Life on Stage with a Glass of Wine for the Audience

Everything begins very simply: a man comes on stage and pulls some pieces of wood back and forth. These pieces of wood will soon turn into a large house; a sturdy two-story house with stairs, a bathroom, and a kitchen where dozens of people will come and go. The most astonishing work of this year's Edinburgh Festival was this play: "The House" by Jeff Sable; a performance that starts from nothing and ends in nothing: just like our lives where we sit on the other side of the stage but soon our "nothing" life mixes with the "nothing" characters we do not know at all - and we are not supposed to know until the end. During the first part of the play, we encounter characters who spend their daily lives in this house, each preoccupied with their own lives. In fact, this house is clearly not just a house; it symbolizes all our homes which usually have no connection with other homes. Now we see different characters from various homes all in one house, without any connection forming between them. The characters go to their own bedrooms, cook in the kitchen, get angry, laugh, go to the bathroom, and undress to take a shower. The bathroom scene is a key scene of the characters' lack of communication: each one undresses and goes into the bathroom and pulls the curtain, but quickly the next person opens the curtain and appears. Behind the curtain, on the bed and under the blanket, the characters shift, as if one disappears and another appears. The play resembles a strange magic trick, and some of the character transitions are truly astonishing, leaving the audience speechless. All this character magic occurs in their daily lives, without dialogue: nearly two hours of performance without words. However, "The House" manages to tell its story without the need for dialogue: the building of a house - our birth - living, loneliness, and then connecting with others, celebrating, and finally death, which is emphasized by the emptying of the house at the end. The first half is a half of loneliness; it seems no one sees anyone else... The second half, however, is the season of connection; the characters connect and gather around a table for various occasions that change every moment; from the birth of a child to the marriage of two characters and also the birthday celebration of another character. But this connection takes on multiple layers and does not remain solely on stage. One of the actors comes down from the stage and invites the audience to introduce themselves to their neighbors and shake hands. This kind of invitation for the audience to introduce themselves to their neighbors is not particularly new in theater, but the actors of "The House" go much further: they go into the scene and bring about ten different audience members onto the stage, not to play for a brief moment, but they truly become actors in the play and perform for about half an hour on stage! The roles of the audience members are significant in the play, and it seems that in the scenes of friendly dialogues behind the celebration table - which we do not hear their voices and apparently, like such parties, they talk about everyday things - the actors tell the invited audience members on stage what they should do in the next scene. Each of the audience members can disrupt the scene or part of it with their mistakes, but the creator's magic here also works, and everything goes smoothly until the end. The atmosphere of the work charmingly recalls the works of Emir Kusturica; with the same type of mad celebration and dancing, forgetting death, and live music that becomes an important part of the performance. Celebration and joy - life - is not limited to just the stage and the various layers of actor/audience (or audience/actor) to the point that even the drinks on the table reach the audience. The actors go among the audience and decorate the hall from one side to the other to complete the celebration of life. They share their wine with us, and the celebration on stage practically encompasses the entire large hall and the hundreds of audience members present; a real celebration in praise of art with a fresh and creative perspective that rebuilds the world around us, with a cold ending and the evident shadow of death, reminding us of the bittersweetness of life.