Festival ‘Beyond the Blackbox’ fans out all over Antwerp with performances that can’t be pigeonholed (Antwerp)
In the Central Station, in a mosque, on the street, on a tennis court or in a community center: the first Antwerp edition of the arts festival Beyond the Blackbox treats the public for three days to groundbreaking work that breaks open the classical theater setting.
Creating a presentation platform for surprising art that gets little space in Antwerp for sketches: that is the aim of Beyond the Blackbox. The arts festival originated a few years ago in the cultural house de Brakke Grond in Amsterdam and will now have a first, Antwerp one on 13, 14 and 15 May.
In total there are a dozen for planned projects, including a handful of premieres. Organizing partners are Monty, Platform 0090, wpZimmer and C-TAKT. “Antwerp has a strong theater practice and a rich visual arts tradition, but in between lies a wasteland”, says Lana Willems, artistic director of Monty. “With Beyond the Black Box we want to close the gap.”
Seef angle
“The idea of organizing an Antwerp part of the festival arose because we saw that there was a show on the Amsterdam that could not be seen in Antwerp itself. In other words, the festival will have a section on its own soil out of necessity because there is little presentation space here,” says Helga Baert of the wpZimmer arts venue, located in the Antwerp Seefhoek.
The performances that take place during Beyond the Blackbox take place in surprising locations. From a tennis court to a mosque of the Central Station. “By performing in public places like this, we lower the threshold. The idea is that transdisciplinary work is difficult, we want to get rid of that. Many performances are just very accessible,” says Baert. “The common thread of the festival is that the audience should not sit in a hall for any performance.”
For example, the young collective Par Hasard developed a podcast about empathy that is presented in interactive form in Buurthuis Unik and in the Mehmet Akif mosque. “The performance by Dan Musset will then continue in Central Station. Musset was inspired by the many encounters that take place in a station.” He mapped out different station stories and encounters and now invites the public to recreate these stories.
Bath of Marie
The full festival program can be viewed on the website of theater house Monty. Beyond the Blackbox is actually not just for sitting down in Central Station. Theater company Bad van Marie will also be moving to the imposing building from 23 April with a new performance. Human Zoo, that’s what it’s called. “In Human Zoo, a voice resounds in your headphones. She guides you while walking through one of the most beautiful stations in Europe. Actors blend into the crowd, passers-by become actors and the spectators unconsciously become extras in each other’s radio play.” Play as a spectator in the station.
All info: www.monty.be and www.badvanmarie.be