Marijke De Roover and Helen Anna Flanagan

De Belgische Marijke De Roover en de Britse Helen Anna Flanagan tonen op het Playground Festival het resultaat van hun allereerste samenwerking: And then she said: "You have a future, but it looks a lot like your past.” 

At the Playground Festival, Belgian Marijke De Roover and British Helen Anna Flanagan will be showing the result of their very first collaboration: And then she said: "You have a future, but it looks a lot like your past.” 

How would you describe yourselves as artists?

Helen: "I work mostly with moving image, film so to speak. In terms of content, I am particularly interested in how people behave and present themselves in public space, and why they do so. I observe that and ask questions, a bit like an anthropologist or sociologist would. My fiction scenarios are experimental, indirectly critical and often absurd."

Marijke: "My work usually consists of multimedia performances: I combine film with a live monologue on stage, in which I let various characters speak. I made my first performance in 2012. After that, I focused on film, and since 2018, I've gone back to doing performances. Personal considerations are usually the starting point: ideas about queerness, feminism, mental health.... I then pull those open to broad, more general concepts."

How did you come up with the idea of working together?

Helen: "We met at Hoger Instituut voor Schone Kunsten in Ghent, during a residency program. That's where we became friends. I felt a natural connection with Marijke's work: I found it very rich and unique and playful. It is also remarkable how she can bring theoretical and abstract subjects in such a light and entertaining way. You are always entertained when you go to see Marijke. I'm also interested in.... Let me put it this way: I don't want to bore the audience. (laughs) Entertainment is not a dirty word to me. You have to seduce people."

Marijke: “I was very attracted to Helen’s visual style. I love her humor and how she writes her super deep characters. Besides: you can learn so much when you work together, because your approach and your practice are never quite the same."

Helen: "Thanks, Marijke!"

Sounds like you two complement each other well

Helen: "Yes, we were already good friends, and we both wanted to work together at some point. Bringing together the worlds of performance and film, and seeing what comes out of it. That is what we are working on now."

"The work will consist of a film with six female characters in it. We will interweave this with a performance by Marijke and probably another actress. Marijke and I write the texts. It will be a complex performance, with a lot of variety. We are very interested in écriture féminine, a term launched in the 1970s by the French literary critic Hélène Cixous. It's quite a far-reaching concept, but in essence it's about decentering: no central narrative point of view, but multiple voices that are all equally important. It is also about a circular way of writing versus the linear narrative, which Cixous associates with male authors. There's a description I like very much: 'the feminist voice as an ecstatic flood of words'. So expect lots of language, lots of dialogue, and an unrelenting desire to communicate."

Marijke: "There is no clear story in the dialogues, we don't go from A to B and neatly onwards to C, as you would expect. Many things are repeated. Circularity instead of linearity. The characters do have their own identity, but they also adopt elements of the other characters. We play with different points of view, and we also try to break through the fourth wall – the barrier between the audience and what is happening on stage. Performance can play a big part in that, because it's a great way to draw the audience into the performance."

"The starting point is a trauma circle: people who have experienced trauma and sit together to talk. But we don't define trauma. We're mainly concerned with the way women talk about it. The circle is a tool, they're not talking heavy shit or anything..."

Helen: "We are also doing the filming at a location with meaning and visual interest: the cultural centre in Dilbeek, designed in the late 1960s by the Flemish brutalist architect Alfons Hoppenbrouwers. The building feels like a playground, with very interesting architectural shapes, including circles and arches. In terms of content, there is a clear circular motif: the circle of trauma, the circular narrative, the repetitions... So we're pulling that through visually as well."

How do the film and the performance fit together?

Marijke: "We're still working on that, at the moment. Of course, the film has to be edited in such a way that it takes the performance into account, you can’t just have ten minutes of people talking on screen while I'm just standing there. But we're not ready for that yet, because the focus was on the film first: the script, the casting, the location..."

What has the collaboration taught you so far?

Helen: "It's something new for both of us. Writing together opens up possibilities and is very enriching, but it also takes a lot of time to get it organised and structured."

Marijke: "I'm quite unpredictable when it comes to writing. Half of the script is done in two days, so to speak, and then I do nothing for a month and a half (laughs). In a partnership, of course, this is not possible. I'm not used to working with actors either. I always make my films myself, or maybe with the help of a friend. There is no directing involved, or no professional editing. These are all things Helen now takes care of."

Will you each stay on your domain, or will you also take over some of each other's role?    

Helen: "I stay behind the camera, because that's the world I know – and maybe I'm a little shy in front of the camera too (laughs). Marijke keeps on performing, because that's her thing. But of course we work together."

Marijke: "We did the writing together. I'm more focused on the acting, and Helen on the film stuff. We complement each other and we support each other."

Helen: "Working together like this is already a big leap for both of us. If we were to switch roles as well, there would be additional stress. More something for the next project though (laughs)."

Buren

Buren aka Melissa Mabesoone and Oshin Albrecht, are no strangers to the regular Playground audience. This year they are on the bill for the third time.

How would you describe 'buren'?

Oshin: "We call ourselves a collective, even though there are only two of us (laughs). Neighbours is a collective term for everything we do as a couple: video, prints, books, music, installations... We are visual artists as well as performance makers."

Melissa: "We started at the end of 2012, so we've been at it for a while. Our aesthetic is very visual, but it also has music and humour."

Oshin: "We also have individual projects and we regularly collaborate with other artists. But buren do have the main share."

Melissa: "It's our core business (laughs)."

The Playground Festival is placed at the intersection of performing and visual arts. Is that a good place for you?

Melissa: "Yeah, I guess we're real Playground kids."

Oshin: “When we started working on our last performance, 'Blue Skies Forever', we had a really interesting conversation with Steven Vandervelden, the director of STUK, who co-programs Playground."

Melissa: "We appeared to have a common interest in some artists and works. He was also the first to be really interested in how we see ourselves as artists. The way we want to play with different media, that we also want to make performances.... Without him saying: Please, you guys don't have a stage background, do you?"

"Playground seemed to him a very appropriate context for our work. It's really nice to find that a programmer anticipates what you're doing, because ultimately as an artist you're always in a dependent position."

Buren has a special bond with Playground: you were there the last two editions.

Melissa: "Yes, very nice. It was also interesting to be able to show 'Blue Skies Forever' in different phases. The first time it was a try-out in one of the studios. The following year we developed the show further into a stage performance and performed in the main hall. Great to be able to take that route, and see a lot of faces back for that second performance. They, in turn, felt like they had been able to follow our process along."

In this edition, you bring a new performance: SPARE TIME WORK.

Melissa: "A performance about leisure and labour. With lots of music (laughs)."

Oshin: “You could almost call the work abstract. It doesn't have the classic musical form, of course, but we do tell a lot through song and music. I think that's also because in the show we explore the role that radio, television and the Internet play in leisure and work."

Melissa: "That's probably true for a lot of people, but as an artist it's really about finding a work/life balance. The boundaries are very thin, because when are you working, and when do you have free time? It is very often blurred. When you start thinking about that, questions arise automatically that almost everyone struggles with, or has struggled with. We then bring those questions to the public in our way."

Oshin: "We like to show many different sides of a story and to create a picture in a layered way. As an artist, you feel a certain commitment – even devotion – to your work. Melissa and I sometimes compare that to being a mother. We ask ourselves the question: If this work is our baby, does that make us mothers? If this work is our baby, what kind of mothers are we? When we made the performance, we linked that motherhood to the figure of the nun: a vessel full of love, someone who is always taking care of other people. So links are created between all these characters: nun, mother, artist... It's our way of creating a kind of separate, hybrid world."  

You come from fine arts. What attracts you to the theatre?

Melissa: "Part of the magic of theatre is that people buy a ticket to hear what you have to say. The stage gives you some kind of power. That's a privilege. But at the same time the audience comes with expectations: for them it's an evening out. In our work – including visual work – we always try to address that ambiguity in terms of content."

"When you stop to think about the concept of theatre, you also immediately ask interesting questions about leisure and labour. For the audience, it's free time, but the performers and crew are at work. Producing a performance is hard work, but at the same time it is an enormous pleasure to play, and to be able to share things with the audience. All those ambiguities make it so intriguing. In any event: we never find being on stage easy. To us, every performance is special.”

Playground: 11.11 - 14.11.2021