Eric Sleichim . Muziektheater Transparant

Eric Sleichim, the driving force behind the Bl!ndman saxophone quartet, has written his first opera. But not an opera as we know it! 'Men in Tribulation' is a monodrama that takes place inside the mind of Antonin Artaud, the poet, theatre-maker, thinker and visionary. A single hour, the length of the performance, represents the last hour of an exhausted man whose body is worn out by struggle. In his stage setting, Sleichim keeps to Artaud's concept of a ritual theatre with the audience in the midst of the action, where words are only one part of an all-embracing happening of bodies, gestures and sounds. Jan Fabre has written a script that bears close resemblance to the style of Artaud, author of 'Theatre of Cruelty': 'I use the word cruelty in the sense of the hunger for life, cosmic harshness and irreconcilable need. Theatre, in the sense of constant creation and complete magical action, serves this need.'