a performance by Robert Steijn (55 minutes)

music: Steve Heather
software: Waagsociety/Keyworx

a solo about dying, a countdown to the moment where the breathing stops. 

a performance about what happens from moment to moment, the night when your father is dying in your arms. What actually happens when his heartbeat stops and silence enters the room of the hospital. A performance as a dialogue and a lecture, in which father and son are mirroring the story from different perspectives, by the use of new media (keyworx).

Facing the invisible questions how to create a silent space on stage, a space without any conflicts, a place we know so well when we are on drugs, in love, or witnessing something very important in our lives, like the death of a loved one.

Facing the invisible is a theatrical dive into silence when death shows his face. This lecture-performance, given by Robert Steijn and his father analyses the son-father-relationship at the moment when the father starts to die. With the audience as a witness Robert Steijn and his father describe and count down the moments till the final breath arrives.

shamanism

Facing the invisible is related to his growing interest in shamanism; in these two solo’s he wants to set up modern rituals of personal transformation within the context of a community. He sees these performances – not without humor – as initiation ceremonies in growing up, and in taking responsibility for his own life; in front of the eyes of and within the community. Together with Fur stefan, this solo reveals a deconstruction of two dramatic moments of his personal life, performed in a combination of performance art, text, dance and new media. He constructs accessible stories, which reveals a desire for stillness, for being in harmony with the situation, a desire for total surrender to a state of not knowing what to do, except observing feelings and thoughts. 

Facing the invisible started as a lecture demonstration at a conference about the meaning of silence in social communication in Barcelona 2003. Robert Steijn transformed this lecture into a theatreperformance (Bergen 2004) and was later shown in several theatres in Amsterdam and in Vienna.