Photo © Phile Deprez

Saturday, September 20
New Riga Theatre, the Big Stage
Lacplesa Str. 25
7:00 PM
In Flemish (English translation)
Duration: 1h 10 min
Tickets: 3, 4, 5 Ls

Josse de Pauw
„üBUNG”
Bourgeois recipe for immortality

Theatre "Victoria", Belgium

Concept and idea: Josse de Pauw and Koen Gisen
Text and direction: Josse de Pauw
Assistants to the Director: Katrin Verlende (stage), Koen Gisen (movie)
Set and costumes: PYNOO
Camera and lights: Ruben Impens (movie)
Light: Philippe Digneffe (stage)
Sound: Robbie Boi (movie)
Sound: Eddie Latine (stage)
Soundscaping: Geroge van Dam & Kurt Verleure

With the support of the Government of Flanders

Theme composition & Musical coaching: George van Dam
Editing: Geert Bové (movie)
Production manager: Pat de Wit

Photo © Phile Deprez

Actors in the movie: Josse de Pauw, Carly Wijs, Dirk Roofthooft, Lies Pauwels, Bernard Van Eeghem, George van Dam
Actors on stage: Basiel Bogaerts, Romy Bollion, Louise Carpentier, Dimitri Dauwens, Stefaan De Rycke, Jasper Sturtewagen

Co-production: Het Net (Brugge)

Premiere: May, 2001
"üBUNG" has received the 2001 THEATERFESTIVAL PRICE for best production in Flanders and the Netherlands of the last season.

Performance
"How quiet it is this morning! And what a fuss there was last night. (Ria laughs). Everyone's unhappy about something. In life, my mother said, we all hold back our tears, our rage, our disappointments. And then one evening, with the help of alcohol, all these little things we're unhappy with come out... Maybe we need it to happen."(Extract from the play)

Photo © Phile Deprez

üBUNG means 'practice'. Director, writer and a leading actor on the Flemish scene Josse de Pauw has written a play featuring six children. They are watching a black-and-white film that is set in a splendid villa and centred on a sumptuous meal. Friends are having a party, but it is somewhat forced because they have to drink to be able to talk to each other and end up drinking too much, letting slip too many things. It is a chaotic display of petty concerns. On stage, the children are dressed just like the adults in the film - miniatures in colour of the grown-ups on screen. The film's sound has been turned right down and the children skilfully set about saying its lines and re-creating its sound effects. They have learnt by heart what the adults say and how they behave. Is this the kind of life that they are going to have to practise enduring or are they just ironically mimicking the film?

"I really had no idea what would come out of this synchronisation of live children and filmed adults in the end. In any case, I was not interested in controlling the emotions that would come out of it. I don't like putting the pressure on to have a particular outcome. It's true that, for me, the plays' heart beats in a little ballad, Voorbij (meaning over or finished), containing ridiculous rhymes murmured in Flemish by our amateur poet who has retired to the bathroom. Something beautiful passed by me, close to my head, brushing against my heart. I don't know what it was. I wanted to catch hold of it, but couldn't find anything. Suddenly I cried, gently, for a long time, until sleep came over me," - states director Josse de Pauw.
"üBUNG" is an experiment that integrates sound, movement, visual art, theatre and film, adults and children.

Director
The career of Josse De Pauw (1952) - actor, writer, theatre director and filmmaker - demonstrates an impressive artistic multiplicity. He is a founder member of the theatre group Radeis (1977) and the collective of artists known as Schaamte (which became the Kaaitheater). Usurpation (1985), the first theatre project he wrote to music by Peter Vermeersch, was a turning point in his career. He has acted with Orkater, with Jan Decorte in Het Stuk-Stuk (1986) and In ondertussendoor (1987), and with Jan Ritsema in Trio in mi-bémol (1991). He has worked both as an actor and writer with Peter Van Kraaij in Exiles (1993), the film Vinaya (1992), Ward Comblez, He do the life in different voices (1989), Het Kind van de Smid (1990) and Wolokolamsker Chaussée (1998). He produced De Meid slaan with Tom Jansen, before staging Trots vlees as part of 'Laagland', a working structure they created together. Composer and musician Peter Vermeersch has been his partner in Weg (1998) and Larf (2000). Josse De Pauw is known to the wider public from his roles in films by Dominique Deruddere (Crazy Love, Wait until Spring Bandini, Hombres Complicados) and Marc Didden (Sailors don't cry, 1988). His latest book, , was published at the end of 2000, and gives an insight into his life and work.

Links
Theatre "Victoria" homepage www.victoria.be

Press reviews

"The reflection of their act in the children's identical version is simply breathtaking. It is not its spectacular, circus-like aspect that so upsets you, as the fact that all the terrible things people do to each other can be analysed and copied by children. In this piece the gap between young and old is briefly erased and at that moment you come to the conclusion that there is no difference. Very briefly. That is what is so horrifying about it."

Carel Alphenaar, Het Volkskrant Magazine 12/05/01

 

"The contrasting dynamic between the editing and the close-ups of the cinema and the movement of bodies in the theatre is reminiscent of the Wooster Group. Here it is less a question of derision than of an attempt -and a successful one - to open up a new field to melodrama. Between the children's clear voices and the sordid outbursts filmed sits the poignant reality of disillusionment."

Jean-Louis Perrier, Le Monde 10/05/01

 

""(…) Ghent is also the home of "Victoria", which escapes standard definitions of its theatre: not a company, and more than a venue, it is an experimental lab of unpredictable approaches and often tentative results - a place of open doors and daring curiosity, that mixes work-in-progress presentations, site-specific productions and intimate lab programs."

Dragan Klaic, Theater (Yale, USA), May 02

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