Learning through life
A Swiss director puts his Flemish child actors, and international audience, through one-of-a-kind experience
In this day and age when many young children have smartphones and access to the internet, when and how do you start discussing adult issues with them?
CAMPO, an arts centre in Ghent, regularly invites a professional theatre director to create projects with children. Last year Swiss director Milo Rau, who heads the International Institute of Political Murder in Cologne, Germany, got the call. His project “Five Easy Pieces”– its title taken from Igor Strawinsky’s composition which he used to teach his children to play piano – intriguingly, focuses on the infamous Belgian child murderer Marc Dutroux.
That leads to another debate in theatre schools, ongoing for decades: can young actors realistically portray the life and actions of someone much older than them, or even express emotions they have not yet experienced in real life? I personally don’t teach acting classes, but have heard comments that undergraduate students here are not mature enough to study and understand Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” despite the play being taught in high schools in many countries.
In first scene of “Five Easy Pieces” the audience watched seven child actors, aged between nine and 13, attending an audition, which helped us see them as they actually were. The remaining scenes showed us how they re-enacted the way in which adult actors the portrayed life and actions of Dutroux and others involved, on a screen above the stage. These were juxtaposed with an adult actor, who portrayed their director and gave comments and instructions and interrupted some scenes as if they were in rehearsals. Given the subject matter, one scene was highly controversial – an encounter between Dutroux and a young girl. Audiences and critics were split in their opinions as to whether or not this scene should be part of the play. The fact that in some scenes a camera captured the actions of the child actors and fed the live close-up video images, in black and white, onto the screen made it look less realistic, however. With all these, the audience wouldn’t empathise with the play or learn more about Dutroux, which we can do elsewhere, but observe how child actors experience theatre – and the society we’ve created for them to live in.
With his worldwide fame and acclaim from previous works in the genre of documentary theatre and film, Rau was well supported by many theatres and festivals for this project. The premiere last May was at Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels and it was then staged at Sophiensale in the German capital in July where it returned last month as part of Theatertreffen. Singapore International Arts Festival (SIFA) is also on board and the Asia premiere was there last August when it caught controversy as, unlike elsewhere, only audiences 18 years and older were allowed to watch this work.
Interestingly and in contrast to what happened in the island state, “Five Easy Pieces” was recently staged at a children’s theatre festival. The work is still touring to many venues across Europe – the child actors still look and sound fresh and natural. In some scenes, some dialogue even sounds improvised though the English surtitles prove otherwise.
The demand for this play is so high that a second group of actors is already in rehearsal. It’s good to know, though, that the children only perform on weekends and study in regular schools on weekdays. That’s different from many child actors who have been forced by their parents into home schooling while working on touring stage productions or TV soaps.
The writer’s trip was fully supported by Germany’s Federal Foreign Office.
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For more on IIPM and CAMPO Gent, Visit www.International-Institute.de and www.Campo.nu.
