• 10/01/2020 De Meervaart, Amsterdam (NL)
  
• 01/02/2020 CC De Adelberg, Lommel (BE)
  
• 08/02/2020 Westrand, Dilbeek (BE)

What is the place of the human in a world in which ecological catastrophe and technology are fundamentally challenging this position? This performance by Kris Verdonck explores the physical and mental state of being in the face of an impending extinction.
The combination of a merciless desire for profit and growth with technological developments, has reduced the human to a disposable object. Making the landscape in which we live inhabitable is the next step. What remains after social, economic and ecological elimination? The dancers wandering around in Something (out of nothing), are oftentimes not more than silhouettes or shadows. They are the ghosts that are the consequence of the destructive dynamics between humanity and the landscape, which in the performance is evoked by large inflatable sculptures and noise cello player Leila Bordreuil. 

A production of  A Two Dogs Company (BE) & ICK (NL) 

SOMETHING (out of nothing)

• 14/01/2020 Cultuurhuis De Warande, Turnhout (BE)
  
• 24/02/2020 SPOT/Stadsschouwburg, Groningen (NL)

What do you say, do or make when the end is nigh? In Conversations at the end of the world, a piece by Kris Verdonck / A Two Dogs Company for large auditoria, five figures find themselves in an empty theatre space. They have only their bodies, their capabilities and the time that is left to them. Together these five figures, played by Johan Leysen, Jan Steen, Jeroen Van der Ven, José Kuijpers and the renowned pianist Marino Formenti, create a portrait of humankind in the crazy twentieth century – a century in which man’s image has been significantly eroded and whose wounds we still carry with us today. Waiting for the catastrophe that is inevitably coming, or in the midst of it, they welcome the audience to ‘a last evening’. When faced with death, the characters react with boredom, panic, madness, lethargy, nonsense and absurdity. Their absurdity is fed by the crazy logic of the war, ecological disasters, and all kinds of crises. Despite being in shock, they try to understand what is going on outside, and it is this absurd reaction to a cruel reality that lies behind this project.

A production of A Two Dogs Company (BE), Het Zuidelijk Toneel (NL) and a coproduction with Kaaitheater (BE), Rotterdamse Schouwburg (NL), Fondation d’entreprise Hermès within the framework of the New Settings program (FR) 

CONVERSATIONS (at the end of the world)

• 06/02/2020 Ainsi, Maastricht (NL)
  
• 12/02/2020 TR Schouwburg, Rotterdam (NL)
  
• 13-14-15/02/2020 Kaaistudio's, Brussels (BE)
  
• 18/02/2020 De Nieuwe Vorst, Tilburg (NL)
  
• 21/02/2020 Toneelschuur, Haarlem (NL)
  
• 26/02/2020 Frascati, Amsterdam (NL)
  
• 27/02/2020 Corrosia, Almere (NL)
  
• 17/03/2020 Het Nationaal Theater, Den Haag (NL)

In ACT, Kris Verdonck explores various aspects of the relation between the human on the verge of disappearing in the work of Samuel Beckett. ACT approaches Beckett in three ways: with a monologue with Beckett texts (Stories and texts for nothing), performed by Johan Leysen, with a scientist, invited to react to Beckett and with an autonomous scenography, a possible landscape for a Beckett text.

The variety and multidisciplinary approach reflect the complexity of Beckett’s work and are at the same time an attempt to literally take apart this complexity. The triptych of science, theatre and high-tech show, as in three acts, each a different facet of the diamond ‘Beckett’. They deepen each other’s experience: a particular way of performing brings a scientific insight to life and vice versa, a performative scenography zooms in on the underlying world of or perhaps after the actor and offers a more contemplative experience.

A production of A Two Dogs Company & Het Zuidelijk Toneel (NL)

ACT

Book release: February 2020

Machine Made Silence. The Art of Kris Verdonck brings together an array of essays written by leading scholars in the field of theatre and performance studies and a series of interviews, performance texts, notes on particular works, and an extensive overview and images and drawings of Verdonck’s oeuvre. The question that fueled this book is that of how to make work today. Looking at the work of Kris Verdonck, tensions come to the fore between humans and machines, between life and death, between the now and the end, between visual arts and performing arts, between something and nothing.

Edited by Peter Eckersall and Kristof van Baarle. With a preface by Guy Gypens and texts by Maaike Bleeker, Andy Lavender, Charlotte De Somviele, Peter Eckersall, Edward Scheer, Tawny Andersen, a.o.

Published by Performance Research Books, Aberystwyth, UK 

204 pages - 49 color images