Two Adults and a Child
With echos of Summer Rain (Pluie d’été) by Marguerite Duras, and excerpts of music and text by Eric Dolphy, Sun Ra, ee cummings, Darren O’Donnell, Alan Pauls, New Order, Leonard Cohen, among others.
Concept, text, music, sound - Ant Hampton
Dramaturgie - Rita Pauls
Artistic assistance - Anna Rispoli
Video design / lighting / technical direction - Mikko Gastael (Expander)
Voices in the speakers - Mia Hampton, Maxim Daish-Belay, Ines Labbé
Bodies on the screens - Ishaq El Akul, Dora Meierhans, Garil Paturel, Laia Vaissier Craviotto
French translation - Rita and Alan Pauls
Dutch translation - Elisa Demarré
German translation - Karen Witthuhn / Transfiction
Management - Danila & Freitag, Agentur für Performative Künste
versions in
EN, FR, NL, DE
3 performers, different each night
and no more prepared or rehearsed
than the audience watching.
The two adults copy children visible on screens around them - an "absent presence" of hoodied kids, moving them around like puppets. We hear children too - their voices whispering a narration which tumbles through their observations of adult life - stories, songs, jokes, dreams and rumours that point to vulnerability, openness, humility and surprise.
The adults' movements start to illustrate this narration, or what the children call,
A generation of child heroes with an uncertain future have gathered forces to make a machine for re-animating adults, shaking them from their “screen-entranced anaesthesia” in real time and in front of other adults (the audience) who, the kids hope, will be infected by the process they witness.
Everything is seemingly orchestrated and checked over by the child on stage, aged between 8-11 (also unrehearsed): the recorded children’s “living associate, who we speak to through headphones, concealed beneath their hoodie”. The child organises the files, moves the adults around, points, sings, interrupts, announces, and sometimes joins the audience to watch.
"an automatic-musical-scrapbook-manifesto created by several million abandoned sisters&brothers who live in a shelter by the motorway running alongside the river.”
Two Adults and a Child
Coproduction - Kaaitheater Brussels, ZeitRaumExit Mannheim, Théâtre Vidy Lausanne
Supported by the Landesverband Freie Tanz- und Theaterschaffende Baden-Württemberg e.V. with funds from the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts of the State of Baden-Württemberg,
and by the NATIONALE PERFORMANCE NETZ Koproduktionsförderung Tanz, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media
With thanks to guest performers during testing - Peggy Donnelly, Emiliano Battista, Leandro Battista, Misha and Alma Downey, Martine Lange, Katja Dreyer, Dolores Hulan, Lucius Romeo-Fromm, Chris Harrison-Kerr, James Axford, Klara De Cock Jones.
And for kind support - Britt Hatzius, Martin Hampton, Caroline Daish, Fred Labbé, Michele Piazzi, Nerea Craviotto, Julien Vaissier.
First stage research (Jan 2020) assisted by Nora Tormann (dramaturgy), Arantxa Martinez, Anna Rispoli and Dora Meierhans (movement) and Timo Kleinemeier (tech), managed by Ana Riscado and supported by Theater Rampe Stuttgart and Fonds Darstellende Künste (Initialförderung) with funds from the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media
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Video stills by Mikko Gastael:
top, Alma Downey
middle, Phillippe Beloul, Fumiyo Ikeda, Nica Van Gijsel
bottom, Sigrid Vinks, Alma Downey, Gustavo Miranda