atelier

De Schrijver De Koning, with and after texts by Karl Valentin, a 90s offshoot of the theatrical evenings set up by the Belgian-Dutch repertory company De Vere (a collaboration between Discordia, STAN, and Dito'Dito), was the very first polycoproduction, a performance by and with Matthias de Koning and Damiaan De Schrijver. Several other polycoproductions have followed since, some of them together with de KOE and Dood Paard: My Dinner With André (1998), Vandeneedevandeschrijvervandekoningendiderot (2001), Onomatopee (2006), We hebben een/het boek(niet) gelezen (2008), and Beroemden (2012).

In the spring of 2017 Matthias de Koning, Damiaan De Schrijver, and Peter Van den Eede will present Atelier. After their study of the actor's profession in Vandeneedevandeschrijvervandekoningendiderot they will now pick it up again in Atelier. Do theatre makers have a studio, just like sculptors and painters, a place where their ideas may or may not take shape, and if so, what does that studio look like? What type of work do we do, where and how and when and why? Is it work? How do we portray characters? What do we emphasise? Are we a display? Are we our own and each other's model? Are we a self-portrait? Looking and being looked at, history, art, life as frames, mounts, edgings for the displays on the canvas of our skin. Rebuilding and then demolishing the fourth ‘walls’ in a bifrontal or quadrifrontal setting. A laboratory investigation into naturalism, realism, hyperrealism.

Large windows casting cold October light onto our innermost feelings. Wrapping up air. Sanding down wooden planks. Eating potatoes. Cooking mussels. Pissing beside the urinal. Writing a farewell letter. (being labelled) Removing an appendix. Sitting. Someone rings the bell. A door. A chink. A spot. A raft. Pitch-dark. A raft.