PROJECT

In When I Look at a Strawberry, I Think of a Tongue dancer/choreographer Lisi Estaràs, musician/composer Mirko Banovic, theater maker/actrice Kristien De Proost and dramaturge/theater maker Sara Vanderieck combine their different disciplines and are inspired by Goliarda Sapienza’s novel The Art of Pleasure. Their different approaches come together in a multidisciplinary narration about a separate past and common present. The foursome meet each other under the pretext of Sapienza’s issues on social and political engagement, personal growth, parenthood, sexual desire and aging.

The intention is not to bring a literal reproduction of the 700 page-thick novel on stage, but to use these pages rather as a starting point for the dialogue between the four artists about life and “being” in the world today and how to convey that. The result is a series of “tableaux” inspired by the novel and their own personal relationship with the contemporary world and the specific context in which they create this performance. The research will take place on the margins between abstract and concrete, private and public, fiction and reality.

To ensure that every performance takes place as much as possible in the here and now, it has to be as flexible and adaptable. Each performance is accompanied by a unique “playlist” of selected “tableaux”, based on the artistic urgency of that day and context. In order to make the performance as agile as possible, it is initially created for different settings outside the regular theater halls: from small rooms, to public spaces, to cafés or brasseries, to museums. In a second phase, a version of the work for theater will also be created. This version will be shown in the regular performing arts circuit.