the repossessed
theatre/performance | 70min | 2020
synopsis
The Repossessed draws its narrative from Djuna Barnes' 1936 novel, Nightwood, a modernist gothic tale of love and obsession in which the boundaries of class, religion, and gender dissolve. A century since the events in the novel, we follow the spectres of Barnes’ characters through the streets of Paris. Our attention falls on what is most bodily, though still ethereal, a present gaze at a past which was Other and would soon cease to be.
The Repossessed is the first of a series developed on the closet drama genre and its authors; reconciling closet drama's double premise of queer secrecy and the impossibilities of rendering it to stage. The project is inspired by Nick Salvato’s Uncloseting Drama, wherein through an analysis of American modernist texts, Salvato complicates the reading and development of this genre from its original premise (a play to be read rather than acted) looking at the histories of modernism through the outlook of the closet, a space which is often half open, half closed, half factual, half fictionalized.
The Repossessed is the first of a series developed on the closet drama genre and its authors; reconciling closet drama's double premise of queer secrecy and the impossibilities of rendering it to stage. The project is inspired by Nick Salvato’s Uncloseting Drama, wherein through an analysis of American modernist texts, Salvato complicates the reading and development of this genre from its original premise (a play to be read rather than acted) looking at the histories of modernism through the outlook of the closet, a space which is often half open, half closed, half factual, half fictionalized.
performance history
(2020) WORM - Rotterdam, The Netherlands
performed by
Sissi Betina Venturin
production support
WORM
produced by
project supervisors
Charlien Adriaenssens
cinematography (stage projections)
live sound and original score
trailer
(2020) WORM - Rotterdam, The Netherlands
performed by
Sissi Betina Venturin
Mavi Veloso
Lennart Smidt
Patricia Janeiro
Leonie Kuipers
production support
WORM
Stichting VHDG
Mondriaan Fonds
Fonds Kwadraat
produced by
Nia Konstantinova
project supervisors
Charlien Adriaenssens
Lieselot van Damme
cinematography (stage projections)
Silvia Ulloa Marquez
live sound and original score
Lennart Smidt
trailer