo which you introduce. Our costumes become larger and more conspicuous. Sometimes they are almost moving sculptures: we coquet with the Peking Opera and Japanese Kabuki theatre. Large objects now determine the landscape of our performance area. We use them sparingly: a tower,