David Weber-Krebs: Beyond waiting

Winnie Love

David Weber-Krebs, This performance

“This performance is about to begin.”

Spoken in a professional, perfectly modulated female voice, in the dark of an empty stage, again and again: “This performance is about to….” And so it goes on announcing, raising our expectations. There are so many things This performance is about to do. The endlessness of possibilities is made apparent. Our audience expectations begin to fade. This performance will not, as announced so authoritatively, begin to get faster. As each possibility is stated, we inhabit the expectation. The stage is an arena within which slowly illuminated emptiness appears as a metaphysical, metaphorical focus. Collectively and as individuals, we have a stage on which to place possibilities from the personal to the limitless—a meta-everyman future fable.

The most minimal of interventions: a drip from above, then a second, becoming puddles, creeping shapes for us to follow. After a long time and many more announcements the light has visibly faded. I become aware of a building sound, interfering with the reverie induced by those infinite repetitive phases. My body absorbs frequencies, like anxiety affecting me physiologically. There is a smell of burning, a light appearing off to the right, in its beam smoke that looks like mist.

The announcements have stopped!

Amazingly, after all that expectation and emptiness, a woman (Jennifer Minetti) walks onto our space, adopts a stance, facing us, staring into the light. Her presence embodies a state beyond any expectations of that phrase: “This performance is about to be.” Held in her watery eyes, her full figure, the very phenomenon of this mature woman, is the actual, the real, for all it’s worth.

She moves to the front of the stage and turns to stare, along with us, back at the empty stage. Returning centrestage, she throws herself to the floor, her body juddering.

This performance ends with an existential image of the woman walking into the shadow pulling her black-lined top (an infinite misery jumper?) over her head.

This performance is crafted, minimal, complex and simple. Is David Weber-Krebs a reincarnation of Beckett, come back to make us wait some more?

This performance, David Weber-Krebs, Wickham Theatre, Feb 2

RealTime issue #0 pg.

© Winnie Love; for permission to reproduce apply to [email protected]

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