KAMP The Space Until 17 Mar 2013 Review by Jamie Wright The Festival Centre’s Space Theatre is transformed once again, this time to allow for a miniature version of one of the most chilling sights in history – a World War II concentration camp – set up on the stage with the audience looking down upon it. The creation of Netherlands theatre company Hotel Modern, “Kamp” combines miniature buildings and puppets, video and sound – a combination of pre-recorded and live effects – to create a work that is hard to categorise; it’s at times it seems an installation, but there are also projected video scenes reminiscent of stop-motion animation – but the energy of the live performance gives it a power that a screen-only version would lack. Performers Maartje Van Den Brink, Menno Vroon and Trudi Klever move through the camp, puppeteering, rearranging the models and puppets and filming close-up scenes using handheld cameras which project the video onto a screen at the back of the space. Sound designer and operator Ruud Van Der Pluijm does an almost unbelievable job of seamlessly synching sounds with much of the action (some is created by the puppeteers on stage), as well as providing ambient sounds like wind and birdcalls, and a few snatches of music. Attention to detail in the miniatures is stunning: buildings, the infamous showers (with poison gas canisters), ovens, tiny vehicles (including trucks and a train), musical instruments and tools – there’s scene where a prisoner shovels tiny pieces of gravel – miniature barb-wire and lamp-posts. Also are the more distressing objects: discarded clothing and suitcases filled with personal items. Piles of bones. A single menorah. The three thousand tiny puppets each have features, albeit with only minor details, giving them a haunted appearance, suggestive of the works of Edvard Munch; expressions of horror, emptiness, hopelessness and confusion. The expression of the soldiers are different, but only slightly less empty; a reminder, perhaps, of what Holocaust writer Hannah Arendt dubbed ‘the banality of evil’. Enacted entirely without dialogue, it covers a day in the camp, with all the horror that entails, including the arrival of new prisoners via train, manual labour (the gates bears Auschwitz’s infamous slogan, Arbeit Macht Frei – ‘work sets you free’ – on a tiny illuminated sign), execution via poison gas showers and mealtime before the lights go out for the night. There are moments of brutality, which we suspect are coming but are shocking when they happen nonetheless – as is how they’re presented, which is as devoid of emotion as is possible. What happens is matter-of-fact, cold, impersonal – and all the more powerful for it. Which is what’s at the heart of this piece: it works because of the emotions evoked from the simple reality of the events depicted; there’s no need to add anything beyond the stark representation of this horrific chapter of history. It’s a challenge to present an original, creative work about the Holocaust that is able to convey the appropriate emotional tone – particularly in Australia, as opposed to Europe where, culturally, it retains much more of a presence – but “Kamp” achieves a resonance through its combination of astonishing technical achievement and understated storytelling, resulting in a powerful, provocative experience.