LIEFDESVERKLARING (voor altijd)
Cas Enklaar, Marien Jongewaard, René van ’t Hof and Antoinette Jelgersma. Four seasoned actors and mime artists together represent many decades of experience in the Dutch theatres. After a long relationship with the public, they're taking stock. We have been watching them for years, now they're looking back.
It all began with the famous and controversial piece Publikumsbeschimpfung from 1968 in which Austrian playwright Peter Handke bombarded his audience with profanations and insults. Playwright Magne van den Berg and theatre maker/choreographer Nicole Beutler adopted the piece in 2014 and turned it around 180 degrees. LIEFDESVERKLARING (love declaration), a performance with six youths, was a heart-warming expression of gratitude to the audience. The piece received rave responses and was nominated for the Theaterfestival.
LIEFDESVERKLARING (voor altijd) is the sequel. Featuring, not youths, but indeed older highly experienced actors. It is more seasoned, more raw and more candid. For as in any long relationship, love doesn't come without a struggle. The piece is about actors and about theatre, but above all about their relationship with us. An outspoken ode to the spectator, to mutual trust, to what makes us and what breaks us.
About the makers
After 1: SONGS (2009), PIECE (2011), LIEFDESVERKLARING (2014) and ROLE MODEL (2018), this marks the fifth intensive collaboration of Magne van den Berg and Nicole Beutler. They form a duo that always captivates with its imagery and its content as well as emotionally. Effortlessly they combine textual theatre with movement and music. They know like no one else how to anchor 'the essence of things' in words and imagery.
Language employed: Dutch
Production: Nicole Beutler Projects, Het Zuidelijk Toneel, Rudolphi Producties
Concept and direction: Nicole Beutler and Magne van den Berg
Text: Magne van den Berg
Performance: René van ’t Hof, Cas Enklaar, Marien Jongewaard, Maureen Teeuwen / Antoinette Jelgersma
Music: Gary Shepherd
Special thanks to: Het Nationale Theater
Photography: Caroline Bijl
Illustration: Tim Enthoven
reviews
Recycling Handke's sentences and interpreting them in a particular way gives them a different meaning in this day and age. LIEFDESVERKLARING is really saying: what we do is much more dangerous...