Works: Ezra Veldhuis & Bosse Provoost

Indoor Weather

What if the theatre were the belly of a huge whale? Or no, wait – a futuristic, completely unknown ecosystem? Ezra Veldhuis and Bosse Provoost deploy the theatre’s full technical apparatus to evoke an environment that echoes both Jeff VanderMeer’s eco science fiction and Inger Christensen’s poetry.

In Indoor Weather, the lighting, sound and fly bars are on an equal footing with the human performers. All of these elements are involved in a mysterious game whose rules lie just beyond our comprehension. A moldy green glow suddenly falls upon the stage and then spreads like an oil slick through the theatre; an actor recites passages from it, the monumental cycle of poems by the Danish poet Inger Christensen from 1969; soundscapes swell and recede in the space as if coming from high and low pressure areas. Who is influencing whom in this constantly mutating environment? What is dependent on what? Is the environment a mainstay or an opponent?

In front of the mountains, and before the mountains
burn or break up as planned,
houses are set up, but just houses
that are not real houses, but just real
fronts of unreal houses
into which everyone can easily run
when an artificial rain begins

(poem from it, Inger Christensen)

Credits

Concept, directing, light design: Ezra Veldhuis, Bosse Provoost Creation & performance: Nathan Ooms, Kristien De Proost, Lobke Leirens, Benjamin Cools Dramaturgy: Sébastien Hendrickx Outside eye: Edith Cassiers Directing assistant: Laurens Aneca Sound design: Benne Dousselaere Costume design: Carly Rae Heathcote Internship: Milan van Bortel Production: Toneelhuis, P.U.L.S. Co-production: De Grote Post, C-TAKT Tour management: Hiros With the support of: workspacebrussels, Kunstencentrum BUDA, Tax Shelter of the Belgian Federal Government, Casa Kafka Pictures, Tax shelter powered by Belfius Thanks to: Max Pairon, An-Marie Lambrechts, Oshin Albrecht, Bart Meuleman, Geert Belpaeme, Jan Fedinger, technical team Toneelhuis