At the canal to the left - Bij het kanaal naar links

The play by Alex Van Warmerdam is a co-production between Toneelhuis ( Belgium) and Orkater (The Netherlands). When I bought the tickets for the performances, the person on the phone said: Oh you will enjoy that one. As it is: I feel bewildered, dissatisfied, wondering... The content: two families (one consisting of four people: mother, father, brother Machien, sister Angelique and the other just a father and son Lucien) have a feud since a few generations. Living in dystopian times the mother, seen the father hasn't been paid for a long time, and the son of the other family look for cooperation setting in motion a chain of events. From a depressed woman, she becomes strong while the policeman father grows weaker and grayer. Machien hates the other family for not being of pure blood. The two families are the only six white people left, Angelique being 'the only fertile female'. Under the bridge are the Congolese, to the east 'the pretty but dark' Iranians, to the south the gypsies and Mongolians and along the canal 'it is black with people and who knows where they are from'. Luciens plan is to make a child with Anglique. The mother brokers the deal. After the suggested intercourse, she goes home, embraces her brother who kills her. End of play. People, also the bunch of young boys from an out of town school who had chosen this as a cultural activity laughed. I failed to appreciate the jokes. The play was what a classical play and listening to other theater goers on the way out, it seems I was not the only one to be dumbfounded. A strange effect of the co-production was that in each of the families there was one character speaking the Flemish variant of Dutch which puzzled me for a while what it mean, why...
The introduction was right: I quote: I see a full house. It happens outside, but all of you came here. I don't know whether you made the right choice. I suggest you lower your expectations.
A last positive remark: the actors did a great job in the performance and the school boys were giggly after the suggested intercourse and having seen naked breasts...

Iraqi Ghosts

 How to express the reality of war? The three young Iraqi artists each have survived three wars. That is nine wars right here, says one of the actors. True enough. There are as many wars as there are participants, victims and survivors, as many wars as people have to live true them. The play is disquieting, loud, funny, clashing, a confrontation with what we have only seen or heard in the media. It is the personal experience of the three Iraqi actors which informs this play. The female roles are performed by Flemish/German actresses. The audience is eased into the drama of war through the first scene with the actors wearing animal masks, animals as victims of war too. I particularly like that each scene was introduced and 'framed', explained and thus creating expectations as to what is to come and how long the particular scene will take.

The vivid images created on the scene, incorporating elements of home - oriental carpets, couscous, food, projected film - are all elements of the questions raised: What is war? How do people live in times of war? The three main images which follow are: The day before the war, marked by fear, tension and preparing for what one cannot prepare. The next scene is the day after the war when distrust reigns, when old friends no longer dare to shake hands. Who is a friend anyway and who is foe? The third day there is war. One of the actresses states: I feel alive, all worries have been lifted, all the rest is unimportant. Now it is all about survival. The performance, albeit very personal, is reaching for a universal almost physical language. In the play language plays a main part: the two actresses speak in German, English and Dutch and a few times almost grammolo, often as a consecutive rendering of the texts spoken in Farsi. To me that was mesmerising. Iraqi Ghosts is a play by Mokhallad Rasem in cooperation and improvisation with the actors Duraid Abba, Sarah Eisa, Ahmed Khaled, Julia Clever.
Remember: Peace is the way.

Theater play: FLOU - (Blurred)

The author of this strangely beautiful play is actress Abke Haring performing together with Han Kerkhoffs the play FLOU. In a disquieting opening with electronic music the two actors stand absolutely still next to each other holding hands. The rectangle on the floor and the floating roof above their life represents an abstract home. During the music drops fall in an array of glass containers. The roof leaks. The couple battles out their pain in a discouraging silence. The repetitive dialogs are pure poetry. His unwillingness to speak is magnified by her voicing his thoughts which he calls nagging in the drip drop on the stage. There is a moving part when they put small glass saucers under falling drops - yet they fail doing it together. Grim. The two longer monologues of the man are very sexual in a strangely ordinary language, talking as he is about wild sex in the deep freeze compartment of the supermarket. His language here is coarse, uncaring about her feelings. Every kind of frozen or fresh produce is used in this wild fantasy of an impromptu encounter with a past flame. At the same time it is almost hilarious. Yet it is obvious the couple doesn't have a lot of sex, or anything else with each other but being stuck, powerless to go or to let go, unable to be fulfilled by each other. The whole performance is punctuated by long eloquent silences, communicating something important, they are unable to share. Towards the end the woman asks to let her grow in 'a being without words', thus seeking the ultimate intimacy of being understood and understanding without words. Words have been used before, are charged and therefore treacherous. Yet this kind of silence would also be a hell of loss, emptiness, and a disappearing self... An intriguing performance balancing, as the author qualifies it, between duet and duel.

Seven things to do... in small towns

In a small town with no road going through, all off them stopping at a mountain, at tailings or a wash there isn't much to do. Favorite activities are improvements: Putting up a water tank with a backhoe and resting under the result.

 One could browse the local shop which holds surprises but no fresh food. I found a second had copy of Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver. I have read several of her novels and some of her essays: great work. The first one was Pigs in Heaven starting at the Hoover Dam, the very first time I crossed it.

Women gathering to discus the last and to prepare the next event at the local VFW. One is a biker chick, one is a belly dancer, an American Sign Language educational assistant, a poet, a cook and a former cow girl...

 You could watch the changes in the Alpenglow on the mountain or watch another splendid sunset...

And on Sunday nights there is a free movie at the theater: Easter Sunday it was the wonderfully moving Green fried tomatoes...

I don't know about other small towns, but here there is a special spirit which brings people together.

And now I go back to my book...

Disgrace-In ongenade J.M.Coetzee

A long time ago I read this book by Coetzee. Josse De Pauw adapted the novel for the stage and his feat is that he maintained the storyline, the male/female divide, abusive sexuality, the darkest side of our soul and even the glimmer of hope of the new South Africa. The play takes us past stereotypes and shows us more darkness of the soul, moral dilemma's we can't quiete work out than we would care to acknowledge as existent in our own soul "My head became an asylum for the old thoughts which have no other place to go" says David Lurie. It is an international cooperation that brought about this play in the form we see it. The director is Luk Perceval working as a guest director with Toneelgroep Amsterdam. I was impressed by Katrin Brack one of Germany's most renowned stage designers. Hence the picture I am showing which is what you see upon entering to take your seat. The concept is used well. Walking home I heard other theatergoers comment: It is not a play that makes one happy. And: A lot of food for thought. Right: all art is quite useless but for stimulating thought and questioning. Well, I'll remain a fan of Coetzee, even with the harsh truths about our fallible humanity or because of it, to say nothing about his superior writing. Should I mention that one of the best actors was present, some writers, the beau monde and some half gods... It was a memorable evening.

The Heart of Darkness - Dark Heart - Duister Hart

 I love the theater, I love monologues and Josse De Pauw is one of the real good ones. Guy Cassiers is a formidable director who with seemingly meager means visible on the stage manages to evoque an array of moods and situations. If you have a chance to go and listen and watch and feel, don't miss 'Duister Hart'.

 I also love this particular theater, the Bourla, with its ornate interior: the sciences and the continents are represented on the ceiling. This monologue is written by De Pauw based on the excellent Dutch translation by Bas Heijne of the novel Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and deals with the Congo and a trading post where Kurtz gathers the most ivory of all the agents. The language is rich and at times chilling.

 A good crowd showed up to listen to this monologue dealing with colonialism and the effects of greed and loneliness, the loss of a moral compass when one has nobody to talk to and the horror, the horror when looking inward at the state of ones soul. One will recognize the final scene as used by Francis Ford Coppola in Apocalypse now. 

Kurtz has plundered the region, has been a violent and cruel representative of the firm, yet he is remarkable, intriguing, imposing, awe inspiring violent and even lovable man. The story is told by Marlow the Captain of a ship sailing up the Congo River in Africa for a Belgian Company. His goal is meeting Kurtz, who has been member of an international society to abolish rude manners and customs. Yet in Kurtz he meets a dark heart, without moral references or control. Josse De Pauw plays all roles thanks to a state of the arts technical approach, projecting the roles that have been  'taped' before and sometimes in the dialog, the actor on the stage is filmed and projected on the projected screen. Thus the meeting with Kurtz, becomes also explicitly a meeting with himself. One wonders why the company never intervened when they knew about about the plunder of the land and the violence against the indigenous inhabitants. The only reason would be greed, in other words capitalism and colonialism. Yet the play leaves one wondering whether one could lose one's own compass.  Great art is food for the soul and food for thought. When the thin gilded layer of civilization is scratched away all that remains is a dark heart.

San Francisco Mime Troupe

       In the Dolores park the San Francisco Mime Troupe  offered a free play in the park. The Troupe has been performing their old style type political theater for 53 years: Death to the pigs! The fascist capitalist conglomerates, accepting money from the 'wrong side' is being a whore of the corporations. The singing and dancing is professional. The audience consists of colorful and happy people and pets. Pick nicks and wine and water, chairs and pillows, make shift  blankets, music and fun. Here two flower-children discuss  the task of the mayor to come.

View of the fog drifting into the bay as seen from Twin Peaks

The West lives on

What to say: the man got caught red-handed on film and it is his wife filming him fooling around with a floozy.

In this picture she turned bounty-hunter and doesn't wait to shoot, nor to collect the money from the sheriff.

The troupe, missing four actors reshuffled and redistributed roles and put up a fun performance.

In these small western towns one finds often Western Reenactment Groups, partially because they are history buffs, or also because it is just a good thing to do to create friendships and a sense of community over the generations. Special in the Longcoats and Lace is that a bit of background on the past is given as an introduction to the skids. The new actor had a hard start: he was shot in each one of the scenes...

The smiling Lady had her 80th birthday and still a dangerous schoolmarm. 

Tradition and black powder... in Chloride, AZ there are even two troops.

Beauty and strength

Emile-Antone Bourdelle , architect and sculptor, was student of Rodin and teacher of Giacometti. His Atelier is to be found in the stables of Montparnasse when Montmartre got too expensive. He designed and decorated the 'Theatre des Champs Elysee", Place de l'Alma.


His pre-modern expressionist huge volumes made my hart tremble. The World War horror is well expressed in the screaming heads before Munch. Pain, strength and beauty overwhelming and uplifting.





Through a rainy Paris I ended up at the Trocadero where Anais Nin had an apartment. There international solidarity was
shown the indigenous peoples of Peru defending their land, the Amazon forest against greedy developers of palm groves destroying the forests and livelihood of the Indians. I added my voice: Un peuble unido jamas sara vencido.

l'acte inconnu

In this city where I am too often, my pleasure is walking along the water noticing its eb and flow and speed. Also I enjoy looking at the copper roofs in the different lights trying to feel the texture with my eyes. The best thing however is stepping out of the political reality, exchanging it for an artistic one by going to the theater whenever MK and myself can swing it. L'acte inconnu was this weeks performance. I love the anticipation in the bar of the theater waiting for my friend to arrive, waiting for the magic to be done, waiting for the language to flow through the actors who embody it. I expected the play to yield an interesting visual experience. It did. It was well choreographed and, using puppets and gadgets. For the rest I can only say it was very French: a logorea with neologisms, the changing of logic and grammar at each instant, the small changes of repetitive music. There is also a play on perceived reality. Actors act, one also act at non acting, death present and being outwitted by make believe. Yes it was an intellectual philosophical, funny, challenging play on words. Did I understand it all? No! But the idea of cheating death by grammar is an appealing one, very Chomskyan who said that structure of a language and the meaning rendered by it are two separate things. His illustration for this was the sentence: Green ideas sleep furiously. In this play the ideas were multihued and well executed. Language once again, the all powerful protagonist.