Donibane Garazi: Antso Azkarra, Rambunctious Rural Revelry in Pais Basque
Antso Azkarra was certainly the most striking performance piece I saw, quite literally, with the clang of swords against an otherwise enchanting town. In the Iparralde (the French Baque Country) town of Donibane Garazi (also know as Saint Jean Pied de Port), there is an annual summer festival (Fetes) of food, music, pelota, dancing, and performance! This festival is not frequented by foreigners, but the town sure is as it is the start of the Camino de Santiago. It is an interesting transitional place, and as one of my last nights in the Basque Country, it would likely serve a similar transitory function.
I had been invited to this festival by Eneritz, the physical theatre artist I had met earlier in Lekeitio. A similar all day event to Musculdy, when the sun finally set, hundreds crowded into a repurposed marketplace with hay bales, benches, and children’s benches stacked the whole way through. We sat in the very front, on a toddler’s bench about 10 inches off the ground. Our poor knees. The show began with a clamor, as Antso, the Basque name for Sancho, A Navarrese king who fought in the Crusades, stormed into the theatre teeth bared and sword drawn. This performance would go on to be the most brutal, the most aggressive, the most outlandish thing I would ever see on stage. These actors embodied the ferocity of warriors as we all sat in this crowded, sweltering barn— the sweat and the spit of the actors spewing onto the audience. The play opened with a fight scene in which real swords were being smacked and human beings were being tossed into hay bales. I sat in shock, I knew I was safe, but certainly the display I was watching would never pass the safety standards I knew of in the American Theatre. Even so, no fear crossed the audience’s mind as their level of engagement, of excitement, roared with every blow from this ancient story of violence.
The play was written by Anton Luku, often dubbed the Shakespeare of the Basque Country, who writes in a poetic, lyrical Basque verse and creates epics as dramatic and fearful as Shakespeare’s most heart wrenching tragedy or dastardly history. This play carried forth as an epic by every definition of the word, following the long drawn out battle, human actors splayed upon the torn hay floor, the kingly character stepped onto the defeated enemies, not over, literally walking on top of them. Nothing was being faked in this rural spectacle. When the opening scene finally closed, I could not believe my eyes as the squished actor, the defeated moor, got up and continued performing, snapping back out of death into a breathing character. The one who was stepped on the most came back later as a jester, and at one point as Pablo Picasso. He was a mad character, and as he painted, squeezed globs of oil paint all over the market floor, the set, the other actor’s costumes and into the audience (who seemed none the wiser or upset by its staining qualities). Truly, all parties seemed equally engaged and satisfied with their involvement in the manic performance elements before my eyes.
As the violence diminished, the plot began to take shape, the courtly scenes were extravagant against the hay bales, and still the humor pervaded the text. The classical ties (to Basque tradition) were embodied by Sorginak (the witch) and a man dressed in full bear pelt, who walked along the stage warning the king to beware their omens. At the very end of the play, the death of the great king was finished with rapturous applause, as a four piece musical ensemble jumped from out of the hay-- made up of the actors, the bear himself playing the drums! The evening finished with thunderous applause, as everyone ran into the market courtyard for more music, talo (Basque street food of tortilla, chorizo, and sheep milk cheese), and to dance the jota.
This spectacle was not quite like the Pastorale, the emphasis of classicism on stage was completely stripped away. This was the bawdy, raunchy, classless theatre that I had been imagining however. A meeting point for people of all walks of the Basque Country to gather, to laugh, to sing along in a show that pitted heroic legends of mythological proportions against one another, in what was otherwise a very grounded, down-to-earth portrayal, with many inside jokes and contemporary political commentary snuck underneath the language.
