“…Let's sit and see how good they are: the clown, the dancer, the acrobat. Let's just enjoy it for a while. When they are finished, it will be our turn. Let's do something. Let's do something we have never done before. Something we couldn't do on our own. Something all together. A heroic act. Something historic. Something to be proud of… Is there a story for all of us together? Is there a voice to tell this story?”
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On stage, there is a huge shiny black screen that covers the width of the audience. At first, the screen hangs in the back of the space, and during 35 minutes, it moves slowly towards the audience, almost unnoticeably. The text that is projected is meticulously manipulated, with subtle rhythmical and graphical changes. For WeUsAll, the core question was whether there is (still) an identification of the individual with a collective ‘we’; and if there is, in which way is or can this ‘we’ be active nowadays. The text proposes a poetic, mental journey in the first person plural, through shared stories, myths and history. ‘WE’ break down a wall, we undress, we run out of the theatre space into the park, we sing and march to music, we lie down entangled in the forest, we struggle through the desert… The individual autonomous gaze of the spectator changes between different degrees of interest and involvement. While ‘we’ stay seated in our comfortable spectator seat, ‘we’ are invited to live through crazy adventures proposed by the text. Now and then, the text projections get interrupted abruptly by a crowd of young, almost painfully enthusiastic circus-artists, who bring one magic trick after the other, slightly distorted. Their job is very clear: to entertain ‘us all.’ The black screen changes its function: as a background for the spectacle, as a mirror for the audience, as a projection surface for the text, and sometimes as an autonomous sculpture. When it stops right in front of the audience, it’s up to the spectator to continue the story, or not. |
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