BIG 3rd Episode

Superamas is known to make elegant, crafted and precise performances mixing humour and intelligent commentary on society, installation art and modern media technology. With the production BIG 3rd episode (happy/end) the company ends it trilogy about capitalism, show-biz and the socially accepted image of happiness. And as in the two previous episodes of the (sit-com?) series BIG with the subtitles reality show/artificial intelligence and show/business - they take a closer look at what we think we know, hater, love or understand of the ever present popular culture and surface society surrounding it.

Happiness. The show is subtitled Happy/End. And as Jacques Derrida would say: '...at the end, we know, all this will end very badly! There is no way to reach the absolute good. Presence is always divided, split...' and even though one sells to us the dream of a possible happiness, thank god, we won't make it! Because 'It would be death, the absolute good would be identical with death!'

BIG 3rd episode has this bitter taste of failure and death. Everything looks perfect, though: the show is sort of smart and funny; the women on stage are beautiful, healthy and sexy; the men are mean and cynical; the dialogs perfectly fit the image of a clever provocative Superamas' entertaining program.

But by using the strategies of repetition and decontextualisation Superamas digs under the surface of its representations. And what Superamas digs out is the power of this desire for happiness and at the same time its total vanity. These strategies applied to this topic create an auto-reflexive thinking process which leads the spectator to reflect its own parkour through the piece and its own expectations of happiness... and it occurs that those expectations are predictable and predicted.

Our more intimate desires are already calculated by social statistics and marketing. Therefore individual behaviour is nothing else than a copy of a cliché. The modern vaudeville is statistics!

Superamas has been called masters of cynicism. Few companies make so cool and calculating theatre, and this, too, provokes many. What provokes is the way the form relates to the content. The Superamas productions are about surface and as a consequence, they become superficial - and politically incorrect. Without trace of shame, but with a healthy helping of humour and self-criticism on behalf of performing arts, they corrupt art with mass culture.

BIG 3rd episode (happy/end) is, among other things, a commentary on theatre as an art form, the way it often is presented, as hopelessly old-fashioned in comparison with modern electronic media. References to, and loans from, the most polished and commercial parts of 'the creative industry' make a pillar in the work of Superamas. The nameless individuals behind the collective do not believe in opuses and originality, but in research and production. An hour in the world of Superamas is like the perfect party: It is comfortable and non-committing, slick and calculated, until you are confronted with your own head. Only then the bitter aftertaste comes.

Sources:

BIT Teatergarasjen,  from the performance program.

BIT Teatergarasjen, autumn program 2007. 09.07.2010: http://www.bit-teatergarasjen.no -archive