BY: Lamija Milišić

The third day of the 62^nd International Theater Festival MESS was marked by the performance titled “Tea Ceremony” by the theater troupe SRSLY Yours. Gathering artists from Greece, Cyprus, Sweden, Germany and Switzerland, the troupe and the director Achim Wieland tackle different sociopolitical topics. At this year’s edition of MESS, they will present us with yet another performance titled “Picture Perfect”.  

“Tea Ceremony” is a 60-minute long anguish over negligent violence, anguish over the pain of the world to which we agree, which we indirectly cause and which, due to that indirectness, we cast away from our own conscience. To the Sarajevo audience, the geisha who welcomes us to her tea ceremony instantaneously conveys an impression of exoticism. Despite the fact that due to its superficiality it does not bode well, this impression we get appears unavoidable – we are in a state of curiosity; however, it is a curiosity that passively waits to be satisfied, which can only be done by its own standards. Hence, we are waiting for the world to shape itself into our own image. This exoticism is also backed up by the mere fact that the tea ceremony represents a certain ritual, a collective experience upon which a change is bound to occur and an experience which is mystifying in itself.

The way it was set up, “Tea Ceremony” effectively creates the sensation which the geisha is constantly reminding us about – a sensation that we are guests and that she is our host. Here, the above-mentioned mystification implies that we are surrendering ourselves to the enchantment of the world. But at what cost? Of course, the overall atmosphere is establishing a clear connection with the theater as a form which evolved from ritual, which we as an audience come to observe as guests in a fictitious world. The very sensation of being guests makes the audience of the “Tea Ceremony” actively fantasize about being absolved from any responsibility or guilt. Nevertheless, being guests in the theater, we sense from the very beginning that its aim is not to let us be the innocent observers but to make us identify ourselves.

Geisha’s character (played by actor Marios Ioannou) is largely based on vocal activity abounding in repetitions which take on a new meaning with every new cycle, ranging from ceremony as a safe place to ceremony as a place of truth.  Geisha’s tone of voice is high-pitched and reserved, it is trained and subdued, as is her body. Even when she is telling us about the pain she witnessed as a little girl, she is constantly referring to the ritualistic, deceptive background of her words, whose disturbing contents and level-headed manner of expression seem to be in discord and in service to the feeling of discomfort. Thereby the actor’s performance successfully provokes the patient commitment and respect the audience has for the tea ceremony, as well as their desire to question the above-mentioned sense of safety.

This provocation might be regarded as “Tea Ceremony’s” greatest virtue since it reaffirms the audience status, from that of guest who is neither passive nor active but appropriately disabled to act on a foreign, exotic field, to the status of an inappropriately irresponsible individual. The stage design, with particular focus on the knocked-down vase with the flower lying on the floor, suggests that every single prop there has a potential purpose that emerges as the ceremony unfolds. Moreover, this also serves to emphasize that coincidence is excluded from the ceremony. Coincidence is hereby expelled from the stage and in the lack thereof, we are left to responsibility simulated by geisha’s request to occasionally point our index finger to the sky and to make circular movements with it, innocently and in unison.

This almost eerie sense of disorientation that we are left with after watching the “Tea Ceremony” is caused by the fact that this ceremony unfolds according to plan, despite the illusive spiritual crack through which the geisha is guiding us. The ceremony remains intact, the ritual remains unbroken, but we as audience should be able to discern that catharsis will not come as a liberating force which frees us from the need for security and ignorance, but as a bitter recognition of that same need of which we might not even be ashamed.

What is somewhat lacking in the “Tea Ceremony” is a more developed or contextually more adjusted image of responsibility for a painful and unjust structure of human civilization. As an audience in a post-colonial state, we could only conclude that the examples of colonization practices that were shown aren’t the battles that we should fight. But then again, why should we agree to any pain from apparent negligence?