Andrea Salustri is a master of manipulation
The Italian contemporary circus artist on his polystyrene performance Materia, which runs as part of London International Mime Festival next week.
Hello, and welcome to the The Crush Bar, a weekly newsletter about theatre written by me, Fergus Morgan.
This is one of The Crush Bar’s occasional international issues - remember Dublin’s Dan Colley back in October? - and features a chat with Andrea Salustri, a Berlin-based Italian contemporary circus artist, whose show Materia was a hit at the Edinburgh Fringe last summer, and now arrives at Jacksons Lane as part of London International Mime Festival.
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That’s all for now. More from me at the bottom, but first: Andrea Salustri!
London International Mime Festival returns in fully-fledged form for the first time since 2020 next week, with fifteen shows running at eight venues over three weeks – including Materia, the second show from 34-year-old, Berlin-based, Italian contemporary circus artist Andrea Salustri.
It is an extraordinary piece of visual performance. Returning to the UK after a successful stint at the Edinburgh Fringe last summer, it essentially involves Salustri exploring the physical and sonic possibilities of polystyrene. Polystyrene planets float above fans. Polystyrene sheets stagger upright. Polystyrene pellets spiral into tornadoes. It is playtime with plastic, a Styrofoam spectacle – and it originated as a result of Salustri’s open-minded, opportunistic approach to making work.
“I enter a studio or a rehearsal space empty-handed, and look around for objects or materials that have lots of movement and acoustic possibilities” Salustri explains. “One studio I worked in was still under construction, and there was lots of scrap polystyrene lying around. I started experimenting with it, and found it an endless source of inspiration. Soon, I went to the hardware store for more.”
There is more going on here than Salustri simply performing with packaging, though. As critics at the Edinburgh Fringe observed, Materia is more like a magic trick: a playful, perplexing production, in which Salustri somehow spins his anthropomorphic experimentation with polystyrene into something else entirely - something philosophically provocative, something that invites audience interpretation.
“I do not push stories or define meaning with my work,” Salustri says. “I am more interested in shaping images and allowing the audience to attach their own meaning to them. The show follows the material. I manipulate it. I make sounds with it. But I do not force meaning onto it.”
The show does not stop at the curtain call, either. After a performance run of Materia, Salustri collects all the polystyrene he has used and transports it back to Berlin. Some of it he transforms into artworks, an exhibition of which, entitled Toxic Landscapes, then tours with the show. The rest is fed to plastic-digesting “super-worms”, which live in a composter Salustri keeps in his studio. “These worms live on a diet of solely polystyrene,” he says. “They help make the show more sustainable.”
“The show follows the material. I manipulate it. I make sounds with it. But I do not force meaning onto it…”
Born and raised in Rome, Salustri fell in love with contemporary circus – and particularly with contact juggling and fire manipulation – as a teenager. He encountered it on a high school exchange trip to the United States, then started practicing and performing himself when he returned to Italy. “I found this little community of performers,” he remembers. “We would train under the Coliseum.”
Salustri went on to study philosophy at Rome’s prestigious La Sapienza University, performing as a street artist to earn some money on the side. “Performing on the street is not like performing anywhere else,” he says. “It can be brutal. People just walk away from you if they are not interested. But you can make extremely special connections with audiences, too. I learned a lot on the street.”
After graduating from La Sapienza University in 2013, Salustri did something surprising: he moved to Berlin to study contemporary dance at Tanzfabrik Berlin. “Berlin was more affordable, which was a big plus for a broke philosophy student,” he says. “It had an interesting circus scene, too, and I loved the diversity. But I had never danced before in my life. I didn’t even know what to wear to the audition. There were all these ballerinas stretching, and me. I just improvised something funny.”
Somehow, it worked. Salustri spent ten months training at Tanzfabrik Berlin, then went on to study dance and choreography at HZT Berlin, where he started making shows. His first, As Long As It Burns, was a fifteen minute outdoor exploration of fire, and of humanity’s obsession with it. “For that, I experimented with a lot of combustion methods,” Salustri remembers. “I did a lot of dangerous experiments. Some of them failed horribly. I made a small show from the ones that worked.”
Materia is Salustri’s second show. He created it in collaboration with lighting designer Michele Piazzi, sound designer Federico Coderoni, and “a series of creative advisors” – and with the support of Circus Next, an EU-funded initiative dedicated to developing contemporary circus, involving thirty partner organisations in seventeen countries. Through Circus Next, Salustri developed his show through a series of residencies across Europe, eventually arriving at the Edinburgh Fringe last year.
“Edinburgh was a great experience, but artistically quite a humbling one,” Salustri reflects. “Usually, when you go to a festival, you get a dressing room, technicians and plenty of time to prepare. At Edinburgh, you have to make it work without any of that. It was inspiring but it was overwhelming.”
Alongside his solo shows, Salustri has several other strands of activity. He was assistant choreographer to his mentor Jérôme Thomas – the French father of contemporary juggling – on his 2018 show Magnétic. He is making a new sound installation with Coderoni called Invisible, which will see music automatically generated via data from air pollution sensors spread across the world. And Materia is one of several shows involved with The Sphere, a non-hierarchical European funding platform for circus involving cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. But, before that, LIMF.
“I haven’t been to the London International Mime Festival before, so I am really excited,” Salustri says. “I feel extremely lucky and privileged to be able to sustain myself by doing what I like and find interesting. All I want to do is to keep exploring the world through my work, and keep discovering.”
What do you want to do?
My knowledge of Europe’s contemporary circus scene is still very limited. I want to expand my knowledge of that by bringing Materia, and any future shows, to as many new places as possible.
What support do you need to get there?
I’m currently looking for support for new creations with new materials. I am always excited to encounter more organisations and individuals to share my work with.
How can people find out more about you?
People can come and see Materia at Jacksons Lane from Thursday 19 January until Sunday 22 January. They can find me on social media and on my website, too.
That’s it for now. As of next week, things are going to look a bit different in this newsletter for a while, as VAULT Festival returns to London. There are going to be weekly picks of shows to see, plus in-depth interviews with some of the artists and companies performing.
One final reminder about the various ways you can support this newsletter: you can share it with anyone you think might be interested, you can become a paid subscriber using the button at the top, or you can get in touch with me about using it for promotional purposes.
That’s all. Thanks for reading. If you want to get in touch for any reason, just reply to this email or contact me via Twitter - I’m @FergusMorgan. See you in a week!
Fergus