FRIDAY 29TH APRIL
Libretto reading #6: Fidelio – Beethoven
WALPURGIS & gasten
A flock of actors, actresses and singers read the libretto of Beethoven’s Fidelio, a Freedom-opera calling out for love, compassion and justice.
Florestan is imprisoned in Pizarro’s tower dungeons in order to stop him from exposing the latter’s infamy. Rocco, the prison manager, is ordered to starve Florestan to death. Fortunately, Leonore, Florestan’s loyal and heroic wife, comes to the rescue. Disguised as Fidelio she manages to get herself on the prison’s payroll..
Brassafrik
Move your ass and the rest will follow! Traditional African question-and-answer motives, Afro beat, highlife and European brass band are all given a place of their own in this melting pot of percussion and wind instruments. Equipped with brass, wood and leather, and with their surprising timing and exuberance, BRASSAFRIK seriously intends to kick off one hell of a party!
DJ K.R.O.L.S.
will launch us onto the dance floor with dance discs befitting the occasion!
SATURDAY 30TH APRIL
Puccini Project – Simonne Moesen & Kaat De Windt
Butterfly, Mimi, Tosca and Liù: each and every one of them ordinary women immortalized by Puccini as tragic heroins.
A singer/actress and a piano player/composer present their unconventional look on Puccini’s famous opera heroins and their passions, contradictions and absurdities, their frailty as well as their power in their search for unity, truth and love.
Recall – Ana Naqe
A nostalgic, musical trip throughout the memories of an Albanian violin player/singer. Contemporary classical, improvised music with a touch of folk.
Commissioned by WALPURGIS, Ana composes a program for this FENIKS FESTIVAL, inspired by her Albanian roots.
BDE – WALPURGIS
A musical, cinematographic and literary trip on the hazy line between fiction and non-fiction, life and death.
After a car-accident with an unknown oncoming driver, an old man is jammed in his car. He has just escaped death by a hair’s breath. For the duration of a few seconds, he remembers ‘things and scenes from previous lives, previous landscapes’, things of which he is absolutely sure that he has never recalled them before.
SUNDAY 1ST MAY
Medea Redux – Stichting Noorderbrugcompagnie
icw Els Roobroeck & Han Stubbe (DAAU)
Hey, someone who is suffering. Lets lower the microscope! – Neil LaBute
In Medea Redux, the second monologue from Bash by the American writer and movie-maker Neil LaBute, a young woman gives a detailed description of everything that happened between that one particular school trip she once joined as an adolescent and her murder on her son, fourteen years later. A series of falling in love,getting pregnant, being cast out and committing infanticide. An auditory portrait of a contemporary Medea.
Diary of one who has disappeared – JANACEK
(BiancoNero)
Rather to yearn for love than to wait for death
Farmer’s son abandons family for the love of a gipsy girl!
These just might have been the headlines of the newspaper article that caused such an uproar in Czechia at the beginning of the previous century and that inspired Janácek to compose this song cycle. In BiancoNero’s contemporary interpretation ‘the one who has disappeared’ is a besotted old man. Does his beloved Zefka really exist? Or is she merely the product of his imagination, in order to make his life bearable in the elderly home?
KWEST#1: The brain – Nele Van den Broeck
The 3.3 pound of meat under our skulls is the source of all our thoughts, emotions and memories. Yet how exactly this brain of ours works, that we can only puzzle our heads over.
KWEST#1: : The Brain is the first of a series of theatrical-scientific lectures in which Nele Van den Broeck, with the help of her ukelele and a good deal of humour, explains the functioning of the brain to us and talks about the most recent discoveries in the field of neurology.
Master test of Nele Van den Broeck in the Drama training at the Hogeschool Gent KASK (promotor Sam Bogaerts)
BUFFET
WALPURGIS closes the FENIKS FESTIVAL in a festive way with a varied and tasty buffet joining the audience and the artists at the table.
SUNDAY 8TH MAY
BIM BAM BOM – Glasbak vzw
An urban composition on location with forgotten children’s songs from all over the world.
production | WALPURGIS |
collaborating artists / companies | François Beukelaers (actor), BiancoNero (music theatre), Conor Biggs (barytone), Brassafrik (band), Nele Van den Broeck (actress), Jeroen Brouwers (writer), Stef Depover (scenographer), Guy Dermul (actor), Karen Dick (video), Glasbak vzw (creative house), Evelien Van Hamme (actress), Wouter Hendrickx (actor), Joris Hessels (actor), Veronika Iltchenko (piano), Valentine Kempynck (design), Kinderkoor Noor (children's choir), Kinderkoor Waelrant (children's choir), Eline Kuppens (actress), Eric Krols (DJ), Anne Maistriau (soprano), Simonne Moesen (actress/singer), Ana Naqe (violin/singing), Diederick Nuyttens (video), Els Roobroeck (actress), Stray Dogs (band), Thaïs Scholiers (sopraan), Liesbet Swings (BIM BAM BOM brain), Irmgard Tummers (directing), Tutti Fratelli (non-professional actor's group), Han Stubbe (electronics/keyboard), Eva Vermeiren (graphics), Judith Vindevogel (soprano/directing), Kaat De Windt (piano) |
WALPURGIS
François Beukelaers (actor), BiancoNero (music theatre), Conor Biggs (barytone), Brassafrik (band), Nele Van den Broeck (actress), Jeroen Brouwers (writer), Stef Depover (scenographer), Guy Dermul (actor), Karen Dick (video), Glasbak vzw (creative house), Evelien Van Hamme (actress), Wouter Hendrickx (actor), Joris Hessels (actor), Veronika Iltchenko (piano), Valentine Kempynck (design), Kinderkoor Noor (children's choir), Kinderkoor Waelrant (children's choir), Eline Kuppens (actress), Eric Krols (DJ), Anne Maistriau (soprano), Simonne Moesen (actress/singer), Ana Naqe (violin/singing), Diederick Nuyttens (video), Els Roobroeck (actress), Stray Dogs (band), Thaïs Scholiers (sopraan), Liesbet Swings (BIM BAM BOM brain), Irmgard Tummers (directing), Tutti Fratelli (non-professional actor's group), Han Stubbe (electronics/keyboard), Eva Vermeiren (graphics), Judith Vindevogel (soprano/directing), Kaat De Windt (piano)