Actors Artour Astman and Rafael Haugas talk to Ramya Palisetty about the portrayal of their characters and special association with the play Afternoon + Evening with a Faun
Art, they say, reflects life. But when life and its reflection become one, dissolving the reality and imagined projection, the artist is at his honest best. Afternoon + Evening with a Faun is a daring personal clearance sale by Artour Astman. The show crashes the idea of performative virtuosity, moving through regions of male sexuality and expanding the borders of the authentic and the fake.
The piece departs from Vaslav Nijinski’s classic The Afternoon of a Faun (1912) — a provocation when it first premiered. Soon, Nijinsky’s biography gets interwoven with the performer’s own: from the unscrupulous boot camps of the Soviet ballet school up to his days as a striptease dancer and reality TV-star in Israel. As the afternoon turns into the evening, the audience gets increasingly involved in the performance and finds itself revisiting shadows and seductions of the past – stripping down to the most fragile layers.
Astman’s autobiographical auction presents a rare synergy between theatre, dance, visual arts and even culinary performance, where anything goes, no one is innocent and everything has a price.
He graduated from the Ballet School of Voronezh in Russia before emigrating to Israel, where he continued his studies as a dancer at the Academy of Music and Dance in Jerusalem. The character portrayed in the play is a true manifestation that actually emerged from his searching. “I didn’t know what I was supposed to create in the beginning. After enquiring through traumas from my childhood, I understood that it was connected to Faun because the improvisations I did helped me remember Faun by Nijinsky. I was amazed at the exact same organisation of the choreography without even thinking about it before. Once I looked at the ballet, I understood my story and what I wanted to create. It actually became a triangle of Nijinsky, Faun and my life. It is also one of those pieces which teaches you not to take creations and performances to heart highlighting the limits and how to play with them.”
To understand and get into the skin of the character, the artist researched, went to museums and met individuals who had videos that nobody had, trying to find pictures. “It was an interesting adventure. Suddenly, you forget about it and begin a new journey because the moment you have it, it is already not yours. I feel like it starts to go somewhere and I go with it.”
He was part of several renowned ensembles, including Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, Barak Marshall, Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak Dance Company and multi-disciplinary group Maria Kong. He gained widespread media attention as a finalist in the Israeli reality TV show Born to Dance. Said Astman, “I haven’t been an actor for long but I have worked with actors. Until this show, I was creating dance constantly but with this show, for the first time I felt that it was more about the artist in me than dance. So I combined my imagination and various spheres of my creativity like drawing, dance and acting.”
The profession of acting chose the actor. “My mum was a dancer and she had her own company in Russia for dancers and my grandma was a ballet dancer before the second world war. Dance was always in my blood but I made the choice on my own and enrolled myself in a ballet school.” This play is his full length solo piece for which he was awarded best performance at the 2017 edition of PUF Performing Arts Festival in Croatia. He feels that this play is a special piece. “It is each time different but still the same — the same continuation, the same scenes and same text but my interpretation, what I am saying, how I am saying it and what my co-star has decided for me, changes each time.”
Though it was a bold play, the audience was able to build a connect with it. “The audience reaction was nice and a bit surprising. When the play begins, one doesn’t know. And slowly, one grasps what is going on. With new audience, you start to build it and each time it is developing, not something that is ready before.”
“Three years ago, we came with a different piece directed by Dmitry Tyulpanov. He had two shows in Delhi and then we headed to Jabalpur. And there, out of the blue, he had a heart attack during the early morning hours. It was just crazy to all of us and it led to a different journey of theatre for Idit Herman. The foundation of theatre started to change because from a strong couple, it had become one person now. Idit took a long while to find her space but she opened herself to help young actors and artists. Today, she has old plays that she had developed with Dmitry and new plays because she wanted a new beginning.”
On a personal note, the actor felt that this was a continuation and the moment he landed in India, he had this feeling that something big was happening. “ I wanted to open a new page to continue for him and for us. I was there with him during his last days and his last hours talking and suddenly it happened. But I am an optimistic person and I love him and I believe that he was an amazing artist, a teacher for a lot of artists in Israel.”
Rafael K Haugas is an actor in the Russian-speaking theatre and was recently cast as the lead in a Russian feature film. As the producer of this play, he did the lights, the designing, playing the background music and organising everything. “The audience understood what was happening after Astman starts speaking about the traumas because that is the time people start to connect with the character. It is a serious piece that speaks about life and its varied facets. Each audience understands something different and that is good because in the show you have the art of ballet, art of speaking, laughing and erotica.
In the play, he enacts a small role to support his co-star, Astman. “Though it is a small role, I feel it is big because I am in this space” and also because the two actors have known each other for the past four years.
An actor by profession, Haugas wants to specialise in designing and lights. “I just don’t want to confine myself to acting. I have acted since I was 15 years old. Once I graduate from professional acting school, I will audition for films and TV shows but I would pursue my other passions as well.”
The most challenging aspect was learning how to operate lights as the control panel was old and he was unable to understand it initially. “In Israel, the computer does the job so it is pretty easy.”
A piece that is close to his heart, this play holds a special place because the actors share a good friendship. Born in Israel with Russian genes, the artist has inherited the culture of Israel and Russia. “When I was acting in Russian theatre, my friend told me I have a mix of Russian and Israel quality which works very well for my acting adding a unique individuality.”