INFANTEN

German version

How would we get along, if things had no name? Do we still have access to the world we belonged to a long time ago, to the world of thousand possibilities?
This is what director Jolika Sudermann and performers Hilde Labadie and Dwayne Toemere try to examine.
Since March 2012 they are exploring motions, sounds and behaviour of children who are at the cusp of finding their feet and learning to talk. The two performers go back and forth between their grown-up existence and the childish state of tabula rasa. Hilde and Dwayne are trying to dive into the time when anything could turn into everything, into the state before hands learn about the forms of things and before the voice could name them, too. At the same time they are confronted with our grown-up point of view, which is forcing them to stand up again, to name the world, to become human. Their effort to measure up to our expectations, their childish and grown-up bodies, voices and states of consciousness entangle more and more in contradiction. They have to manage to seduce us- the adults- and bear losses, to reconnect the worlds.

Concept/Direction: Jolika Sudermann
Performance: Hilde Labadie, Dwayne Toemere
Dramaturgical advice: Nienke Scholts
Coaching: Esther Snelder
Production: Benjamin Bay
Lights: Tilo Schwarz

Production: zeitraumexit e.V. in co-production with Het Veem Theater, Amsterdam and Dampfzentrale Bern.
Supported by Nationales Performance Netz (NPN) Coproduction Fund for Dance, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM) on the basis of a decision made by the German Bundestag and Landesverband Freie Theater e.V. sponsored by the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Science, Research and Art.