Is humanity doomed?
Where can we save ourselves?
The Belgian artistic ensemble Ontroerend Goed explores these apocalyptic questions in “Are we not draw onward to new erA”.
The Wexner Center for the Arts, in association with the Columbus Association for the Performing Arts (CAPA), will present the Ohio premiere of the multimedia play Wednesday and Thursday at the Riffe Center.
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“It’s dangerous to say too much, but it feels more like a performance than a theatrical performance, with a dreamlike quality,” said Angelo Tijssens, one of the six company members performing the piece. on tour.
“My role is probably the most naive, almost childish. We talk, but there’s not a lot of text,” Tijssens said.
How is the theme of the climate crisis explored?
Moving from Adam and Eve to the apocalyptic future and back again, the 70-minute one-act depicts a world grappling with climate and warped by the quest for progress.
“When it comes to building and destroying, we’ve noticed that there’s one issue that’s becoming increasingly important: how we treat our planet. But that was not our starting point. We knew about global warming, but that is part of a more philosophical theme,” Tijssens said.
Offering hope or despair depending on how the piece is viewed, the company invites viewers to question whether the actions of humanity are reversible.
“I don’t want to sound like Dr Doom, but the fear and likelihood of civilizational collapse is almost inevitable,” Tijssens said, noting that the troupe took inspiration from “Collapse,” Jared Diamond’s book about extinct civilizations. was meant to make the play fun to watch.
“We felt when creating this piece that we needed humor and balance to tackle such heavy themes,” Tijssens said.
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How are Americans reacting to the tour?
The Belgian company’s visit here follows acclaimed performances in New York, Minneapolis and Ann Arbor, Michigan, with the North American tour concluding at the Push Festival in Vancouver, Canada.
In her recent New York Times review, critic Sarah Krulwich praised the “Belgian provocateurs” for their “allegory of climate destruction”.
“If the ideas are wonky, the craftsmanship is surprisingly robust,” Krulwich wrote. “The set works with incredible precision, selling gestures and movements that might otherwise seem bizarre or arbitrary. … (It’s) a parable of disaster, but turn the tape upside down and it promises to instead a reparation Paradise, he suggests, can be found.
Tijssens, meanwhile, reports that spectators reacted positively to the tour – with a difference.
“American and Anglo-Saxon audiences tend to laugh when they recognize something, while Belgian or Scandinavian audiences tend to be quieter,” he said.
How does the unusual structure work?
Just as its title is a palindrome, reading the same backwards or upside down, the piece is similarly structured.
“The first and second half connect in the middle… with a big thing happening halfway through,” Tijssens said.
“You can read the show two ways… start from the end or start from the beginning. Everything you do in the first half will inevitably be destroyed in the second half. It has a cruel poetry that we really liked,” he said.
Lane Czaplinski, the center’s director of performing arts, was eager to bring the troupe here after seeing the play on video.
“It was a no-brainer because you immediately see that this is a major piece of theatrical magic…accessible to sophisticated theatergoers and the curious, but unlike anything you’ve ever seen before,” he said. -he declares.
How does the staging define the play?
Czaplinski was struck by how the choreography and physicality of the actors reflected the troupe’s vision.
“The way they create stage images is different. … They really reflect on their surroundings … to re-explore the spatial orientation between performers and audiences,” he said.
The production uses a lot of smoke.
“With the smoke, pollution and images unfolding, you literally see the environmental impact of life on earth…how we throw things away and how we’ve become less patient with each other, becoming less tolerant,” Czaplinski said.
Tijssens, on the other hand, finds the smoke evocative of deeper themes.
“The idea of not knowing what is hidden in the smoke, the fear of the unknown, is something that all civilizations have in common. We always feared what we didn’t know,” Tijssens said.
What is the impact of live theatre?
Also a screenwriter (“Girl”, “Ijsland”), Tijssens co-wrote “Close”, nominated for an Oscar for best international feature film. “Close,” also nominated for the 2022 Golden Globe for Best Non-English Language Film, will be released in the United States on Friday.
“You can do whatever you want in the cinema. What we’re trying to do in theater is give you an experience that you couldn’t have if you were watching a movie,” Tijssens said.
“We want to use the theater as a live experience, adding, in this case, video, smoke machines and a huge golden statue.”
Although the Wexner Center offered other live events last spring, this is its first live theater performance since the pandemic began.
“I couldn’t ask for a more timely work to reintroduce our audience to international theater,” Czaplinski said.
“The work asks questions about the world we live in and whether we can fix the mess we’ve made of it.”mgrossberg1@gmail.com@mgrossberg1
In one look
The Wexner Center for the Arts and CAPA will present Ontroerend Goed’s “Are we not draw onward to new erA” at 8 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday at the Riffe Center’s Davidson Theater, 77 S. High St. Tickets are $6-$36 ; proof of vaccination required. For more information, visit wexarts.org and cbusarts.com.