tg STAN Maatschappij Discordia

Rambuku

Archive 2021
Theatre
1/4

Conceived and performed by, Kayije Kagame, Damiaan De Schrijver, and Matthias de Koning
Text, Jon Fosse
With Kayije Kagame, Damiaan De Schrijver, and Matthias de Koning
In association with Théâtre de la Bastille and Festival d’Automne à Paris.
A production by tg STAN ; and Maatschappij Discordia
A coproduction by Théâtre Garonne – scène européenne (Toulouse) ; and Théâtre La Mouche (Saint-Genis-Laval)
In association with Théâtre de la Bastille (Paris) ; and Festival d’Automne à Paris
Partnership with France Inter

What is Rambuku? Is it a place, a being, a ritual, a remedy? Jon Fosse brings us a near- monologue piece for one woman and two men which deals with love, elsewhere and the end. Amidst this mysterious writing, tgSTAN, Maatschappij Discordia and Kayije Kagame find a fertile breeding ground for their theatre of the instant, on the knife-edge between humour and the abyss.

A woman speaks. Her inexhaustible flow of words, both faltering and determined, is interrupted ranging from the short to the long. A man listens and carries out the script that she dictates to him. What are they doing together? What is this past that she seems to regret? With him, is she hoping for reconciliation, rupture or renewal? The long-awaited departure is imminent. Rambuku, she says, would be a far more pleasant elsewhere than the « intolerable here ». In few words, by means of repetitions and ellipses, and with « an immense simplicity » according to Damiaan De Schrijver, Jon Fosse grasps life in all its powerful complexity. Moved by the contemporary Norwegian playwright's work, the co-founder of the Antwerp-based collective joins forces with Maatschappij Discordia's Matthias de Koning – a long-term acolyte of his – and the Swiss actress of Rwandan origin Kayije Kagame in a staging of this demanding score. Within the tg STAN's bare, sparse theatre, the silences and the gashes, there is surely a light to be found.