Project for Upcoming artists for the Large Stage.
Four young directors ask, investigate and play the grand hall.
Follow their projects, their work process and their dialogue.
Timeau De Keyser (b. 1988) graduated in 2011 from the School of Arts |KASK Ghent. Together with Hans Mortelmans and Simon De Winne, he founded tibaldus. After a series of rather abstract productions, such as Paard: een opera, Tibaldus developed a renewed interest in the aspects of ‘acting’ and went back to placing the focus on ‘the actor’. In the work of the Polish author Wiltold Gombrowicz, the company found the right material for developing their (acting) style further, which resulted in two brilliant productions: Yvonne, Prinses van Bourgondië and Het Huwelijk. “The acting must be earnest in order for it to be acting!” Timeau De Keyser also has worked regularly with filmmaker Pieter Dumoulin. Together they made the short film De Reconstructie (2015) and the feature film Etangs Noirs (2018).
Timeau De Keyser (b. 1988) graduated in 2011 from the School of Arts|KASK Ghent. Together with Hans Mortelmans and Simon De Winne, he founded tibaldus, with which he made productions such as Paard: een opera (2010), 4:3 (2012) and Persona (2013). Tibaldus notably chose to work with amateurs as well as professional actors. After these first productions, which were more abstract and visually oriented, the company rediscovered an interest in ‘acting’ and the focus came back on the actor. Tibaldus found the perfect material for further developing their style in the work of Polish author Witold Gombrowicz. The first result of this was their production Yvonne, Prinses van Bourgondië, which premiered at the Bourla Theatre in 2016. Discarding all theatrical aids, Tibaldus radically focused on the acting. Aided only by minimal dancing movements and a concentration on the words, the actors literally personified the meaning of the script. “The combination of Gombrowicz’s Yvonne, Prinses van Bourgondië with the poetics of Tibaldus is a match made in heaven, both for the performers and the spectators,” said Jasper Delbeke in Etcetera. During Love at first Sight #2, Tibaldus presented texts by Hans Mortelmans in the installation Nooit Opgevoerd Toneel, a series of interfering ‘incidents’ that prevented the actors from presenting the play they wanted to perform. Here too, the spirit of Gombrowicz was in the air; no coincidence, then, that the follow-up to Yvonne was his playHet Huwelijk. Once again, Tibaldus concentrated on the acting – “Acting must be serious in order to be acting!” – this time ‘brightened up’ with live polyphonic singing, some in the company’s own arrangements. “This is the right play at the right time: this production of Het Huwelijk demonstrates the responsibility that all speech requires, and in these politically correct times gives a contemporary twist to a 70-year-old script,” wrote Gilles Michiels in Etcetera.
In September 2020, Timeau De Keyser and Tibaldus are creating the production Gekken & Specialisten, based on a text by Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka. Gekken & Specialisten employs nonsense and word play to unmask our society as an everlasting power struggle between belief systems that each claim to be the one and only truth. In the meantime, the company is also preparing for Operette, Gombrowicz’s third and last play.
Timeau De Keyser also works regularly with filmmaker Pieter Dumoulin. Together they made the short film De Reconstructie and the feature film Etangs Noirs (2018). The latter was shot in the Modelwijk district in Brussels and performed by local residents. “Nothing is what it seems in this enigmatic mystery, which promises to be one of the most original films of the year…. Searching for pent-up tension and a subtle feeling of impending doom in everyday reality, they keep the viewer in a state of intangible agitation.” (Michael Blyth, programmer for BFI London Film Festival).
For theatre magazines like Etcetera, Timeau De Keyser also regularly writes more contemplative contributions, such as the recent Wie behoort de verbeelding toe? (March 2020).
In the meantime, Timeau has trained under Jan Fabre (Belgian Rules/Belgium Rules), Guy Cassiers (Vergeef ons) and Olympique Dramatique (Angels in America).
Read here the interview with Timeau de Keyser
On the Bourla attic Tibaldus in full rehearsal mode for Het Huwelijk that will premiere on 19 September at the big stage.
Ferre Marnef during rehearsal of Het Huwelijk
Timeau De Keyser and Tibaldus rehearsing Het Huwelijk
Simon De Winne and Hendrik Van Doorn during the rehearsal of Het Huwelijk
Tibaldus is premièring Het Huwelijk (The Marriage) after a play by the Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz at the 2018 Love at first Sight festival.
Gombrowicz was born in 1904 and moved to Warsaw to study law. When World War Two broke out he was on an assignment as a reporter in Argentina. He decided to go into voluntary exile there and he stayed until 1963. By that time he had already written several of his later award-winning works, including the play Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy (1935) and the novel Ferdydurke (1937). In 1953 he started writing his diary.
Driven by a critical view of Poland, he set out his theories at length, including his theories about Form. By Form he meant first and foremost convention. Throughout his life he struggled with the idea that a fixed Form determines the human condition. People express themselves to the outside world as they think they should appear, according to a Form imposed by others, by culture and society. To free himself of this, man must strive for a sort of formlessness, a state of continuous evolution. He saw Communism as a tyrannical expression of that Form theory because of the ideology it imposes on its adherents to subject themselves fully to the authority of others.
Gombrowicz wrote the passage ‘Thursday’ in 1954 while working for a Polish bank in Buenos Aires but still living in great poverty. Distribution of the diary was banned in Poland until after his death. It was not published until the 1980s and then only in a censored version.
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In the light of the lecture at Slogi (Slovenian institute for theatre) in Ljubljana Bart Meuleman wrote an essay that gives an insight in the realisation and structure of P.U.L.S.. You can read the text entirely here.
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Bart Meuleman and Dina Dooreman were invited by Glej theatre to hold a lecture about P.U.L.S. in Slogi (Slovenian institute for theatre) in Ljubljana.
Tibaldus during the first reading of Het Huwelijk (The Marriage), a text by Witold Gombrowicz
Actors Hendrik Van Doorn, Simon De Winne, Hans Mortelmans and vocalist Sander De Winne presented for the first time a small fragment of the new production Het Huwelijk. A text by Witold Gombrowicz, directed by Timeau De Keyser.
This week Lisaboa, Timeau, Bosse and Hannah followed a four-day lighting workshop led by Fabiana Piccioli (Grensgeval, Borderline, Vergeef ons, May we be forgiven).
Last Monday Yvonne, Prinses van Bourgondië was presented by Timeau De Keyser and Hans Mortelmans at the Arenbergschouwburg in the context of their nomination for Circuit X, a platform that offers younger theatre artists extra performing spaces. And so the play will already be part of the selection of the TheaterFestival.
