The performance based on Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s book “The Discomfort of Evening” is a visual story about the experience of loss and its accumulation in the body and imagination; about the attempt to confront the tragedy that confines the 10-year-old protagonist and her relatives in a world immersed in mourning; about the need to find meaning in death. It is also a story about maturing and the end of childhood.
The world, where eternal winter and penetrating cold reign, is full of magical thinking, spells, and prayers. We see it through the eyes of a little girl entering adolescence. She is at once an observer of the course of events, a narrator, and a creator of fantasies – she retains the memory of the tragedy, grapples with feelings of guilt and responsibility for her parents, and struggles with the pangs of emptiness.
The plasticity of the world seen from a child’s perspective and the childlike imagination described in the book allow for the creation of images from the experiences recorded in it. These images become independent micro-stories. The disturbing everyday life, from which the director builds the visuality of the performance, also consists of observations of the bonds between people and animals. Through this prism, we can take a closer look at family relations – a family that lives next to each other, not with each other.
The play deals with the themes of death, depression and adolescent sexual behaviour.
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