THE LOST ONES (after Samuel Beckett)
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An Architecture of Loss
In Samuel Beckett's The Lost Ones, characters search for their lost ones in a space without an exit. They seem to follow unwritten rules. They are the result of the architecture and dynamics of their surroundings. This environment has something hellish: space, light and sound have a merciless effect on the seekers. Their search seems futile: recognition and memory are absent in this world. And yet they continue: nonsensically, bored, playfully, madly, endlessly.
One could also look at it another way: maybe the figures are not so much the seekers as the ones who are being sought, the ones who are missed. Like silhouettes in a white space, they are the holes in our emotional architecture. Somewhere in our memory, in our body, these 'lost ones' wander. They are connections that are no longer made but that are still sought. The world of The Lost Ones is then an architecture of lack, of a loss and longing for something absent that rages through the brain and the body. The figures' absurd searching in this environment is a consequence of that longing and missing. As long as we yearn for them, the people we miss are lost - in us. In the same way, we ourselves may be both seekers and seekers. Will this circle ever be completed, will this desire ever be at rest? Or is it rather like two parallel lines and do the paths of seeker and sought only cross in infinity?
© Beeldstorm/ KASK / A Two Dogs Company
© Beeldstorm/ KASK / A Two Dogs Company
© Beeldstorm/ KASK / A Two Dogs Company
Credits
Concept and Direction: Kris Verdonck
Performance: Toon Acke, Lise Bolikowski, Lotte De Keyzer, Marah Haj Hussein, Emma Van Ammel, Sophie Anna Veelenturf, Maria Zandvliet, Fiene Zasada, Lieselot Siddiki, Luca Persan
Dramaturgy: Kristof van Baarle
Costumes: Eefje Wijnings
Soundscape: Oscar Claus
Lumière & technique: Kato Ooms
A collaboration between KASK – School of Arts and A Two Dogs Company
The Lost Ones is a project in the frame of the three-year research project at KASK – School of Arts by Kris Verdonck and Kristof van Baarle, focusing on the performative and dramaturgical convergences between the work of Samuel Beckett and Noh-theater. This performance was made with third Bachelor and Master students from KASK’s drama program.