Neverland

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  • A discussion performance
  • 2006

Events

    • 22 September 2007
      • zeitraumexit, Mannheim
      • Festival "Wunder der Prärie"
    • 10 + 11 February 2007
      • Parnassos, Utrecht (NL)

4 Performers, a VJ and a soundtechnician transform the stage into a scene of discussion. The subject is: «the political order in the Netherlands should be replaced by anarchy».

Everyone brings along his world view, his language, his opinion: in which society do I want to live? How do I want to live? And how should the world, I want to live in, be? The topic is to be negotiated, deconstructed and dismembered together. But what does it actually mean: anarchy? The question is being directed to the audience.

"Neverland" is a peformance that explores discussion in the context of theatricality and brings it on stage in the form of a «discussionperformance». It is also the attempt of a culmination of the so called post-dramatic theatre: abdication of a plot, dissolution of autonomous positions of subjectivity, dissolution of a narrative or directing authority, confrontation of the audience with an open system, performativity.

"Neverland" is meant to be an experiment, which focuses theatre to a specific core: the scene in which communication and social community is being negotiated.

"Neverland" is a mix of sampled, rehearsed discussion elements and parts in which the discussion is being opened to the audience. In these phases spaces of insecurity and contingency are being created. They correspond to social ready-mades in the microcosmos of the theatre space and are pure performativity. The product is what is being created in the moment. Here the discussion is the synthesis of all persons who are present and their participation, be it expressed by speaking or by remainig silent. No way of communication, not even the refusal of communication, is supposed to be excluded. The spectator becomes a co-author. He becomes a performer.

"Neverland" is a text that is being written in the encounter of spectators and performers. The text is open. Thus on a level of structure and form the content of the discussion is to be questioned: what kind of text is being created if its authorship is multiple?

"Neverland" is thereby at the same time the attempt of a performative experiment in which the political model of democracy is put to disposition and at the same time questioned by its own means of cacophony and silence. Here every word, every sentence, every formulated opinion is an element that flows into the text of the performance. This text is being written anew from performance to performance.

Conceived, directed and designed by
Boris Nikitin, Marcel Schwald
Performers, texts
Lot Broos, Sacha Janatti, Soula Notos, Anka Pajor, Ambroise Vardon, Ruud van der Zalm
Technical director
Lot Broos
Dramaturgy
Bregtje Radstake