ALL THAT IS WRONG PREVIEW AT THE DRUM THEATRE, PLYMOUTH
Have you ever tried considering everything that is wrong with the world? Really? Everything? Chances are we all have some sense of the things we disagree with but to stop and list everything which is not the way it should be . . . that would be a truly massive task.
This is the beginning point of Ontroerend Goed’s new show, which previewed in the Drum last week. Director Alexander Devriendt told me that, at thirty-five years of age, this was a show that he felt he was too old to write. “I have only facilitated the process,” he said. “With this work all the words come from Koba Ryckewaert who is eighteen and so still making her own decisions about who she is and her place in the world. I’ve made my decisions but Koba is considering, still exploring who she is and where she stands in relation to what’s around her”.
“In our some of our previous shows,” says Alexander, “people have been really concerned with the question of authenticity. Teenage Riot featured a group of young people questioning the mistakes the adults had made. Audiences were so concerned with whether the words they heard were directly from the young people so with this show the words are all Koba’s.”
Koba agreed with this and told me the process of creating the show was a difficult one. “I sat in a room and tried to write down everything that I disagree with. Everything that I thought needed to be changed. It became exhausting. Just when you think you’ve thought of everything someone would come in and ask if I’d included children’s cults for example? I hadn’t – so then I’d need to start writing on another section of the floor and take groups like that into consideration”.
Koba told me creating this show had caused her to reconsider her place in the world and, despite feeling that his place was quite set at this point in his life; she had caused Alexander to begin to do the same thing. “People aren’t oblivious to the world they live in,” she said, “but it’s really hard to keep challenging the status quo. Without meaning to, we begin to take the easy way out and try not to care too much about certain things. It’s different at eighteen; I’m trying to find my place in the world so I’m more prepared to look at everything. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep doing this, as I get older”.
Another theme of the show is to consider the intimacy of words and how they convey meaning. Are they sufficient for us to truly understand one another and can we fully express what we feel inside to the world around us through the use of language? It charts the history of the month and half creative process of the piece and considers how far Koba can convey to an audience the dissatisfaction she feels with so much of the world. As a result, it also looks at the process of theatre and theatre’s relationship with the audience in a unique way.
Koba is trying to provide a manifesto to be prepared to question how you live your life. We all make choices, even if those choices are not to think too deeply and not to put yourself in a position where you have to choose.
All That Is Wrong returns to The Drum, Plymouth, for a full run on November 6, 2012.
Words: Alan Butler
