How Goes the World - Histoire(s) du Théâtre V Tim Etchells / NTGent

They exit and enter through doors somehow separated from walls, rushing to be part of a play that either hasn’t started or else ended decades ago. They slump to the sofa, weeping. They rise from the armchair in anger, then collapse again like amnesiacs. They head downstage to stare from a window that doesn't exist anymore. A piano plays the same tune repeatedly, grinding and warping its’ melody.

With Tim Etchells, NTGent adds a big name to the list of (inter)national artists creating a brand new play for the Histoire(s) du Théâtre series. Etchells’s contribution to the series uses a fragmentary quotation from Shakespeare’s Macbeth as its title: "How goes the world".

Four performers come and go in a confusion of roles, costumes, scene changes, and light effects. Butlers, servants, messengers, soldiers, doctors, lovers, murderers, dancers, drunks, scoundrels, liars, and innocents are all here, along with queens and kings in tattered robes, all of them wailing in the fake snow that falls somewhere between the bookcase, the coffee table, the dead tree and the ironing board. A storm outside. A war in the distance. The sound of applause.

ABOUT TIM ETCHELLS

Tim Etchells is a British artist and performer, born in 1962. He co-founded the company Forced Entertainment in 1984 and has been its artistic director ever since. In the past decades, Forced Entertainment became renowned all over the world for its renewing, minimalist, humorous and tantalising theatre. In 2016, the collective was awarded the prestigious International Ibsen Award.

Etchells' work often explores themes such as language, communication, and the relationship between performer and audience. His performances have been presented on major stages and festivals worldwide. Invited by NTGent, Etchells now creates the fifth part of the series Histoire(s) du Théatre. The Brit follows in the footsteps of Milo Rau, Faustin Linyekula, Angélica Liddell and Miet Warlop.