Always In The Kitchen: theatre & text

Festival / with CAMPO

Thu 08.11 → 20:00 & 22:00    Fri 09.11 → 20:00 & 22:00    Sat 10.11 → 20:00 & 22:00


Always In The Kitchen
Combining forces for the multidisciplinary art festival Always In The Kitchen, Gouvernement and CAMPO reunite artists and audience in a familiar yet disturbing setting: an IKEA®-kitchen. For three weeks the space is challenged by curators, theatre makers and artists. An unusual context emerges and acts as the blank canvas for the different disciplines, while obtaining multiple layers with every happening.
From off-beat installations and theatrical kitchen scenes to in situ art works and total sensory experiences, nothing, not even the freezers or stoves, will be spared. Week I focuses on theatre & text, week II evolves around visual arts and week III casts a light on cross-overs between music, performance, video and much more.
Week I: Theatre and text
Heading off for the first week: Dounia Mahammed & Gosie Vervloessem, Hof van Eede, Tibaldus and Angelo Tijssens. Each one of them has a strong affinity with language and a sense of humour, especially when it comes to interpreting this new environment. They separately create a ‘kitchen scene’ in which they use and adjust the kitchen and its characteristics, or draw upon famous kitchen plays and scenes representing mundane life at the heart of the home.
Technique: Anne Meeussen & Philippe Digneffe
Dounia Mahammed & Gosie Vervloessem
Dounia Mahammed and Gosie Vervloessem have a strong connection with food, kitchen related themes and kitchen experiments. The artists cherish a fascination in cornflour which also acts as the binding agent between them. In their research “kitchen laboratory”, they translate the transformation of forms, the digestion of human beings and of animals into a search for the hidden, underground and invisible things. As its emphasis lies on transition phases of forms and substances, the kitchen is an ambiguous space.
Text, direction & play: Dounia Mahammed & Gosie Vervloessem
Hof van Eede
Design your own life
Buying a kitchen. For some it’s an investment like everything else, for others a first step towards an existential crisis. Especially at an IKEA store, that listens to the baseline “Design your own life” and is decorated as a collection of picture-perfect backdrops where you can walk around to test your possible lives. Hof van Eede sheds a light on a couple in a show room where they are forced to wonder where they want to feel at home. The staged hygge at IKEA gives such a familiar vibe that it eventually becomes unheimlich. Navigating between hygge, spaghetti meatballs and handless slides, the couple might not only lose their grip but also each other.
Text & direction: Wannes Gyselinck & Ans Van den Eede
Play: Greg Timmermans, Ans Van den Eede & Patrick Vervueren
Tibaldus
Together with two nine-year-old girls, Tibaldus-member Hans Mortelmans evokes a sequence of dreams. In those dreams, two old women, a female dancer and a king who wants to be an actor pass by.
Text & direction: Hans Mortelmans
Play: Hans Mortelmans, Renée Van Reeth & Rosanne Van Severen
Angelo Tijssens

Our senses are masters in associating things which might seem non-related at first, and they clearly link together our taste buds and unforgettable moments. Just like that mesmerising ratatouille dish from the eponymous Walt Disney movie, food and memories seem to rhyme easily together as a match made in heaven. Theatre maker Angelo Tijssens drags us in a play where all our senses are simultaneously triggered and offers a sort of homage to the kitchen with the space as an important glue between food and people.  A walk down memory lane.
Text: Angelo Tijssens
Direction: Pol Heyvaert
Play: An Miller
More information or background can be found in the online handout (in Dutch and English) via the links below.
Always In The Kitchen: theater & tekst_NL
Always In The Kitchen: theatre & text_ENG
Tumult.fm, cultural sidekick of Urgent.fm, had a chat with Gouvernement’s artistic coordinator (and much more than that) Nele Keukelier about the festival, events and kitchen.

Relive the first week! The digital platform KLAP sent one of their illustrators who captured the evening with drawings. Pictures are taken by Tim Theo Deceuninck (1-4) and Dagmar Declercq (5-8).
Don’t forget to buy your tickets!
Tickets are on sale via CAMPO or via this link.
Go the facebook event for more updates.
It’s in the press! Go read De Morgen’s visit at Gouvernement and chat with some of the artists and curators, or Het Nieuwsblad’s coverage of the festival.
Organised by CAMPO and Gouvernement, as part of Always In The Kitchen.
Many thanks to IKEA® Ghent.
Artwork by Lukas Verstraete