Who Wants to Be Perfect Anyway!

With the production "A perfect person" (in English), Gabel Eiben made his second guest appearance at the Gold & Pech Theater in Höf near Eggersdorf, following his performance with the "Nature Theater of Oklahoma".

If you drive over the Ries in Graz – and every local knows which little hill is meant – then, once back on level ground, you reach a former inn on your left. The large sign reading "Cafe Marie" gives no hint that the same building has also housed a theatre for about a year now. And one that, with around 100 seats and the requisite stage technology, is professionally equipped at that. The Gold & Pech Theater is run by Jula Zangger as a year-round venue. And as if that weren't astonishing enough, the programme on offer there is anything but easy-peasy fare.

With "A perfect person", which can be seen there, Gabel Eiben – a Norwegian dancer, actor and writer – has created a two-hander that comes with a particular challenge for the performers. Together with Ross Cowan, he jogged for almost an hour and a half during the performance along a stretch of coastline in a Norwegian town.

Or so it appears, at least. With a video, Luka Curk created a stage design in which the two men could be watched engaging in an intense exchange of ideas along their running route, dodging people coming towards them or turning to look after them, and allowing themselves only a single short breather.

Every thinking, empathetic person knows them: self-doubts. Unless you happen to have a narcissist as your conversation partner, you know how readily one drifts into rhetorical loops among friends. They revolve around whether and what one is still allowed to do these days – and above all, whether one is good enough for whatever it is one does in life. This conversational template was the starting point for the text, which meandered around this subject entirely from the perspective of the two actors. Often, though, with points of reference to "normal people", to use the term employed on stage.

"I want to eliminate things from my life that stop me from being productive," Ross explained after a few moments of running. The counter that came immediately from Gabel – "I'm glad to always do the wrong thing" – instantly tempted one to pin down the two men's roles. In Austria, double acts have, since Ernst Waldbrunn and Karl Farkas, also carried the subtext of "the clever one and the fool". With these two performers, however, it became apparent over the course of the show that this division didn't hold. Sometimes it was the one, sometimes the other with whom you had the feeling of witnessing a moment of insight.

That actors these days have to stay in shape in order to hold their own on stage was only one of the topics addressed, only to arrive immediately afterwards at the realisation that we are in "deep shit". Because everything that is drummed into us about what to do and what not to do ultimately only plays into the hands of the rich.

Also raised was the question of whether it is possible, alongside their profession, to be a good, caring father. Alongside serious topics of conversation, however, there was also the highly amusing observation that in close-up film shots the eyebrows should do the talking – since they are the equivalent of the arms, which of course can't be used. What may read here like an inconsequential list of topics discussed among colleagues may indeed be taken as such, for verbal exchange for its own sake was part of the well-conceived concept.

As long as you are talking, you are not mute. And as long as you also try to understand the other person's opposing position, you remain connected. These insights, familiar to us from our everyday lives, actually require no further explanation. And yet a conversation like the one between Ross and Gabel no longer seems to be an everyday occurrence. An exchange of ideas that goes beyond the everyday has become rare.

Letting contradictions stand, perhaps even acknowledging them, rarer still. The longer the two men talked about the burdens and joys of life, the more clearly one could perceive that their wishes and dreams lay very close together. Playing good roles, achieving a degree of fame – like Hugh Jackman, Tom Cruise or indeed Taylor Swift – would be something other than earning a living as a mascot or a clown.

As socially desirable as Ross's remarks on self-optimisation sound at the beginning, so wonderfully crumbled do they appear by the end of the performance. The realisation of not being perfect and of having done things that don't fit the economisation of the self – that realisation does one good. Not only the performers, but above all the audience.

The performance, well worth seeing and, above all, well worth discussing afterwards, will be shown twice more at the Gold & Pech Theater: