Interview: Wayn Traub - Not a bang but a wimple … a genius leaves the stage

Published on Wednesday 3 June 2009 19:16

NO LIST of the leading multimedia theatre-makers of our age would be complete without Belgian artist Wayn Traub. He has made his mark with works such as Maria-Dolores and Jean-Baptiste (the first two parts of a trilogy inspired by the stories from his Catholic upbringing). His combination of dance, physical performance, live acting, film and music has seen him compared to the acclaimed Quebecois theatre maker, movie director and actor Robert Lepage.

It is a comparison that will only be strengthened by Maria-Magdalena, the final part of Traub's trilogy, which begins its UK premire at Tramway in Glasgow tonight. As with many of Lepage's works, such as Elsinore and The Far Side of the Moon, Traub will be the only performer on stage, interacting with the variety of media he has assembled around himself.

The Belgian actor-director, whose training was at film school, came to theatre ten years ago through a desire to create "rituals". "I started to make theatre because of the emptiness of the consumerist society," he explains. "I felt that there were no sacred things any more. In my own life, I couldn't find any place to discover the irrational part of myself. I couldn't find it in Catholicism, or other religions, and I couldn't find it elsewhere in society. I believed that, by creating my own rituals in the theatre, I could find and work on something that could be sacred."

Alluding to so-called "body artists", such as Franko B and Ron Athey, Traub says that he reacted against the kind of theatre which was being hailed as modern ritual. "The performers always used blood and a very physical way of acting to show that it was a ritual. For me, that is very formal, but it is not really from the heart or from the head."

The rituals of Maria-Magdalena involve a series of arrestingly original, often humorous characters and images. In one moment, we see a macho guy who secretly records his sexual adventures by means of a camera built into his spectacles. At another, we see a zealous Colombian exorcist who is certain that he is close to capturing Satan.

Traub admires the work of American film director David Lynch, and, like Lynch, he specialises in unsettling images. Often these images are ambiguous and invite us to relate our own lives to the variety of meanings they might suggest.

"It's my second nature to create strange combinations," he says. "People are always surprised that I combine things that no-one expects to be combined. I like the challenge of it, and to surprise people.

"I always use humour and playfulness, just to make it not too heavy to take. If a movie or a theatre show is only aggressive, it loses my attention. The trick is to be hard and soft at the same time. I want to wake the audience up and also carry them to sleep."

A primary example of this artistic balancing act is the ambiguous, potentially satirical film of fictional Asian nuns which appears in Maria-Magdalena. A series of young Chinese women – every one of them cover-girl beautiful, their faces made-up as if for the catwalk – are seen in the iconic black and white habits of Catholic nuns.

The combination of Catholic myths and rituals with very modern images makes sense to contemporary audiences, Traub believes. "I use old Catholic myths because people know them, they feel them, they're in the blood. But I also like to use things that are very close to modern society, the myths of today. I could use Michael Jackson, for example, as easily as I use characters such as the professor or the soldier."

If the images and characters grab our attention, so, Traub hopes, will his use of film. When he first started making theatre, he was appalled by much of the use of film in live performances. "It always seemed very poor to me, or the movie was used only as some kind of light effect or to create background images. I believe in a special way of using a film in the theatre, as a real movie, with distinct characteristics."

Having been drawn into theatre by the need to create rituals, Traub feels that he is ready to embark on a new stage of his career, as a filmmaker. "Now that I've finished the trilogy, I feel that a part of my life is over. I'm saying goodbye to theatre. Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch have said that a man will only be ready to make a movie when he is 40. Now, as I approach 40, I really feel that also. I think now I can really make an interesting film."

&#149 Maria-Magdalena is at Tramway, Glasgow, tonight until Saturday. www.tramway.org