Michael Cox reviews an essential and moving performance.
What is theatre? It is a question I ask my college students every year. While many think it’s a trick, I am genuine in my enquiry: what counts as theatre?
Nigamon/Tunai could have been classified in many ways. Dance? Yes, with its stylised movements executed by the performers. Music? Again, yes—the production relies on a mixture of live and recorded soundscapes and rhythms. As it is beautiful to experience, and as it makes use of natural objects and props, could it even be classed as an exhibition of sorts?
But theatre is the right place for it to sit, as far as classification goes. It lacks Aristotelian requirements of character and plot, even if themes are revealed during this 90-minute meditation on ritual and the spiritual lives of American indigenous people—and the price they pay for the world’s exploitation of natural resources that were, at one time, abundant.
Nigamon/Tunai is not about story but instead about experience. It is a production one should enter with all forms of tech turned off and hearts opened. It is about connecting with a ritual that might be foreign to most Western lives but critical to generations of another people.
Are we witnessing an exhibition and sharing of these rituals? Or, as the West buries its head in denial about the effects of climate change and the cost of ripping precious resources from the earth, is Nigamon/Tunai indeed a funeral for these traditions of spiritual guidance and communion?
Only time will tell. Nevertheless, Nigamon/Tunai is an experience worth having—more as a form of honouring the spiritual and less about the demand for entertainment.
Nigamon/Tunai is part of this year’s Edinburgh International Festival. It performs at The Studio until August 18, 2024.
Photo by Andrew Perry.
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