De dieren is a playful requiem for dying ecosystems and a failing human image. The performance takes you to the zoo, the place par excellence where the human project takes shape. The zoo is a performative space where animals have to increase their otherness so that humans can confirm themselves - by looking at the animals. In this zoo, the boundaries between humans and animals are blurred. In De dieren it is unclear who is performing for whom.
director
Geert Belpaeme
dramaturge
Bauke Lievens
actors
Greet Jacobs & Sophia Bauer
light design
Geert Vanoorlé
stage design
Geert Vanoorlé, Geeraard Respeel & Jens Burez
sound design
Esther Venrooy & Jürgen De Blonde
masks
Viktor Leestmans
artistic advice
Mats Van Herreweghe
with thanks to
Oxana Sankova, Lien Wildemeersch
producer
l’hommmm
co-producer
Vooruit
with support from
de Vlaamse Overheid, Cultuur Gent, Buda, De Grote Post, C-Takt & KAAP
“Animals are always the observed. The fact that they can observe us has lost all significance.”
- John Berger, Why Look at Animals?
In this piece Geert Belpaeme asks us about being human, the environment, citizenship and power. He does so through the eyes of animals: age-old silent witnesses of who or what humans are but also of what language does and the harm it can cause. They bear witness to the human gaze that turns everything that exists outside itself into an object, even something to be consumed. But what if animals and things stared back at us?
Two of the actors will be appearing several times at nona this season. Besides Lien Wildemeersch, we recognise Greet Jacobs (who can also be seen on 20 February in Weird Tales by KRAPP) and Oxana Sankova (who will be presenting her own play I forgot at nona on 6 November).
De dieren is simultaneously reminiscent of the obnoxiousness of Kafka’s Trial and the irresolvable trial of the war criminal Adolf Eichmann. But watch out: this time we are all in the dock.
