Taking the structure and form of computer games as its frame, New Game tells the parallel stories of two people, a woman and a man, by recreating the subjective experience of significant moments in their lives. Subjected to the various external and internal events, their primary aim and task is to go on, to get through the different levels of their respective games, no matter what. Here too, as in life, the only way to end the game is to lose, and the only way to avoid losing is to keep going. Step by step, level by level, the arch for each life, the fate of each person is revealed. Then the two stories cross each other, and a third one emerges: that of a life they could have together.New Game is a love story.

New Game premiered in 2004 at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, and has been shown in various theatres and festivals in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.

Drama is a solo piece inspired and performed by Tasmanian performance artist Nancy Mauro-Flude – the bloody story of three generations of women told in one breath.

Point Blank is a visual theatre performance in which the narrative is constructed by using paparazzi-style photographs of everyday situations. The 19-year-old Nada has been secretly observing people for years, taking ‘spy-photos’ of them, capturing their private moments. The core of her interest is to trace the various life-strategies that people follow. She wants to map out the options for herself. Driven by this curiosity, she becomes witness to a wide range of – at times extreme – human behaviour. The performance is an occasion for Nada to structure her ‘archive of possibilities’. Together with the audience she contemplates the images, and looks for the implications and patterns that emerge. She aims to get a comprehensive overview and to reach a conclusion: the vision of a life worth pursuing.

Point Blank premiered in 2007 at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, and has since been performed at various theatres and festivals in Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, France, Hungary, Norway, Portugal, Belgium, Serbia, the United States, Ireland, Poland and China. It is available in both English and French-language versions.

From the press:

Collaboration between Edit Kaldor (HU/NL), theatre-maker whose work tends to zoom in on the thought processes of isolated individuals, be they players or spectators; visual artist and choreographer Piet Rogie (BE/NL) who works for the past 30 years in the modern dance field, most recently with Rogie CS, a company dedicated to creating performances with people of different ages and abilities: dancers, scientists, kids, singers and outsidersWWW.ROGIE.NL; Ivo Dimchev (BG/BE), choreographer and performer whose work is extreme and colorful mixture of performance art, dance, theater, music, drawings and photography WWW.IVODIMCHEV.COM; actor/theatre-maker Jaap ten Holt, who has worked in a broad specter of acting and theatre styles; Nada Gambier (FIN/BE), performance-maker, whose work incorporates physical and theatrical elements, often blurring the border between fiction and reality WWW.ACTIONSCENIQUE.BE; ; dancer, teacher, and choreographer Michael Jahoda (US/NL), who is co-founder and creative force behind of the Phillip Series; a unique multi-media collaboration projectWWW.MICHAELJAHODA.COM; visual and performance artist Yenyitzu (TW/NL) WWW.YENYITZU.COM; Robert Pravda (SRB/NL), who designs and builds musical instruments, makes spatial sound installations and sound design for theatre productions; Jan Fedinger (DE/NL), light-artist and lighting-designer WWW.JANFEDINGER.NET; enNadia Tsulukidze (GEO/NL), freelance artist.

English spoken

* French expression, meaning “it’s all Greek to me” (literally “it’s Chinese”), a phrase indicating that something is impossible to understand. The equivalent of this idiom in Mandarin is (literally “sounds like Mars language”).

On stage: 5 Chinese citizens, determined to open up to the public. The only language they speak is Mandarin, but they are convinced this should not stand in the way of an fruitful exchange with the audience.

Using the possibilities of theatrical representation, they teach us basic oral comprehension of the Mandarin language, just enough to understand the gradually unfolding narrative: that of a family under pressure, eager to leave old troubles behind and start a new life in a strange country.

In essence C’est du chinois is about communication. Communication that is impossible, but through the common effort of players and spectators working together, it comes into being. Starting at zero, they create something together – the possibility of a personal encounter, of an intimate face-to-face meeting.

C’est du chinois premiered in June 2010 at Alkantara Festival in Lisbon.

Agenda

C’est du Chinois was shown before in:

‘Let us deprive death of its strangeness, let us frequent it, let us get used to it… To practice death is to practice freedom.’ Montaigne

One Hour combines an exceptional theatrical form with an existential theme: our relationship to time and to our mortality. Kaldor invites the spectators to approach dying with curiosity, and creates the conditions for ‘rehearsing’ their own deaths.

Lying down in the darkness, the audience is enveloped by questions, people, images and sounds. A reflective and sensory experience, the performance guides them through the physical and mental states connected to the process of dying, and triggers them to revisit their own lives from the vantage point of death. Each spectator creates his or her own personal narrative at the junction of things maybe long forgotten and not yet imagined. Like a lucid dream. Here. Now. Alone. Together.

Agenda

One Hour was shown before in:

The English word ‘woe’ means trouble, misery. In this performance, three teenagers are located in the auditorium, close to the spectators. Searching for words, in an attempt to tell a story, they guide the members of the audience through memories of their own youth. Images of normal childhood experiences are gradually replaced by images that evoke feelings of powerlessness and loneliness. While the performers alternate the evocation of emotions and the sharing of memories with information about what happens in the body and the brain during various kinds of abuse, the attention slowly shifts to fierce attempts to put the experience of child abuse into words. How closely can you approach the experience of another person? Woe is a particularly intimate performance about the power and limitations of empathy and the courage to look far inwards.

WOE is produced by Stichting Kata, and co-produced by STUK in Leuven, Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin and Teatro Maria Matos in Lisbon.

CREDITS
Concept and direction: Edit Kaldor

Performance: Merel Ouwehand, David de Lange and Kobbe Koopman

Text: Edit Kaldor, Karmenlara Ely and the performers

Assistant dramaturgy: Camilla Eeg-Tverbakk

Light: Jan Fedinger

Text advice: Rob de Graaf

Direction assistant: Annefleur Schep

Management: Anneke Tonen

Thanks to: Nicola Unger, Frank Theys and Emke Idema

WOE is produced by Stichting Kata / Edit Kaldor, and is co-produced by Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin, Teatro Maria Matos in Lisbon and STUK in Leuven. The performance is supported by the Performing Arts Fund NL, the Amsterdam Arts Fund and the SNS Reaal Fund.