Philippe Quesne: the day after

(© Martin Argylogro)

In Next Day, thirteen children between the ages of eight and eleven organise, on their own initiative, a training camp for superheroes. The director Philippe Quesne shows remarkable trust in his young actors; the children respond by showing tons of imagination and delight in acting.

The Parisian Philippe Quesne didn’t have to think twice when Ghent’s Campo theatre approached him to put a production together with children only, but intended for an adult audience. He had been preceded by big names like Josse De Pauw and Tim Etchells. “I was honoured to be part of that tradition,” Quesne told us. “My own work, moreover, is often about communities that imagine themselves and about showing groups trying to organise themselves. I thought it would be fascinating to have a go at something similar with children. Children who are completely alone on the stage have, by definition, something special about them: their movements, the changes of pace and energy, their imagination…that vulnerability is perfect. As an adult, you inevitably project questions on to it: who are they? What will become of them? Are they being left in the lurch? And so on. I found that kind of “dramaturgical charge” very interesting to explore further.

If I understand right, the children themselves came up with the theme for the production: superheroes!
Philippe Quesne: Yes, I wanted to completely imbue the show with their personalities, the same way as I always go to work with “my” adult actors. We rehearsed over several months, in the form of workshops, taking for the most part the title Next Day as the starting point. One of the questions that arose was how they saw themselves in the future. That fascination with the “superhero” kept coming up, as a person who is able to solve all problems. [Laughs] At that age, the superhero is, of course, also a strong presence in the books and comic strips they read and in the films they watch.

The action takes place in a so-called training camp where they are hoping to become superheroes… Is that a metaphor for the fact that our children have to prepare themselves for a world full of looming disasters that we have created, such as climate change?
Quesne: Absolutely. The human species is doing a superb job of shifting onto future generations the problems it hasn’t been able to solve. I try to show that we can learn, in a poetic way, to live with the consciousness of a catastrophe. We must dare to keep on imagining worlds, continue to preserve utopias… Look, that idea of a training camp is a simple fable, around which the piece is constructed. But the real delight is to be found in looking at how that specific group of children, with their various differences, succeed in organising their world in a free way. And by “free”, I also mean that they do it with perfectly simple means and via ordinary rituals such as simple games, the construction of the stage, making pancakes, or making music together… That’s the beauty of it, I think: to see these children going through the experience of being children.

(© Philippe Digneffe)

The show is aimed at adults only. Why?
Quesne: I’d like to set that straight: it can be for anyone from eight years of age to a hundred. All the better, in fact, as it is great to perform this show for a mixed audience: the electricity released then is a good bit more interesting than when there are only adults watching.

NEXT DAY • 27 & 28/2, 20.30, 1/3, 15.00, €8/12/16, NL + EN, Kaaitheater, square Sainctelettesquare 20, Brussel/Bruxelles, 02-201.59.59, www.kaaitheater.be