Theatre group explores dynamics of poverty, power and privilege

But first, there’s the December première at KVS of Tristero’s first play in English. Almost a decade after Abigail’s Party, Tristero’s  twisted remake of film director Mike Leigh’s 1977 cult play, the troupe again finds itself in a ’70s decor, complete with the then fashionable hairdos, wigs and wicker chairs. Dress-up parties can be tricky, but here the costuming seems to add value.

“The content is very bound up in time,” explains Kristien De Proost, who joined Tristero in 2002 and became more widely known in Flanders with her role in the VRT drama series Kinderen van Dewindt. “But at the same time, not a lot has changed today, and that’s very unsettling.”

“It’s a matter of Reculer pour mieux sauter,” says Youri Dirkx, the third member of the company’s creative core group. Dirkx explains that setting the story in the past creates a distance, which alienates the audience a bit. But as the story unfolds, everything gets scarily close, holding up a revealing mirror to viewers in the process. “Social commitment was cast off as something trivial for a long time,” adds De Proost, “but it’s starting to become relevant again.”

Vandenbempt: “It’s true that some people told us this was schoolmarmish political theatre. I think that’s only true when the actors become stuck in the formal aspects of telling their story. But we don’t. We always question how we present a text.” 

The parties around the table of the conference on poverty ask themselves – can we still make change happen? In Reset, the people who visit the newsstand feel everything is too connected and complex to be able to make good choices in an age of information overload. “I’m struggling with this global inter-relatedness,” Dirkx admits. “You have to start with – if I can quote Michael Jackson – ‘the man in the mirror’.”

But even changing just one person’s ways can prove a tough feat. “Being consistent is difficult, if not impossible,” Dirkx says. “Can you buy an Israili avocado in a Carrefour supermarket? Or a bottle of water in a Relay press shop? I recently bought new trousers at H&M, and I felt really guilty reading the Made in Bangladesh label.”

And the picture becomes even more complicated, according to De Proost. “You see a documentary quoting workers in an Asian clothing factory: ‘Mind your own business in the West. This job earns me a better living’,” she says. “All our presumptions are constantly taken down. The more we know, the more complex it gets. We feel like we’re constantly playing catch-up with the facts, especially in theatre, which is by definition a slow medium.”

Still, the company remains bent on showing the real world, with all its complexities and nuances. “It’s not our goal to offer a solution,” De Proost says, “but showing that all these different perspectives exist is already quite something.”

Summarising the approach of the collective, De Proost explains that “Tristero needs this kind of friction; we don’t like a smooth, completed story. We want to wring it.”

It’s been like that from the moment Vandenbempt founded the collective with Paul Bogaert and Barbara Van Lindt (both have since left the company). The three were all graduates in theatre sciences at the University of Leuven. “It was a distinct choice to tell something about the world and not focus on just personal problems – unless they could be extrapolated. We debuted with a dark and incomprehensible play by Berthold Brecht,” he laughs. “An adaptation of The American Dream by American playwright Edward Albee followed. But the Martin Crimp translations I made with Youri and Kristien, for instance, also illustrate this approach.”

A Map of the World is the company’s first play in English. (It will be subtitled in Dutch and French.) “Performing in English is more difficult than in French,” Dirkx admits. “In Brussels, we’re more used to using French in our daily lives, and we’ve performed in French before.”

But the decision to perform this particular play in English was for them obvious. “At an international conference, everyone speaks his own version of English,” says Vandenbempt, who adds that he doesn’t want to ignore the reality of Tristero’s home base. “In 30 years’ time, who knows, English could be the primary official language in Brussels.”

Apart from those artistic choices, the collective always had to take into account the specificity of the nation’s capital. This has led to collaborations with Kaaitheater, Beursschouwburg, Théatre National and now KVS for A Map of the World. “Such collaborations are enriching,” Vandenbempt says. “They create space for a long-term commitment because they allow us to play in different configurations all the time.”

7-21 December
KVS
Arduinkaai 9, Brussels
In English, with Dutch and French surtitles
www.tristero.be