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Le sec et l’humide

Guy Cassiers, Toneelhuis

In his small-scale project Le sec et l’humide, Guy Cassiers takes a closer look at the theme he explored in his impressive production De welwillenden (2016) after Jonathan Littell’s novel, The Kindly Ones.

While writing his lengthy novel, Littell also completed an essay entitled Le sec et l’humide in which he dissects the language and imagery he encountered in Fascist writings by the Belgian Léon Degrelle. In contrast to the creative, constructive, orderly, neat and dry approach of the Germans and all the pro-Germans, Degrelle paints horrifying pictures of the lax, slovenly, disorderly, tacky, muddy, smoky and humid Russian world into which the German adversaries are in danger of being dragged. Two voices are heard in the essay: firstly, that of Degrelle himself in the extensive quotes from his book La campagne de Russie and, secondly, that of an (objective?) commentator.

IRCAM - Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique – in France offered Guy Cassiers the opportunity to experiment with sound and voice. By means of historical sound recordings from the archives, Guy Cassiers has the 'objective' historian tell the story of Léon Degrelle on a campaign in Russia and of his escape to Spain, but gradually the piding line between the narrator and his subject blurs: by subtly manipulating sound and voice, Cassiers interweaves past and present and Degrelle himself becomes the narrator. An intriguing and alarming transformation (courtesy of Johan Leysen’s deep voice). Here, too, the view formulated in De welwillenden is never far off: "You can never say: I will not kill. That is impossible: at most you can say: I hope I won’t kill."

 

Le sec et l'humide is part of The littell Project co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.

director

  • Guy Cassiers

dramaturgy

  • Erwin Jans

text

  • Jonathan Littell

performance

  • Filip Jordens

sound design

  • Diederik De Cock

voices

  • Johan Leysen

assistance of the director

  • Camille De Bonhome

production

  • Toneelhuis
  • Toneelhuis

coproduction

  • IRCAM - Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique / Musique

with the support of

  • Cultuur Programma van de Europese Unie

All data

There are no upcoming activities for this event.

  1. Tuesday 30 June 2015 — 104, Paris, Parijs
  2. Tuesday 30 June 2015 — 104, Paris, Parijs
  3. Wednesday 1 July 2015 — 104, Paris, Parijs
  4. Thursday 2 July 2015 — 104, Paris, Parijs
  5. Sunday 18 October 2015 — Temporada Alta, Girona
  6. Saturday 11 February 2017 — Festival de Liège, Luik
  7. Sunday 12 February 2017 — Festival de Liège, Luik
  8. Wednesday 15 March 2017 — Centre Pompidou, Parijs
  9. Thursday 16 March 2017 — Centre Pompidou, Parijs
  10. Sunday 9 July 2017 — Festival van Avignon, Vedène
  11. Monday 10 July 2017 — Festival van Avignon, Vedène
  12. Tuesday 11 July 2017 — Festival van Avignon, Vedène
  13. Wednesday 12 July 2017 — Festival van Avignon, Vedène
  14. Thursday 23 November 2017 — Le Parvis, Tarbes
  15. Friday 18 January 2019 — Palais des Beaux Arts, Charleroi
  16. Saturday 19 January 2019 — Palais des Beaux Arts, Charleroi

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