Germinal’s Brave New World

Halory Goerger and Antoine Defoort’s Germinalbegins in a black void and ends in an incandescent pool in which a quartet sings harmony. At the core of its journey from nothingness to this lush state of being are the questions: how do we communicate? What modes work best, and why? And why and how do these modes dictate how we live together? Further, what does human communication mean in the twenty-first century, when so many of our interactions are mediated through technology? To contemplate these questions, Goerger and Defoort—who co-conceived and directed the production, as well as appear as two of the four performers in it—use actors alongside stage tools that create light, projections, and sound. Germinal’s technological landscape invites communication and ultimately the building of a new world. This from-scratch construction is an enactment of community and dialogue, and further, a love letter to the ephemeral beauty of theatre and human life.

All of the tools used to create the world of Germinalare unearthed and discovered in real time in front of the audience. The performance’s structure follows the discoveries of stage layers and objects, all of which are considered, then used or rejected in this construction of something from nothing. In my September 19, 2014 interview with Goerger and Defoort at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Defoort explained that Germinalcame about after working on—and ultimately rejecting—an idea for a different performance:

… we decided to start again from scratch. And then this itself became the starting point for what would become Germinal. This would be a piece that would build itself. Everything we would need to do the thing would come from the stage. It would be self-generating.

Theatre as a form, and the explicit use of technology, were key to the director-creators in this “allegory” about communication. Defoort explains:

In the process of writing the piece, we wanted to address big issues: agriculture, food, energy, but we had to consider how to represent these things on the stage. So we ended up with an allegory about the history of communication in human society. So on stage, first, we know how to think, then to speak, and so on, and to categorize, and to progress. So quite naturally we ended up with computer tools—the most recent ways to help us communicate.

Germinalopens in pitch darkness. After an initial silence, a clunky maneuvering reminiscent of an Atari joystick echoes. Lights flash, and through the intermittent pools two human figures emerge, each seated on the floor hunched over a controller. With the opening soundscape, Goerger and Defoort begin guiding the audience through a process of discovering the theatre’s physical space, along with the elements that go into mounting a stage production.

As the lights come up, Goerger, Defoort, and the other two performers, Ondine Cloez and Arnaud Boulogne, are revealed to be manipulating small light boards. As they wrench the controls, more lights flash—from bright washes to colorful travelling gobo specials. When the lights come up more fully, the empty stage is revealed, a large proscenium black box with thick, dark curtains along the upstage wall, all four people sitting on the floor working with their boards. From this earliest moment, Germinalis rooted firmly in the recognizable world of the theatre, revealing aspects like technical equipment and the bare stage that are not often seen by spectators. That the actors onstage are using actual boards to manipulate lights adds to the palpable energy of revelation; this sense of real-time discovery is key to Goerger and Defoort’s vision. When, shortly after the opening, a red swirl zooms across the stage, performers and spectators audibly share their wonder. From the audience’s vantage point, these opening light games look like a glimpse of a theatre technical rehearsal.

Germinal’s main preoccupation is this journey through different ways of communication. As the four onstage realize that they are the ones who can control light, they...