We Are Still Watching(2012)
We Are Still Watching is a show performed by spectators; by an instant community of « audience members » that changes every evening of the show. And as they change the piece also radically changes every time that it is performed.
We Are Still Watching has a form of a “reading rehearsal” in which spectators encounter each other while reading a script together. During approximately an hour spent in company of each other spectators create and perform a community, making decisions individually and collectively while « simply » reading a text that someone else has written for them. In the “mini-society ” that gets created each evening of the show, everybody slowly but surely gets his or her role… Everybody speaks in the « I-form », everybody reads badly and everybody engages one way or another although no one ever read the script before and no one knows what will happen next.
We Are Still Watching is a piece in which the idea of “spectacle” slowly shifts to where we least expect it. Something that for a moment could look like a bad theatre becomes an invitation to look beyond of what is being scripted. While still staying in the realm of theatre and representation WASW leaves place for something « real » to happen.
ressemble à une répétition au cours de laquelle les spectateurs se rencontrent autour d’un texte qu’ils découvrent et lisent ensemble. Pendant une heure, les spectateurs créent et ‘performent’ une communauté, prennent des décisions individuelles et/ou collectives en lisant ‘simplement’ ce texte écrit pour eux, par quelqu’un d’autre. Dans cette ’mini-société’ créée chaque soir, chacun adopte lentement son propre rôle… Tous parlent à la première personne, tous lisent mal, et tous s’impliquent d’une manière ou d’une autre même si personne n’a lu le texte avant cette soirée et même si personne ne sait ce qui arrivera ensuite.
est une pièce dans laquelle l’idée de ‘spectacle’ se déplace peu à peu pour arriver là où on l’attend le moins. Ce qui à un certain moment pourrait ressembler à du mauvais théâtre devient une invitation à regarder plus loin que le texte. Tout en restant dans le domaine du théâtre et de la représentation, We Are Still Watching ouvre une place à l’imprévu, pour que quelque chose de ‘vrai’ arrive.
Concept & text Ivana Müller in collaboration with Andrea Bozic, David Weber-Krebs & Jonas Rutgeerts Light design & technical direction Martin Kaffarnik Production I’M COMPANY (Matthieu Bajolet & Gerco de Vroeg
We Are Still Watching was developed as a part of Encounters project and was premiered in Frascati, Amsterdam in November 2012. with a kind support of Het Veem Theatre, Amsterdam. financially supported by: Fonds Podiumkunsten, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, SNS Reaal Fonds
More on WASW:
The idea for We Are Still Watching came in 2011 when in The Netherlands and in some other countries in Europe some serious changes in the cultural policy and society in general happened. While writing the script and imagining the communities that will read it, we were trying to reflect on the idea of theatre and its place in the contemporary society and at the same time we were working with the problem of « participation », both in theatre and outside of it. In Dutch, and many other European languages, the word « voice » is the same as the word « vote ». In general it is believed that to « vote » means to be political, or at least to be civic. That is what most of contemporary democracies promote. But curiously, and somewhat paradoxically, with the act of voting we give our “political voice” to someone else… someone who we don’t necessarily know or often someone that is least bad on the list of names we hardly know. We give our voice and then we possibly become politically mute…
In We Are Still Watching the role of spectators-readers coincides with the role of citizens-voters. One of the questions that we kept asking ourselves when working on this performative proposition was: How to stay political in an extremely scripted and seemingly “well organized” society? How to observe differently in order to have different ideas…. (IM, August 2013)