Friday, 9th September | 21.00
Saturday, 10th September | 20.00
LA PELANDA | SALA 1 | 1h 30′
theatre
tg STAN
Trahisons
national premiere
in French with Italian and English subtitles
by and with Robby Cleiren, Jolente De Keersmaeker and Frank Vercruyssen
text ‘Betrayal’ by Harold Pinter
French version Eric Kahane
lighting design Thomas Walgrave
costumes Ann D’Huys
technique Tim Wouters
production tg STAN
So shall I live, supposing thou art true,
Like a deceived husband; so love’s face
May still seem love to me, though alter’d new;
Thy looks with me, thy heart in other place:
For there can live no hatred in thine eye,
Therefore in that I cannot know thy change.
In many’s looks the false heart’s history
Is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange,
But heaven in thy creation did decree
That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell;
Whate’er thy thoughts or thy heart’s workings be,
Thy looks should nothing thence but sweetness tell.
How like Eve’s apple doth thy beauty grow,
If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show!
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 93
Harold Pinter wrote Betrayal in 1978. The play tells the story of a classic three-cornered relationship in which Emma has been cheating on her husband Robert for seven years by having an affair with his best friend Jerry.
Pinter uses an unusually dramatic structure – the play begins at the end and ends at the beginning – to explore themes like loyalty, insincerity and self-deception. He presents characters who are caught up in the untenability of an all-consuming passion, who struggle against the inevitable mediocrity of their daily lives, who want to live grandly in a world that is too small. As if with a scalpel, he exposes the pride and longings, the lies and weaknesses of his characters, and, in that laconic and ruthless style at which he excels, succeeds both in glorifying and ridiculing love. In this way Pinter elevates the prosaicness of human relations to poetry.
BIOGRAPHY
Theatre company STAN, an acronym for Stop Thinking About Names, is a collective formed by Jolente De Keersmaeker, Damien De Schrijver, Sara De Roo, and Frank Vercruyssen, who met in the late-1980s at the Antwerp Conservatorium. There they worked with Matthias de Koning from Maatschappij Discordia, who acquainted them with another, less dogmatic vision of theatre. The company operates on the democratic principle that everyone participates in decisions on everything, from text selection, décor, and lighting to costumes and posters. STAN places the performer in the centre and strongly believes in the principle of the sovereign actor: s/he is both player and maker. Nothing is rehearsed in the conventional sense of the word; the largest part of the rehearsal process takes place around the table. Once the choice of the play is made, the text is edited and retranslated to arrive at a new script. Only in the final days before the premiere do the players take the floor, but the idea really only comes to fruition when the spectators are seated in the hall. STAN nurtures a firm belief in the ‘living’ power of theatre: the performance is not a reproduction of something that is learned, but is being created anew every night, along with the audience. A STAN performance is therefore not a finished product, but rather an invitation to a dialogue.
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