Schweinerei

It must be born. Like a spirit emerging from the cunt.

What happens when a civilisation can no longer digest its own history?

In  SCHWEINEREI, two figures lock themselves away in a bunker. They are twins. They are lovers. They are puppets, performers, spirits of the theatre. Fallen angels. They are repulsive and seductive at the same time. The last descendants of a Europe that has reproduced itself for centuries until it became sick. Behind them lie Versailles, Marie-Antoinette, Mozart, the aristocracy, the theatre. Everything that was beautiful. They have turned it into a paradise. But  paradise is rotten. They party while the world outside perishes. They play, eat, make music. Their bodies become entwined. Their embrace turns into a knot. They love each other so much that they suffocate one another.

Then their bodies begin to speak out. What was swallowed up (culture, beauty, violence, guilt, desire) comes pouring out. They break through an inner wall. Inside becomes outside. Their artificial bodies begin to leak incessantly.

SCHWEINEREI is a love letter to the theatre and a reckoning with its ghosts. A state of being. An exorcism.

THE WHOLE GLOBE FOR A REAL SORROW. * Theatre is dead. Long live theatre.

Together with Lucie Plasschaert and Lucas van der Vegt, who plays Mozart on the fortepiano, Lieselot Siddiki builds a bunker that is a palace, a doll’s house, a body and a ruin. A place where past and present can no longer be distinguished from one another.

BORED. FRIVOLOUS. EXCESSIVE. SICK. SO SO SICK.

*from Hamletmachine by Heiner Müller

Schweinerei in the press

"This magnificent feast has both the aesthetic grandeur of La grande bellezza and the unpleasant side effect of gluttony: aerophagia, swallowing too much air, making everything feel like an inflated balloon. Plenty to think about." - De Standaard

"Somewhere halfway through the performance, Lieselot Siddiki says that she suffers from 'nightmare disorder': everything she dreams about is dirty, violent, and she hopes that one day she will be able to experience dreamless sleep. Perhaps that is why, with Schweinerei, she stages the ultimate nightmare, only to then drift into that blissful sleep." - PZAZZ

Lieselot Siddiki on Pompidou on Klara.

__

Photos: © Yaqine Hamzaoui

Gallery