In Matisklo, Bosse Provoost and five other theatre makers search for the limits of what can be expressed in words and images on the basis of poems by Paul Celan, with costumes that swallow a person up and heaps of inspired material.
As a survivor of the Holocaust, Celan goes to moral and linguistic extremes. His poetry reaches for that which is ‘beyond’ language: a world long before or long past mankind, speaking from beyond his own death… Every word is like a stone that can be picked up and examined from multiple directions. Benjamin Cools and Joeri Happel take a shot at it.
Several ambiguous and inward-looking ‘inclemencies’ also come into play. What extensions of meaning and imagination arise when these inclemencies converge with Celan’s poems?
Doesn’t the dark of the sky testify to distant starlight that can never reach this world? Matisklo is an invitation to gaze at ‘black stars’.
THREADSUNS
above the grayblack wastes
A tree-
high thought
grasps the light-tone: there are
still songs to sing beyond
mankind.
(P. Celan, Breathturn)
Now that even the president of the United States is helping to make racism and anti-Semitism socially acceptable again, a group of young Flemish theatre makers are throwing a fresh theatrical spotlight on the language of an almost forgotten Holocaust poet.
"In these images – and there are more of them – Matisklo opens up, revealing a world that is bigger than the images themselves, in which the unspeakable becomes palpable."
director
- Bosse Provoost
concept
- Bosse Provoost
performance
- Joeri Happel
- Benjamin Cools
- Ezra Veldhuis
- Geert Belpaeme
dramaturgy
- Geert Belpaeme
sound design
- Benjamin Cools
costume design
- Max Pairon
set and light design
- Ezra Veldhuis
text
- Paul Celan
translation
- Ton Naaijkens
production
- Toneelhuis
- P.U.L.S. - Project for Upcoming Artists for the Large Stage
- Kraagsteen
coproduction
- kunstencentrum Vooruit
- Jonge Harten Theaterfestival
with the support of
- wp Zimmer
- De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam
- Tax Shelter maatregel v/d Belgische Federale Overheid
- Casa Kafka Pictures Tax Shelter powered by Belfius
