A voice, a void, a World Without Us
Show draws on science and imagination to reflect on existence without human beings
On stage World Without Us
When: April 17-29
Where: Cultch Historic Theatre Tickets: from $22, tickets.thecultch.com
Depressing or exhilarating? How you feel after seeing World Without Us may depend upon your perspective going into the theatre.
“We spend a long time in space, when even the Earth has been swallowed by the sun, and you realize that your period of time is incredibly short,” said Karolien De Bleser, the lone performer in the production she calls “a zerologue.”
“For some, this is depressing. For others, it’s the opposite: ‘Wow, I’m just this little part in time, so why am I worrying that I didn’t park my car in the right position,’ or whatever. It can be very comforting to see the bigger picture. But that depends on who you are and how you look at things.”
World Without Us was the winner of 2016 Fringe First Award and finalist for 2016 Edinburgh Fringe Sustainable Practice Award. It’s the third part of a thematic trilogy from Belgian company Ontroerend Goed. Local theatre-goers may recall the company as the force behind Fight Night (not part of the trilogy), which the Cultch brought to town just before the 2016 American election. That politically-charged piece explored the meaning of democracy as it invited audience members to vote for their favourite performer based on rigged answers and questions.
As per its title, World Without Us — making its Canadian premiere at the Cultch — imagines an absence of humanity. There are some props and effects, but mostly it’s voice and imagination.
“We take the visitor on an imaginative trip into time, like if you were to open a time capsule and find some evidence or traces from five thousand years ago,” De Bleser said. “You would find a recording and that would be my voice.”
She collaborated on the piece with Alexander Devriendt, Valentijn Dhaenens, and Joeri Smet (artistic director, performer, and dramaturge with Ontroerend Goed, respectively).
“We read a lot of books about what the world would look like without us. Then we asked a lot of questions of scientists, and looked at what would happen with metal, with plastic, with our clothes, with our glasses, with our teeth. How long can an animal survive without food? How long can an airplane stay in the air?”
They applied their research to the physical space of the theatre.
“What would happen with this floor, with this roof, with these chairs? How long before the walls collapse, and you see the outer world? We put together all the information while keeping track of the information we had on a big timescale.”
She sees the show as guided by the same human compulsion to bury a time capsule or send evidence of our existence into space.
“It’s not about how correct it (the scenario) is,” she said. “Though we try to be as correct as possible. When you talk to scientists, at a certain point they say, ‘Well here I can’t say this or that, because we don’t know.’ It’s more about what would it be like, and in retrospect what does that mean for me now, for my life?”
End-of-the-world scenarios are as popular now as ever, especially on screen. But they’re not as common in theatre.
“Film can create images like factories completely overgrown with grass and trees,” De Bleser said. “In this piece, there’s just the voice and your own imagination. But just those two ingredients can create a whole world.
“What we want to do is guide this thinking exercise together for an hour. I don’t see any other place where that happens. In that sense, theatre is the right medium to talk about the topic in the way we want to talk about it.”