The Bird of a Thousand Voices pulls out all the stops to translate an Armenian folktale into images, sound, feelings, associations, and - for who so desires - a political message.
The only label befitting The Bird of a Thousand Voices is that of ‘total artwork’. The piece is a combination of music, oral literature, kinetic art, film, videogames, theatre, poetry and light art. ‘A multi-disciplinary jam session of the highest order’, feels Ruben van Leer, the Dutch director and filmmaker who initiated the project together with composer/pianist Tigran Hamasyan.
The duo first met ten years ago and clicked instantly. Together they have since realised various productions, with Hamasyan’s fusion of jazz, rock and Armenian folk music a perfect match with Van Leer’s associatively lyrical visual language, which he honed in music videos and touring as a veejay with artists including The Black Eyed Peas and Coldplay.
‘Four years ago, Tigran and his young family moved back from Los Angeles to Armenia’, Van Leer says. ‘The country is threatened by its neighbouring country Azerbaijan and receives little to no international support. He felt he could contribute something positive with his music. Another two years later I received a phone call. He’d written his biggest composition yet, based on a fairytale that, though ancient, is relevant to the present. Tigran said: you’re my storytelling partner, come help me tell this.’
Hazaran Blbul
Van Leer travelled to Armenia to learn more about the country and the folktale that so inspired his creative partner. ‘Fairytales about birds are found in various cultures, like in the myths about the phoenix or firebird’, Van Leer says. ‘The Armenian Hazaran Blbul was orally passed down for centuries as a bedtime story. It wasn’t until the Middle Ages that versions were put on paper, pieces of which I was able to film in the Armenian capital Yerevan. The Matenadaran archives of manuscripts also have first editions, which were mainly made on early printing presses in Amsterdam.’
Hazaran Blbul is about a generous king who opens the palace gates to share his property with his people. In the greedy subjects’ jostling, a small child is trampled; his grandmother holds the king responsible and puts a curse on him. Only the bird of a thousand songs can lift it. And so the king sends his oldest sons on a quest to find the mythical creature. But when they return empty-handed, it’s the youngest son Areg’s turn. Before embarking on a journey that will lead him to meet demons and other peril, he visits the village girl Manushak and promises to marry her when he returns. Only it takes much longer than expected for him to return. Though Areg succeeds, and the bird brings peace to the kingdom once more with its song, Manushak has turned into a lily from sorrow.
Hallucinatory flashbacks
‘My first idea was to render the fairytale in a cinematic way’, says Van Leer, who did something similar before working with Michel van der Aa and Peter Greenaway. ‘Onstage my film would meld with the music and sung lyrics, a bit like with an opera. But gradually my film became a standalone work. It’s set in a post-apocalyptic world, which Areg moves through in a climate suit, breathing heavily. He’s dying, but when he finds a manuscript in a monastery, the story inspires him to go on living one more day in order to bring about a new world. The original story of the mythic bird is told in hallucinatory flashbacks, a cinematic translation of the fairytale.’
The choice fell on a more abstract form for the final theatrical performance. Areg is no longer a real character but a light source, which makes sense given the Armenian meaning of his name: sun. Onstage the only one from the story physically present is singer Areni Agbabian, who plays the roles of both the bird and Manushak.
Feminine energy
‘I feel the fairytale is about the absence of feminine energy’, Van Leer says regarding the female perspective. ‘Areg is different from his brothers. There’s one sentence that describes him as dark and small, the bastard son of the king and a woman who isn’t mentioned for the rest. He loses his great love as well. And the bird he looks for is female.’
But the feminine element is deeper still. ‘For centuries it was mothers who passed myths on to their children. They are the guardians of culture and laid the basis for a collective identity. Which in Armenia is under attack, especially after the ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh last year. But the rest of the world, with its Putins and Trumps, can use some feminine energy too.’
Game
There’s certainly a political layer to the piece, but Van Leer and Hamasyan don’t want to make it too explicit. It’s primarily about the sensory experience for them. And as if images and music aren’t enough already, Van Leer and scenographer Boris Acket also added a ‘wing machine’, an enormous moving sculpture that mimics a bird’s movements with fishing rods and transparent fabrics. Van Leer: ‘We invite the audience to fly on these wings themselves, to dare to dream.’
Even before the performance starts, the imagination is stirred in a rather unorthodox way. ‘Instead of an introductory text with eighteen pages of poetry, we chose to make a game,’ Van Leer says. ‘These are the bedtime myths and stories of today. The game is free, and you don’t need to download anything. In sync with a four-minute piece of music, players have Areg run through a landscape transporting an egg, the symbol of hope and new life.’
‘We use this variety of means in order to understand and depict the complexity of the fairytale and today’s world. It’s a kaleidoscopic experience we’re aiming for. We want to offer listeners and spectators a bridge to an own interpretation of the fairytale about a bird whose song created harmony to a society in crisis.’
Amsterdam
Edo Dijksterhuis
Freelance journalist for Het Parool, Museumtijdschrift, De Filmkrant, DAMn Magazine, Zuiderlucht