Where the world is going, that’s where we are going
Hof van Eede, Theater aan Zee, Richard Jordan Productions, Theatre Royal Plymouth & Big in Belgium in association with Summerhall present
Where the world is going, that’s where we are going (Dutch première, 2012, English premiere 2014 at Edinburgh Fringe Festival, translation into English by Wannes Gyselinck)
Where the world is going, that’s where we are going is Hof van Eede’s first show, written and staged in 2012, and winning the ‘TAZ-KBC Jongtheaterwerkprijs’ (TAZ-KBC Young Theatre Award) 2012. Louise and Ans Van den Eede have written a text that scrutinizes and charts the vulnerability of language, the whimsicality of a conversation, and the tensions between structure and chaos.
A man and a woman (‘he’ and ‘she’) address the audience frontally, and seem to host some kind of literary evening focusing on Diderot’s Jacques and his master. But they start off by apologizing: Diderot lead them into disaster. Not only did they fail to stage their play, it also clouded their own relationship, of whichever nature that may be (they’re not sure, but they’re afraid to discuss it directly). But – just as Jacques in Diderot’s novel fails to tell his love-story because he and his master constantly stray-off into side stories, the man and the woman too fail to tell the story –Diderot’s that is – but they manage, albeit indirectly, to give the audience a glimpse of their own, very complicated, relationship. But more than a love story, Where the world is going that’s where we are going is a glowing homage to the art of conversation, a celebration of language’s power and ineptitude.