Interested in seeing a well-written, cleverly thought-out play that elegantly addresses the overall state of the world while also offering you an intriguing fictional puzzle? Then David Hare’s A Map of the World, as staged by Tristero and the KVS, might be just the thing for you.
"A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.” That clever observation of Oscar Wilde serves as the prelude to a damn well-made play by the successful British playwright David Hare (born in 1947). Hare wrote it in 1982, and although it is set – at least at first sight, anyway – in Bombay, it is entirely appropriate that it should be staged in the international diplomatic capital known as Brussels. Hare presents us with a number of people attending a major UNESCO conference, at which representatives from every country and continent meet to state their points of view on the global issue of poverty, while also having to deal with a number of private issues.
Tristero & KVS sketch a map of the world
Why did you opt to perform the play in English?
Youri Dirkx: We didn’t translate it because, in this case, it is really appropriate that we all speak English. At that sort of international conference, the medium of communication is English, after all.
Mieke Verdin: Hare wrote it at a time when the discussion of women’s rights, racial equality, and poverty was well under way. He himself was known, moreover, as a writer who, for example, came up with good roles for women in the theatre. But in the end the standpoints and speeches we get to hear from the Senegalese delegate, the African-American woman journalist, and the Indian writer are, in any case, and unavoidably so, written by a white Western man. The play is, to a considerable extent, about the problematic nature of such a one-sided perspective. That’s also why we decided to play all those different roles with a completely white cast.
Who are your characters?
Dirkx: I play Stephen Andrews, a European journalist who works for a little literary magazine and is interested in the conference because the keynote speaker is a novelist whose standpoints have provoked quite a lot of controversy.
Verdin: I play Elaine le Fanu, a female African-American reporter for CBS, one of the most important TV companies in the United States – something that was still quite a recent phenomenon back then. The first female African-American CBS reporter was appointed in 1972.
Youri Dirkx: We didn’t translate it because, in this case, it is really appropriate that we all speak English. At that sort of international conference, the medium of communication is English, after all.
Mieke Verdin: Hare wrote it at a time when the discussion of women’s rights, racial equality, and poverty was well under way. He himself was known, moreover, as a writer who, for example, came up with good roles for women in the theatre. But in the end the standpoints and speeches we get to hear from the Senegalese delegate, the African-American woman journalist, and the Indian writer are, in any case, and unavoidably so, written by a white Western man. The play is, to a considerable extent, about the problematic nature of such a one-sided perspective. That’s also why we decided to play all those different roles with a completely white cast.
Who are your characters?
Dirkx: I play Stephen Andrews, a European journalist who works for a little literary magazine and is interested in the conference because the keynote speaker is a novelist whose standpoints have provoked quite a lot of controversy.
Verdin: I play Elaine le Fanu, a female African-American reporter for CBS, one of the most important TV companies in the United States – something that was still quite a recent phenomenon back then. The first female African-American CBS reporter was appointed in 1972.
What is the conference about?
Dirkx: The conference is organised by UNESCO and is about poverty, an issue that found its way onto the political agenda in the late 1970s. Among other things, it’s about aid dependency, about the relations between rich and poor countries; but everything happens in the corridors and in the lobby of the hotel. That’s where the participants meet up, where preparations are made, and where friction develops. But Hare also cleverly creates fiction within the fiction, so that an intriguing puzzle of different levels of reality emerges. Ultimately, the story is about points of view, about the place where public, political, and private life meet up, about the tension between fiction and reality, about representation. Who can represent whom? What role do the media and literature play?
Does the play sketch a “map of the world”?
Verdin: It sketches a map of the world, but a highly subjective one – as most are. And apart from the big world, the little world of “people with each other” is also depicted. For example, an everyday row about a woman plays a role, which helps to ensure that the play is light in form, like a comedy.
Dirkx: When you see all the things Hare deals with, it takes you just about all around the world. It is about American culture and domination; it is about Russia during the Cold War, about South America, China, Angola, Mozambique, Scandinavia, and more.
Isn’t the conference, in the end, depicted as a talking shop?
Dirkx: It is a characteristic of a good play that, as a spectator, you swing back and forth between the different characters and their points of view. One day, I see my character as an unbelievably naive lefty; the next day, I just think he is right-wing. The play’s strength is that, after each response by one of the protagonists, you could find yourself thinking: “Bloody hell, I can agree with him or her about that.”
Verdin: The conference is a talking shop: it produces a mountain of paper and the way in which a deal is finally done is dubious, but it is not denounced at the end. For, even if it doesn’t work on the grand scale, the changes in everyday practice could well be of importance. After the conference, each character has made important choices in his or her life.
Dirkx: It doesn’t make out that congresses are good for nothing. My character, for example, reckons it is worthwhile fighting for a small result: no more excuses, hold to my beliefs. There is criticism, but there is hope too. And that is why that quotation from Wilde is so important: without a utopia, you really shouldn’t even start.
CAST OF OLD RELIABLES
The cast of A Map of the World is in itself a bit of a conference of well-known actors. From its own artistic core, the KVS (Royal Flemish Theatre) supplies Mieke Verdin and Willy Thomas, both once founders of the groundbreaking Brussels company Dito’Dito, which was wound up in 2006 when its members were absorbed into the nucleus of the KVS. Prior to that, Dito’Dito, which had spent twenty years making theatre about and with the city, and thus operated across Belgium’s linguistic divisions, often got together with the young people of Tristero, another Brussels company. Since the early 1990s, Tristero has combined the creation of new plays of its own with ferreting out international works for the stage. The Map cast includes Kristien De Proost, Youri Dirkx, and Peter Vandenbempt of Tristero, as well as Peter Connelly from the US, who studied film in Ghent and has worked recently with, among others, Superamas, Diederik Peeters, and Tristero (in Living). Ans Van den Eede (of Hof van Eede) has also performed in Tristero productions.
A MAP OF THE WORLD • 7, 11 > 13 & 18 > 21/12, 20.30, €13/17, EN (NL boventiteld/surtitré en FR), KVS_Box, Arduinkaai 9 quai aux Pierres de Taille, Brussel/Bruxelles, 02-210.11.05, www.kvs.be
Dirkx: The conference is organised by UNESCO and is about poverty, an issue that found its way onto the political agenda in the late 1970s. Among other things, it’s about aid dependency, about the relations between rich and poor countries; but everything happens in the corridors and in the lobby of the hotel. That’s where the participants meet up, where preparations are made, and where friction develops. But Hare also cleverly creates fiction within the fiction, so that an intriguing puzzle of different levels of reality emerges. Ultimately, the story is about points of view, about the place where public, political, and private life meet up, about the tension between fiction and reality, about representation. Who can represent whom? What role do the media and literature play?
Does the play sketch a “map of the world”?
Verdin: It sketches a map of the world, but a highly subjective one – as most are. And apart from the big world, the little world of “people with each other” is also depicted. For example, an everyday row about a woman plays a role, which helps to ensure that the play is light in form, like a comedy.
Dirkx: When you see all the things Hare deals with, it takes you just about all around the world. It is about American culture and domination; it is about Russia during the Cold War, about South America, China, Angola, Mozambique, Scandinavia, and more.
Isn’t the conference, in the end, depicted as a talking shop?
Dirkx: It is a characteristic of a good play that, as a spectator, you swing back and forth between the different characters and their points of view. One day, I see my character as an unbelievably naive lefty; the next day, I just think he is right-wing. The play’s strength is that, after each response by one of the protagonists, you could find yourself thinking: “Bloody hell, I can agree with him or her about that.”
Verdin: The conference is a talking shop: it produces a mountain of paper and the way in which a deal is finally done is dubious, but it is not denounced at the end. For, even if it doesn’t work on the grand scale, the changes in everyday practice could well be of importance. After the conference, each character has made important choices in his or her life.
Dirkx: It doesn’t make out that congresses are good for nothing. My character, for example, reckons it is worthwhile fighting for a small result: no more excuses, hold to my beliefs. There is criticism, but there is hope too. And that is why that quotation from Wilde is so important: without a utopia, you really shouldn’t even start.
CAST OF OLD RELIABLES
The cast of A Map of the World is in itself a bit of a conference of well-known actors. From its own artistic core, the KVS (Royal Flemish Theatre) supplies Mieke Verdin and Willy Thomas, both once founders of the groundbreaking Brussels company Dito’Dito, which was wound up in 2006 when its members were absorbed into the nucleus of the KVS. Prior to that, Dito’Dito, which had spent twenty years making theatre about and with the city, and thus operated across Belgium’s linguistic divisions, often got together with the young people of Tristero, another Brussels company. Since the early 1990s, Tristero has combined the creation of new plays of its own with ferreting out international works for the stage. The Map cast includes Kristien De Proost, Youri Dirkx, and Peter Vandenbempt of Tristero, as well as Peter Connelly from the US, who studied film in Ghent and has worked recently with, among others, Superamas, Diederik Peeters, and Tristero (in Living). Ans Van den Eede (of Hof van Eede) has also performed in Tristero productions.
A MAP OF THE WORLD • 7, 11 > 13 & 18 > 21/12, 20.30, €13/17, EN (NL boventiteld/surtitré en FR), KVS_Box, Arduinkaai 9 quai aux Pierres de Taille, Brussel/Bruxelles, 02-210.11.05, www.kvs.be
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