WEERSLECHTWEER (The Waste Land - T.S. Eliot) - Toneelhuis - Holland Festival 2008.A staging of the famous poem by T.S. Eliot by Peter Missotten for Toneelhuis.
Selected for the Holland Festival 2008. With Teun Luijkx and Joost Steltenpool.
Direction, Stage&Light Design by Peter Missotten
'In an inverted pyramid, as the inside of an ancient tomb entirely covered with pure lead, the audience looks into a square pond. It is drizzling, it is beginning to splash. In the well two young people are drowning. Or no, they are reciting The Waste Land, the famous poem T.S. Eliot wrote shortly after World War I, when there was little left of Europe but The Barren Land, as Eliot's poem has also come to be called in Paul Claes' new translation. Water purifies and brings new life, but in the climate of the Low Countries it mainly brings swampiness and rot. So is there no hope at all? 'No,' says director Peter Missotten, known among other things for his collaboration with Toneelhuis director Guy Cassiers. 'Or yes, that you see two young people standing, that always gives hope.'In this staging, Peter Missotten not only uses technology to create a barren landscape of death, but also to alienate the actors from themselves. Their voice is taken from them, replaced by a remote controlled computer spitting out perfectly dubbed sentences. How much life is left in this waste land?…
True to form, Peter Missotten has designed a machine for WeerSlechtWeer that sets the stage for another unusual theatrical experience. He builds a genuine, closed weather machine, which subjects performers and public to all the vagaries of the weather known to mankind.
In this mouse-coloured space Missotten comes up with another story about the dark, back alleys of the soul. At first it looks very much as if we have all climbed into a dishwasher. We almost feel we are roller-coasting through a thunderstorm. When we eventually come to a standstill a shadow appears out of the mist – and sings to us. And from then on things start to get better. This time Peter Missotten’s script was inspired by T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.
WeerSlechtWeer - Peter Missotten - Toneelhuis 2007 from Peter Missotten on Vimeo.
Weer Slecht Weer (The Wasteland - T.S. Eliot - Paul Claes),
Direction, Stage&Light Design by Peter Missotten
With Teun Luijkx and Joost Steltenpool.
Voice Teun Luijkx
technician Henk Vandecaveye
Dramaturg Ellen Stynen
Production Toneelhuis
Selection Holland Festival 2008
