»The idea is to experience a genuine effort together.«

You are the fourth artist to attempt the task of recounting your theatre history(ies).

Miet Warlop: NTGent entrusted me with the “mission” of telling my history of theatre, following Milo Rau, Faustin Linyekula and Angélica Liddell. It is a project like a long conversation between one artist and another. The answers each person gives are extremely different and personal. And that leads to a wide spectrum of paths, possibilities, but also breaks and fractures. Within these theatre stories, we talk about how certain events that have shaken our personal lives actually flow into our artistic work. It is never entirely possible to know what will come out during the creation of a play. In my case, my work starts from a visual approach. I place particular emphasis on objects, the absurd, humour and laughter. Even though I stand behind this process and it is difficult to separate the work from the artist at certain stages of our lives, it is not my goal to talk purely about myself. It is obvious that our thoughts and desires are likely to change during the creative process. We can never be sure what we will create, what we will feel before, during and after, and even less what others will feel about it…

My first piece, ‘De Sportband / Afgetrainde Klanken,’ which premiered in 2005, is a requiem for my brother. It combines sport and music. Sport as the highest perfection of movement and music as the culmination of sounds and noises. The efforts of the performers on stage were an illustration of existence, of the waves of energy driven by our individual and collective breaths… until the inevitable exhaustion. The pain and grief were so present that I felt the need to create a requiem, but today it is a more peaceful memory. Watching the piece can even evoke joy. In ‘Histoire(s) du théâtre IV: ONE SONG,’ I explore the idea that my artistic practice is cyclical, that it is an ongoing process, a living quest that itself becomes a character. This world that I have built and am still building is a character in its own right. It is capable of looking back on past events nostalgically or non-nostalgically, or even meditating on this past. I like it when traces of the past become visible in the work in the present. That is why the metaphor used in ‘De Sportband’ as a requiem for my brother can be read as a palimpsest in ONE SONG. Between these two moments in my life as an artist lie my twenty years of artistic practice and personal experiences. They are naturally present in this piece, which presents itself as the repetition of cycles, a certain history of theatre…

ONE SONG tells of a transformation through repetition …

Miet Warlop: ONE SONG is the multiple repetition of one and the same song. The piece evokes a long, circular movement, a movement that is present in all my pieces in varying degrees. It is a metaphorical piece about all the things I want to celebrate: celebrating life, celebrating artistic practice, celebrating encounters, celebrating the collective. But even though it is my theatre story, I want to present it through the story of the collective. With ONE SONG, I want to show a group in which no one appears alone, but all roles are evenly distributed. That is also one of the reasons why I do not sing. Instead, I position myself within the group, almost indistinguishable from the others. My work in recent years tells of this collective effort of sharing. In moments of joy, but also in more difficult moments. Through humour and image association, I try to materialise these emotions in order to “abstract” them. ONE SONG tells of all this at once: of repetition and cycles, of collective spirit, of diversity, of humour and of exhaustion. It is the transmission of joy, a shared warmth and a shared pleasure, shared in the moment of effort.

Can you elaborate on the concept of effort that is visible on set?

Miet Warlop: Although the piece stages an arrangement of sports stands, I didn’t want to work with athletes. Musicians, for example, demonstrate the virtuosity of athletes themselves… I’m more interested in the sensitivity of people who perform than in their virtuosity. I invite them to have new experiences on stage and to change their practices. The idea is to experience a real effort together. But this effort must be sought on the side of sensitivity rather than on the side of technique. Thus, the violinist finds herself on a beam like a gymnast. She seeks a new balance in a situation that challenges her habits. What I am trying to question in this way is our deep need to express ourselves and communicate. It is a metaphor: the uncertainty in which we often find ourselves is a game with the (im)balance between the desire to understand and the desire to be understood.

They also tell a specific story about the collective.

Miet Warlop: The setting is a sports club where a music group has set up their instruments to give a concert. Similar to a gym, there are mats on the floor and a small grandstand that plays the role of a social sculpture. On one side sits the audience, loudly expressing its delight but also its disapproval, and on the other side stand the musicians performing. Among the members of this small audience is the sports commentator, who analyses the game/concert. So there are several groups present. ONE SONG depicts the energy transfers from one group to another in various ways. There is the five-piece band that creates, plays and sings the song, performing a physical feat; there is the cheerleader who offers her energy to support the band members and the commentator, but receives no encouragement in return. She gives her all without receiving anything in return. The people in the stands are voyeurs who push the athletes/artists to sometimes push their limits to the extreme without ever being satisfied. They are like puppeteers who dictate the efforts and risks that must be taken, and who even experience moments of intense negativity and manic depression, sometimes directed violently against the people they are ‘fans’ of. The commentator makes herself the spokesperson for everything we think but cannot say. The torments of human desires are shown as if they had been subjected to anatomical dissection. The stage of ONE SONG is a miniature society in which all actions and desires that determine the principles of the collective can be exorcised and even ritualised. I want the energy that explodes on stage to transcend the boundary between stage and auditorium, and for the exorcising nature of a gesture or a repeated emotion to be projected onto the audience and shared with them.

This concert consists of a single song, which is viewed from all possible angles.

Miet Warlop: My answer to the question of how to describe my history with theatre has its origins in Requiem, which I began in 2005. This piece has become “eternal” in my practice. I keep coming back to it, chewing it over and transforming it. My past work meets my future work at a point that is the present of ONE SONG. The moment I integrated music into my visual work was fundamental. Before that, my works did not contain any sound material, and suddenly I allowed myself to break the silence. I work with words like a sculpture. They do not only have a horizontal existence, a word spoken by a figure to a viewer; they are part of a song and take on a third dimension that is both vertical and circular. I work with the vibration, the reverberation of words. ONE SONG is therefore a race against time, in which we repeat a song composed by Maarten Van Cauwenberghe especially for this occasion over and over again. The meaning and significance change constantly, depending on the rhythm and energy we invest in it. On stage, we find ourselves in an ‘again and again’ cycle, to the point where we reach physical and mental exhaustion and face failure.

The principle is to keep trying again and again and to start over and over again. Just like life itself. Since I have the time to question my practice, I naturally have a personal point of view, but I also take into account the way we are connected to each other. I like to question ‘my’ history of theatre in relation to the history that preceded me. My projects are not plucked out of thin air, but part of a chain reaction. I explore strands of thought and action that balance each other out and insert new images so as not to become rigid. I would say that I am constantly exploring my existential loneliness; I welcome the presence of others just as I mourn their absence. And I always do this together with the performers and the audience.

The interview was conducted by Moïra Dalant for the programme of the Festival d’Avignon 2022.