Sun, sea, beach and culture … a delightful, summer mix. The Theater Aan Zee festival remains vibrant, stimulating and topical, evolving with the times. It reaches more lovers of diverse performing arts each year. The counter stood at 180,000 visitors after the event, an absolute record.
This year, curator and artistic jack-of-all-trades Lucas De Man chose 'commitment' as a more layered and overarching theme during the 23rd edition. He managed to bring different voices and perspectives together under the motto 'It's up to you, me, us'. Two years ago there was some commotion because the festival was said to be too white. This year, quite a few people of color are on stage. Unfortunately, this does not translate to the audience, with a few exceptions.
Theater Aan Zee is close to De Man's heart. With this curatorship, he is taking on the role for the eighth time. In previous editions he created installations and performances and was jury chairman. #TAZ19 broadcasts a frequency that both young and old can perceive. No pigeonholing or isolationism then, but virtually all performing arts are covered in a well-balanced program. A feast for the senses with humor, refinement and powerful statements alike. Oostende offers a sea of possibilities in terms of performance spaces. Small and large companies navigate like ships through the city. For everything, theater, dance, music, there is a place. And everything falls into place: an impressive overall picture. Choosing is winning. From the great diversity of performances, we selected ten.
MonologueSimone Milsdochter
'What do you think about western civilization?' 'I think it would be a good idea' (CC DGP-Studio 1, Monday 5/8)
A one woman-performance of the purest caliber, written and performed by Simone Milsdochter. She wrote the gripping text together with Wallace Shawn and operates the buttons for the music during the performance (Ludwig Van Beethoven and Frederik Van de Moortel).
There is anger and fear in the air. In this monologue she dissects today's world: morality, sectarianism, rich versus poor, happiness versus misery. The text is born on the tongue of the performer. Contradictory things are embraced simultaneously in a cognitive dissonance. Is Western civilization a mistake? But then we would have been deprived of books, theater, visual arts and music … By a stroke of fate we belong to the lucky ones, the strong versus the weak. The confrontational monologue is interwoven with music by Beethoven and provides striking accents. This performance, which sits somewhere between a lecture and a performance, is fairly heavy going but ends on a positive note: the quantitative accumulation will eventually lead to a qualitative shift. Hopefully!
Music TheaterVictoria Deluxe/Kopergieterij and Eden-Charleroi
Avond Van Hoop (Loods NMBS, Monday 5/8)
For five evenings, curator Lucas De Man invited a theater company to shape an Evening of Hope and expose dominant power relations in our society.
The aforementioned companies joined forces for a performance with young people from completely different backgrounds, with roots in Congo, Morocco, Angola, Spain and also Belgians. Also second generations, born here, who experience discrimination as a daily reality. They all had a lot of abuse hurled at them. To a punchy beat, the performers enter diagonally from stage left and right and step to the center of the stage. In their clumsy way of walking you can see that these are not trained actors. The performance is constructed in the most simplistic way, but that is also its strength. Each performer gets a few minutes center stage to tell, in an alphabet of remembrance and prosaic construction, an experience that stayed with them. Being misunderstood, hypocrisy, society's inconsistency left marks on their souls. The performer with Congolese roots proves to be a natural talent: a born storyteller with a wonderful sense of timing, who in 1-2-3 plays the audience and involves them in interaction in his story. Stories that are anything but hopeful. In their texts lies a desire for recognition and freedom. Through the shift in perspective: from solo to group moments with song and dance, the whole gains depth and cohesion and gets under your skin. Classical music provides rest points in floating, dancing moments that suddenly shift into sprightly, compressed energy. Each performer is an individual thread, which together form a performing whole. A performance with a strong vibration, an energetic feeling that despite all the pain it can still work out and … that's where hope arises.
Apéro Poetry (Vrijstaat O, Tuesday 6/8)Warre Borgmans and Lies Van Gasse
It is a pleasant way to start the day with a refreshing dose of poetry. Carl Destrycker, director of Poëziecentrum and editor-in-chief of Poëziekrant, converses with a few well-known people and authors about what poetry means to them. We chose actor Warre Borgmans. Poetry must offer him comfort in the broadest sense of the word. In turn, he invited poet/visual artist Lies Van Gasse. She won the prize of the province of Oost-Vlaanderen for her collection Brak de Waterdrager and likes to combine word and image in her work. Debut author Gerda Blees was also introduced to the audience. Both performed from their work. I must say: it sounded quite monotonous. One of the few authors who can do that with verve is Tom Lanoye. When Warre Borgmans recites a range of poetry, ranging from cerebral, sad to hilarious, the audience hangs on his every word.TheaterComp. Marius
Les Enfants du Paradis (Koninklijke Villa, Tuesday 6/8)
Comp. Marius, known for his unconventional choices, premiered Les Enfants du Paradis on August 4, based on the film script of the same name by Jacques Prévert from 1943. The text focuses on love and playing and offers plenty of scope for acting. One woman and four men: a mime artist, an actor, a criminal and a stinking rich count. They all are at her feet but only one wins her heart. There are both wordless acts and meaningful dialogue, there is both slapstick and tragedy. At least, that's what the brochure says, but it comes across only sporadically. Everything takes place in a strange Ensor-like world with nighttime cafés full of strange figures from the theater, mime and carnival world.
We arrive on Tuesday, August 6. Not under the easiest circumstances for the actors, there is a strong wind, the surf and screaming seagulls cause noise disturbance. It requires a lot of vocal power from the actors. The audience sits on a grandstand with a view of the sea and another small grandstand, part of the set. Between them is the actors' playing field. The mechanisms of theater are completely unraveled. The performance gains extra dimension through the gliding of shadows versus the increasing intensity of the heavy lamps. The rays narrow and gain direction so that things gain relief. Everything becomes sharper: black/white. Different generations share the stage: Waas Gramser, Kris Van Trier, Koen Van Impe, Frank Dierens, Clara Cleymans, Lisah Addeaga, Bert Haelvoet and Ray Aernouts. The performance starts promisingly, but then seriously goes off the rails. It's like a balloon that escapes from your hand and empties in turbulent patterns. Maintaining two and a half hours of such burlesque acting is a feat of magic. For some spectators it went down the wrong way and they demonstratively dropped out. Kill your darlings. Shorten the performance by half an hour and the whole thing becomes more manageable. I also got furious about the sloppy way Bert Haelvoet speaks, in a leading role. His ij and a sounds are pure dialect, while the rest of the cast uses beautiful language with Koen Van Impe leading the way. As a bonus that evening was a beautiful sunset. In the literal sense of the word: theater at sea.
Stichting Nieuwe HeldenYes, Please! LIVE (Atelier Klein verhaal, Wednesday 7/8)
This is part of a study. What does science say about fantasies, erotic fantasies at that. The Nieuwe Helden have been asking people in the Netherlands and Flanders this question for more than a year now. Why? Because many people are ashamed of their own fantasies and that is sad. Researcher Charlotte van der Meer and Rashif El Kaoui take the audience through their research. What erotic stories does the audience want to hear? Quite an oddball in the festival landscape.Music TheaterHet Nieuwstedelijk
Gesprek met de regen (CC DGP, Wednesday 7/8)
Director, author and house director Stijn Devillé of Het Nieuwstedelijk city theater of Leuven, Hasselt and Genk describes a compelling experience in Gesprek met de regen. He writes down the emotions after a near-death experience with his daughter as a kind of catharsis. Years ago they found their six-year-old daughter lifeless at the bottom of the stairs. The parents resuscitate her and can, by a miracle, bring her back to life.
In a murky process of mourning and letting go, two people, man and woman, are trapped in a downward spiral of grief that pulls them into a bottomless pit. They have moved abroad, even as far as possible, Singapore, because they can no longer live in the house where the accident happened. They arrive there in the middle of the monsoon. The woman has an important position as CEO in a nanotechnology company. Hard work is her escape route. He is a writer and has suffered from writer's block since the death of his daughter Hanna. The emptiness consumes him.
The large glass window of their apartment on the foreground reflects the audience. Behind every façade lies a story. In the back left of the stage sit the musicians with their instruments: partly electronic music, supplemented with violin, guitar, xylophone and trombone. They weave a web, like fine filigree, thin and floating, around the emotional state of man and woman. Tom Van Bauwel plays the role of his life as the loving, comforting man for his wife who has completely lost her way. While he himself struggles with his immense grief. Two lonely souls. They play hide-and-seek behind their laptop. A colorful LED strip on the back wall stands in stark contrast to the sadness of man and woman. Numbed by grief, he circles the emptiness and wanders through the city. The rain falls in buckets from the sky. As a kind of sign from the afterlife, he thinks he hears his daughter's voice through the sound of the rain. The e-Media Research lab at KU Leuven developed a kind of rain printer. His daughter's words flash through the rain curtain. A clever piece of technology. The magic and poetry of it renders one silent. The father clings to this transcendent phenomenon. He wants to share it with his wife too, but as a scientist she remains down to earth. In the end, the grief bursts out like an eruption of reproaches and self-reproaches. They are startled by each other's deep-rooted and pent-up emotion. Together with the downpour that stops, their grief slowly fades away. The realization: they must continue living their lives. Sara Vertongen too, as the steely CEO but distraught mother, plays the duality very convincingly. Dissecting such a subject down to the bone without being maudlin is top-notch writing, directing and acting. Gesprek met de regen is a gem of a performance, so moving and beautiful that it hurts.
Music/stand-up comedyB.O.X/Martha!tentatief
Lulletje (Loods NMBS, Thursday 8/8)
A strange mixture with ingredients: stand-up comedy in the language of the City, baroque music played by harp, sitar and oboe and a couple of video screens of different sizes projecting YouTube videos of idiotic, hilarious Chinese customs. To be honest, I found those the most fun of all. The musicians, too, under the direction of Pieter Theunis of Baroque Orchestra X, a collective that blends contemporary music with the richness of baroque sound, provide beautiful intermezzos. With the help of classical instruments, they break down the sound barrier between old and new, pop and classical.
The hyped-up story by Johan Petit about his childhood friends, football and traffic adventures could barely bring a smile to my face. Les goûts en les couleurs, as they say …
TheaterCompagnie Cecilia
De broers Geboers (CC DGP, Thursday 8/8)
Arne Sierens is often called the 'producer of contemporary melodrama, of the grotesque, that delightful mix of high and low, of kitsch and art'. Popular and enthusiastic spectacles such as Ensor, Lacrima, Zingarate and Heilig Hart reached a wide audience.
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The premiere of De broers Geboers dates back twenty years ago, but this production has lost none of its power: raw and intense, but also poignant. With bravura, the entire cast: Wouter Bruneel, Sebastien Dewaele, Marijke Pinoy, Tom Ternest and Wim Willaert deliver the text in a juicy West-Flemish idiom. The set design by Guido Vrolix helps the actors emphasize the uncomfortable situations even more. Banal conversations alternate with venomous discussions, with the characters barking and growling at each other like dogs. Fireworks crackle from every pore of theirs. De broers Geboers: passionate, witty and biting.
TheaterRataplan
Een Jihad van Liefde (CC DGP, Friday 9/8)
When Mohammed El Bachiri sent these words out to the world after the attack in Maalbeek, in which he lost his beloved wife and was left with three small children, everyone was taken aback. Struck speechless by such altruism. After the book Jihad of love, a manifesto for love and humanity (recorded by David Van Reybrouck) he was in the spotlight for a while. But the world moves on. The ever-recurring list of disasters, accidents and wars shifts the focus. Mohammed El Bachiri was left alone with his grief, the emptiness, the care for his children who struggle with trauma. The theatrical performance continues where the book ends in a direction and text adaptation by Hans van Cauwenberghe. Like any partner left behind after a death, he is struggling, must despite his helplessness and despair stand up for the children. As a foothold, he looks back on his first meeting with his wife. In a kind of inner dialogues, she encourages him to continue. The courage not to give up. To care for his house, the children and for himself. The actors Rashid El Kaoui and Amara Reta wrap the spectator tightly in the silky soft dark fabric of their voices and the human survival instinct.
All the performances fit perfectly into the theme 'It is up to you, me, us' like the swelling and shrinking flow of tide and ebb. Next year, God willing, I will be at the appointment again. The new curator is already known. That will be Caroline Pauwels, professor of communication sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and rector of the university since September 2016. The overarching theme? 'Amor mundi'. The belief that people are inextricably linked to nature and need each other to become human.
- WHAT: Theater Aan Zee
- WHO: Simone Milsdochter, Victoria Deluxe/Kopergieterij and Eden-Charleroi, Warre Borgmans, Lies Van Gasse, Carl Destrycker, Gerda Blees, Comp.Marius, Stichting Nieuwe Helden, Nieuwstedelijk, B.O.X./Martha!tentief, Compagnie Cecilia, Rashid El Kaoui and Amara Reta
- WHERE: various locations in Oostende
- WHEN: Wednesday 31 July to Saturday 10 August 2019
- WEBSITE: https://theateraanzee.be/
- PHOTOS: © Kathie Danneels | Marcia van der Zwan | Maarten Geukens | Ilse Philips | Katrijn Van Giel | Kurt Van der Elst | Karolina Maruszak