As a result of ypur first play, Nageslachtsfarce/genocide (2002), your work was labelled ‘theatre of solitude’. Was that an appropriate label?  
My theatre isn’t just a way of talking about ‘solitude’. After my graduation monologue, I wrote the solos Hoop (Hope, 2006) and Linoleum/Speed (2009) about the mother/child relationship. After HOUT (Wood, 2010) I tackled other themes and forms. UNISONO is another solo and you might describe it as a play about solitude. But it is about more. I want to focus on the patterns in our life. Everyone follows the same patterns. Literally and figuratively. Everyone is born, gets older and dies. 
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I want to make an intimate play. Ideally I’d like to open the door for the audience myself. And the set will be as minimal as possible. That way I’ll be able to go on tour in Flanders and the Netherlands with little more than a rucksack. Or maybe I’ll perform it in a converted garage somewhere off-off-Broadway! UNISONO is a little ritual, a prayer almost. It’s a choreography of thoughts and ideas in an intimate, silent space. You see and hear the thoughts of someone who is unsure how to deal with life. In this society there is very little time for silence, uncertainty and searching. Yet all around me I see people looking for an answer as to why things are as they are. This play is about that search for a holdfast. We all want to arrive in a place where we find space, repose and peace.
(…)
The lengths I go to to portray stage images and the postures of my actors verge on the irritating. And I would like to be even more irritating! (Grins) Details are my great love. The beauty and the added value of things lie in the details. The beauty of nature affects me deeply too. The veins of a leaf, a drop of water. In FLOU [a play made in 2011 about the ebbing love between a man and a woman, performed by Haring and Han Kerckhoffs, editor’s note] water dripped onto the stage drop by drop. That sound was amplified so you could clearly hear the ‘drip’. I want to stage those details as precisely as possible. And I don’t compromise. If you do that, you disavow yourself. It’s your job as an artist not to disavow yourself. I don’t make theatre to please people.  

So why do you make theatre?
HARING: So as to stop and reflect in this hectic world, as in UNISONO. Making theatre is damned difficult. What people really want is a relaxing evening. But as a theatre-maker you want to say and show confrontational things. When I was pregnant I, too, wanted to go to the theatre alone and to chill out. But why do you make art or theatre? Because you want to make a statement. I don’t so much make plays for the public as with the public. Together you focus on a feeling, on pain, you get through it and then experience the hope together. Together! Without your having to participate actively or anything like that. The theatre is the best place for loners to be together and feel they have a bond without actually having to bond with anyone.

How will UNISONO create a bond? HARING: As a prayer. One of the things I focus on is what photographer Dash Snow shows in I Love You, Stupid!: the frayed ordinariness, a person going over the edge, almost choking in obscenity, but he goes on trying just to live and survive. Go on trying. The audience can watch and listen quietly without having to think about a story. We find that difficult today. The deluge of images has deprived us of the knack of looking. That’s why I love slow theatre which billows over you. (Jumps up) You know what I’d like? I’d like the play to feel like a big, collective Zen meditation. Everyone gets into a Zen state of mind, sees the details and so sees the thing as a whole in all its beauty.   

Published in Focus Knack, 18.11.2015