´every now and then` – Mette Edvardsen och Philippe Beloul Sept 15+16

Performance at Weld Sept 15+16 at 7 pm
Tickets: info@weld.se

In the new piece 'every now and then' Mette Edvardsen and Philippe Beloul invite the audience to read a book as a performance. The idea is to create a space and a time inside a book, like a piece in a theatre. For the whole duration of the piece the audience can read through the pages and the spaces of the book at the same time as they follow what is taking place on stage. The book is direct, tactile and persistent, giving the audience another access to the piece. The reader of a book can decide for him/ herself the reading direction, the tempo and the space. With the book, ‘every now and then’ is a piece to delve into, proposing an individual reading combined with a collective experience. How does the experience of reading a book merge with the experience watching a performance, how does the book read after the performance is over?

Concept Mette Edvardsen
Created & performed by Philippe Beloul and Mette Edvardsen
Lights Jan Van Gijsel
Sound Charo Calvo
Graphic design Michael Bussaer
Photos Julien Lanoo
Production Helga Duchamps/ duchamps vzw and Mette Edvardsen/ Athome
Co-produced by Stuk/ Leuven, Workspace/ Brussels
In collaboration with Kaaitheater/ Brussels, Vooruit/ Gent, Netwerk/ Aalst, Les Brigittines/ Brussels, De Pianofabriek/ Brussels and Weld/Stockholm
Supported by Vlaamse Gemeenschap, Norsk Kulturråd, Fond for Utøvende Kunstnere

www.metteedvardsen.be

Excerpt from text by Mette Edvardsen
(…)
For ‘every now and then’ we consider the page to be a space. More than being just a surface and ‘a floor’ it is now a space with depth and perspective. I am interested in creating this dimension of a space on the page not only through representation, but also through the movements and actions we perform inside of it. In combination with the performance that takes place on stage, how can the space enhance the reading of the page in another way and make us experience it as ‘space’? And in return, how can the reading of the book enhance our experience of the performance and change the way we see, understand and imagine the space to be? I am interested in the relation between the ‘small world’ of the book and the ‘bigger world’ of the theatre and how the notion of the book translates into the real space.  How do we experience the performance on the page, and the other way around, how do we read the theatre space when we think of it as a page in a book?

The piece unfolds through the turning of pages and the imagination of a space, of a time, of a performance. We want to explore what takes place outside the pages, behind the rooms, between the times, in the folds of the book, along the edges of space. With every turning of a page a new space appears, in layers on top of each other. How can we imagine such architecture? Pages after pages of spaces bound together in a complex architecture called ‘book’? Do we imagine a corridor where we move through space after space, or is the space always the same one and we only move through time? When a performer exits to the right on one page, will she enter from the left on the next page, or the right? Is the space on the left book page the mirror of the space on the right page? How does this affect our understanding of space and our movements on stage? How does this translate to reality, to the theatre? Is there a space behind the space that we see?

Is the space in ‘every now and then’ the representation of the book or is the book the representation of the space? What came first, the book or the space? Is one a model of the other? Are we performers models of the figures in the book? Is the performance a memory of what was happening in the book, or is the book the trace of the performance? And if so, how is it possible that the book exists before the performance is over?