1800 Ft / Student: 1400 Ft (Trafó Season Ticket is valid!)
Extract from their piece Tinseltown:
Abattoir Fermé is a theatre collective founded in 1999 and based in Mechelen (Belgium). Its earliest productions -"cult guerilla theatre"- blended influences ranging from dadaism to horror movies into a humorous-yet-disturbing personal style.
From 2002 onwards, Abattoir Fermé further explored their love of fantasy worlds, filmic narratives and often grotesque acting style. New themes were found in science, counterculture, outsider art, dissident politics, twisted sexuality and various themes clouded by obscurity or taboo. The formal aspects and visual style became more significant, sampling and contextualizing influences from comic books, horror cinema, subcultures, paintings, Hollywood, etc.
Today, Abattoir Fermé produces two to three new plays per year. The company's style has been described as provocative, physical, funny, disturbing, full of powerful imagery and a dark sense of humour. In its most recent productions, Abattoir Fermé defines itself as a theatre company focussing on the constant development of new visual narratives. The company loves each production to be quite different from the other. What binds them together, is a love of themes and forms like cinema, private backrooms, the metropolis, horror, rituals, intense acting, the grotesque and burlesque, the enigma, the underground, outsiders and all things deviant.
The production Galapagos (2004) proved to be a breakthrough. In its visual design, dark atmosphere and fragmented narrative, Galapagos marked a new step in the development of Abattoir’s artistic discourse. The piece received wide critical acclaim and was selected for the annual Flemish-Dutch Theatre Festival as an extraordinary and memorable production. With Galapagos, Abattoir Fermé first started performing outside of Belgium.
Flemish company Abattoir Fermé has established itself in recent years by making confronting, provocative theatre performances balancing between thriller and dark comedy. The images are often inspired by experimental cinema, comics, and other influences from the counter-culture. Directors Lernous and Vandecasteele understand what Fear is, and how to establish it on stage: fear of the unknown, fear of the physical, fear of the End. (8Weekly, critical webzine, 2006)
“We would like to be outside every category. Make plays that are different, an exception. In this regard, I think you shouldn’t misunderstand democracy. In a democracy, not only the voice of the majority counts, but also the right of the minority to be heard, and that’s us.” /Artistic director Stef Lernous interviewed by Etcetera, magazine on the arts, 2004/
The performance is in Dutch and English.
Director: Stef Lernous
Actors:
Mieke Laureys, Tine Van den Wyngaert, Joost Vandecasteele
Soundscore: Kreng
Production: Abattoir Fermé with Arts Centre nOna, Nieuwpoorttheater & Mechelen 2005.
With the support of: Flemish Advocacy
