British Theatre Legend Tim Etchells Creates Fifth Part In Prestigious NTGent-series

After forty years of making theatre, British artist Tim Etchells reflects on the history of (his) theatre at NTGent's request. In How Goes the World, four performers engage in an absurd orgy of entrances and exits, sound cues, and feverish memories

They exit and enter through doors somehow separated from walls, rushing to be part of a play that either hasn't started or else ended decades ago. They slump to the sofa, weeping. They rise from the armchair in anger, then collapse again like amnesiacs. They head downstage to stare from a window that doesn't exist anymore. A piano plays the same tune repeatedly, grinding and warping its' melody.

With Tim Etchells, Belgian city theatre NTGent adds a great name to the list of International Artists creating a brand new play for the Histoire(s) du Théâtre series. Since 2018, the series started by current NTGent house artist Milo Rau, gives artists with an impressive track record in the performing arts the chance to reflect on theatre as an art form. Etchells follows in the footsteps of Swiss director Milo Rau, Congolese choreographer Faustin Linyekula, Spanish performance artist Angélica Liddell and Belgian visual artist Miet Warlop. 

Tim Etchells is a British theatre director, visual artist, author and professor. He is the artistic leader of the renowned collective Forced Entertainment celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2024. For How Goes the World, Etchells joins forces with British actors John Rowley and Neil Callaghan, and Belgians Aurélie Lannoy and Aurélie Alessandroni. 

Four performers come and go in a confusion of roles, costumes, scene changes, and light effects. Butlers, servants, messengers, soldiers, doctors, lovers, murderers, dancers, drunks, scoundrels, liars, and innocents are all here, along with queens and kings in tattered robes, all of them wailing in the fake snow that falls. A storm outside. A war in the distance. The sound of applause.

Spoken in English, surtitled in Dutch.

CREDITS

with: Aurélie Alessandroni, Aurélie Lannoy, John Rowley, Neil Callaghan / direction: Tim Etchells / dramaturgy: Matthias Lilienthal / music composition: Graeme Miller / light design: Dennis Diels / costume design: Jo De Visscher / production: NTGent / co-production: Tandem Scène Nationale (Arras-Douai), Wiener Festwochen

DATES

• 2023/11/16: world premiere - Minardschouwburg NTGent (Ghent, BE), 8pm
• 2023/11/17 & 18: Minardschouwburg NTGent (Ghent, BE), 8pm
• 2024/02/9, 10 & 11: Minardschouwburg NTGent (Ghent, BE), 8pm
• 2024/06/04: Tandem Scène Nationale (Douai/Arras, FR)