The opening of Het TheaterFestival starts with a welcome speech by Nora Mahammed in which she thanks everyone for being here; all the people that worked on making the festival happen and all the partners and sponsors. We all know that this is the obligatory part but we willingly participate with our applause. The prizes for best actors will be announced later this evening but I think that Mahammed already deserves one for the way she was able to thank Pajottenlander Fruji fruitjuice for ‘their delicious drinks to quench our thirst during the festival.’ After that Patricia Kargbo and Louis Verlinde appear as our hosts for this opening and they welcome us with the reminder:

‘Resistance is important.’

A big group rises from the audience, it’s the cast of Stereo Denta Plastique, the annual social project by Antigone. The show was selected for the festival, but unfortunately couldn’t be performed due to practical reasons. Michael Vandewalle and Silke Thorrez give a short speech while the big crew forms a line right next to them. The whole speech is about all the things that they could’ve said in their speech. ‘Age is only a number’ interrupts one of the actors, and that’s the only thing that needs to be said.

Next up is the State of the Youth, and let me tell you this: the youth is not okay. In his speech, Loucka Elie Fiagan perfectly captures the visceral cynicism that I recognize in so many people my age (including myself). This year’s State of the Youth breathes Mark Fisher’s legacy. His book Capitalist Realism (2009) lays bare the workings of our capitalist system; on how it thrives on the idea that the only alternative to this system is doom and that every attempt to escape from it will eventually be transformed into something that will serve it. Fiagan knows this, his speech against the system is embedded in the system and there is no escaping. He directly addresses the ambassadors of the performing arts field:

‘Do they want to cultivate authentic expression and feeling, or are they merely interested in conceptualising that feeling?’

The question remains unanswered, the questioning itself becomes a performance.

It reminds me of the following quote by Audre Lorde:

‘They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change’,

coming from the essay ‘The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House’ (also one of Fiagan’s inspirations). The title of Lorde’s essay speaks for itself. 

There is one problem; the master’s tools are hyper automated, state of the art, technological advancements, powered by AI. The ones we must invent ourselves would probably look a bit like the toaster that the designer Thomas Thwaites made in an attempt to DIY a modern product from start to finish, from mining iron ore to casting a plastic cover. The toaster looks like this, not exactly the tool that looks like it will make the pillars of our capitalist society tremble. For those wondering whether it works, it did, for 5 seconds.

After Fiagan’s State of the Youth, it’s time for the State of the Union. Iman Aoun opens her speech by explaining the difference between reality and surreality. 

Reality is the fact that those living in Gaza are under constant threat, that schools, houses and hospitals are constantly bombed and that too many civilians and children have died already. Surreality is the claim that these horrors are justified as attempts to exterminate Hamas and the way that politics and media downplay, or straight up deny the genocide

Aoun’s speech is a call for action, the situation in Palestine is still fucked up and it’s important that we continue talking about it and act in solidarity. That call for action will be continued here. The best way to tackle nihilism is by becoming part of a collective (in the broadest sense of the word) that aims to improve the world around us.

If you don’t know how you can help, here’s a link to the BDS which has a list of practical actions you can undertake to help. These are tools that you could consider the master’s tools (protests, petitions, e-mailing/contacting politicians) but you can still give the master a solid headache if you strike him with a manufactured toaster from Mediamarkt.

https://palestinasolidariteit.be/

The QR code that was put on the screen after the Iman Aoun’s speech and abruptly replaced by the next slide announcing the next thing on the program, (I’ll come back to that later, don’t worry) leads to the website of the ASHTAR theatre, here is the link:

https://www.ashtar-theatre.org/

If you’ve been a bit on the background concerning Palestine in the last few months, it’s not too late to show your support now. As Aoun tells us in her speech:

‘Solidarity is a long term strategy.’

That being said, I feel the need to confess something, I dozed off for a bit during the speech, it can’t have been more than five minutes, but it still happened, I fell asleep. Not because the matter doesn’t interest me, not because I don’t care about all the horrors that are still happening in Palestine, not because the speech was boring or unengaging, or because Iman Aoun’s tone was sleep inducing, but simply because I was tired. Tired from a lack of sleep by trying to combine being a redaction member for Het TheaterFestival with a night job in a bar in Brussels (because capitalism). And tired from an oversaturation of horrific facts and images combined with a feeling of helplessness and guilt. 

The speech ended in a standing ovation; of course it did, it had to. And I, being the hypocrite I am, woken by the sound of the applause, participated in this standing ovation; of course I did, I had to. It all feels a bit performative; the invitation to Aoun from het TheaterFestival, the standing ovation, this article. But then again, performative action is still better than no action. (I guess?)

The surreality that Aoun describes is immediately confirmed when right after the speech our happy hosts enter the stage again and announce that we will now open a bottle of cava to announce the winners of the acting awards, the discomfort of this transition is noticeable in the audience and visible on the faces of our hosts. The show must go on.

The prizes are divided in three categories: best collective work, best performance 35- and best performance 35+. Previously the price categories were based on gender, I’m assuming that they switched this up because society’s view on gender is radically changing. However, the new categories based on age immediately nullify the earlier exclamation that ‘age is only a number’.

If anything, the whole opening ceremony is a huge contradiction. It participates in the things it tries to oppose. I’ve been poking fun with the hypocrisy of the whole, but hypocrisy is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s what makes us human I suppose, desperately trying to conceal it, is what makes it problematic. Theatre often attempts to expose the contradictions within ourselves and our institutions. Friction and conflict are what makes an interesting play. The foyer offers a perfect space for discussion, for disagreement, for difference. Let us engage in conversations about the themes that the theatre pieces offer us, about the way the actors deal with their inner conflicts and about how we can learn from the mistakes they make on stage, instead of getting drunk on the free cava after the reception and boasting about how ‘awfully busy’ we’ll be upcoming season. (yes, I’m also guilty, I confess).

There is a duality that I think most of us in the cultural field feel, Luanda Casella points it out in Elektra Unbound; a desire to make the world a better place through art combined with an individual desire to be acknowledged, to be seen, to be in a place of power. A need to go against the structures while still being very dependent on them to realise our project. We should continue addressing these dualities. We can only be truly critical about things we care about. That being said: being critical is easy, coming up with alternatives is not, but we can try. And we should.