Welcome To The Jungle

Using a labyrinth of various mirror foils, Welcome To the Jungle proposes a ‘house of mirrors’ where the audience, inside of the space, has to navigate trying to find which way is which. Smells designed by perfumer Laurent-David Garnier, a set designed in collaboration with scenographer Erki De Vries, as well as water mists, temperature fluctuations, wind, and vibration applied to the frames of the mirror foils are used to create an immaterial yet nevertheless sensorial parcours for the audience. The costuming of audience and performers alike make that the space becomes further confused in this mirror hall- between who is in and who is out, what is a body and what is a reflection. The use of light works in tandem with the mirrors, creating a fluid movement between what appears to be a reflective surface, an open space, or a transparent barrier.

The confusion of the space is implemented to suggest an environment which has become itself weird, confused, and erratic- an atmosphere which no longer adheres to the normal laws of nature and the navigational compasses that we are used to relying on in our everyday lives. Without representing any particular environment, through textures, smells, lights and sounds, Welcome To the Jungle proposes a dramaturgy which is organized by the space itself- the linear pathway of the labyrinth is therefore used to structure the beginning, middle, and end of the performance for the audience. Here we encounter a sensorial jungle, an overgrowth of pseudo-natural stimuli rather than an overgrowth of flora, a space where there is too much, and at the same time, nothing at all. Where everything is visible and nothing reliable. A space dense with its own emptiness.

(www.thegreatindoors.be)