DE KOE

Le Relèvement de l’Occident : BlancRougeNoir

Archive 2016
Theatre

Text, directed and conceived by Natali Broods, Willem de Wolf and Peter Van den Eede
With Natali Broods, Willem de Wolf and Peter Van den Eede
Translation into French and language coaching by Martine Bom
Lighting design, Bram De Vreese
Sound design, Pol Geusens
Technical managers, Bram De Vreese and Pol Geusens

A De KOE production // A Théâtre Garonne (Toulouse) coproduction for the French version ; Théâtre de Nîmes – scène conventionnée pour la danse contemporaine ; Théâtre du Bois de l’Aune (Aix-en-Provence) ; Théâtre de la Bastille (Paris) ; Festival d’Automne à Paris // In association with Théâtre de la Bastille (Paris) ; Festival d’Automne à Paris // Executive producer for the French version and tour, Théâtre Garonne (Toulouse) // A House on Fire project // French version first performed on 12th May 2016 at Théâtre Garonne (Toulouse)

The De KOE company returns with a trilogy which is brimful of energy and vitality. It plunges the audience into the history of the human condition, an extended fresco along the course of which we are prompted to dissect our hearts and souls. The piece summons up three landscapes, three symphonies, and three colours in order to relate man’s not uneventful, but altogether joyous, journey. We start off with the virginity of White, an untouched, blissful world, free of mishaps, over which peace reigns. But the spectator is never allowed to retreat into this world of illusions. In a short space of time, the Red blasts the contours of this paradise to smithereens. For man, full of hubris, continually seeks to go beyond his limits in search of “more life and death”. A new phase opens up before him, tainted with darkness. Black, the last part of the trilogy, closes its doors in order to open them up wider to infinity. De KOE invites the spectator to look into the deepest, most intimate, recesses of the human being. And, of course, man’s meanderings are interwoven with reflections on the times we live in. The company sounds out the disenchantment that characterizes our era and announces, to our amusement, that, thanks to them “everything is going to be fine!” BlancRougeNoir gives rise to a form of pessimism - one which is never cynical, but joyful and liberating. Le Relèvement de l’Occident - or in other words, the raising up of the West. As with their friends from the tgSTAN collective, the stage becomes a place for life and the living, on which   a shared experience with the audience becomes possible. Theatre gathers up the pieces of our own disarray - in order to play upon them, and map out the lines of a collective escape route.