HAROUN
+8
by Het nieuwstedelijk (Belgium) / Sara Vertongen
English version > Feb 2018
Haroun is a double performance for children (+8) and adults based on two novels
by Salman Rushdie.
When going to see a film or play with (your) children you, as a grown up,
usually enjoy the performance because you get to share the experience together
or because it brings back own memories. Pixar has made a whole genre out of
trying to incorporate enough adult jokes into children's films to please all
viewers. But what if you both did not have to make any concessions when going
to see a performance? If you both, child and adult, got your own (secret)
experience for the price of one?
We are going to work on the idea of thematically and physically dividing
children and grown ups and make a play about what it means to want to protect
or save the absent other. This means there will be 2 versions of the same play
on at the same time.
You as an audience only get to see or hear one side of the story according to
your age and size. The children watch the story from the point of view of
Haroun, while the grown ups follow that of his father. Now and then though
these two worlds will collide, mingle and flip.
Haroun ( A-side of the performance)
----------------------------------When Salman Rushdie was forced into hiding by the fatwa put upon him by the
Ayatollah Khumeini the first work he published was a children's book:'Haroun
and the sea of stories', a promise he had made to his own son Zafar to finally
write something he could read.
Haroun is about the power of imagination and storytelling as a weapon against
censorship, it is also a archetypical adventure story filled with mythical
creatures (flying mechanical birds, water genies ...)
Haroun's father, the professional storyteller Rashid Khalifa (the sjah of blah)
is so unhappy he can no longer work now that his wife has left him. His son
embarks on a mythical quest to restore his believe in himself.
Listen to Rushdie reading the novel himself at:
https://m.soundcloud.com/vermonthumanities/sets/haroun-and-the-sea-of-stories
Fury (the B-side of the performance)
-----------------------------------On this side of 'the wall’ we get the perspective of the father. Fury is the
title of a novel by Rushdie from 2001.
The story of a man who can feel rage bubbling up inside of him despite the fact
that he seemingly has everything to be happy, he is not able to deal with the
idea of failure
Trying desperately to protect his family from the world and ultimately from
himself, (as in most of the stories were people are so driven to desperation
that they kill their own family, children). The fury which Rushdie analyses in
his work is universal.
"These days the goddesses, less regarded, were hungrier, wilder, casting their
nets more widely. As the bonds of family weakened, so the Furies began to
intervene in everyday life."
The pressure of city life, the aggressiveness of it, the bottled up frustration
is something Sara would like to investigate with the use of battle rap as form
of expression.
"Garbage trucks like giant cockroaches moved through the city, roaring. He was
never out of earshot of a siren, an alarm, a large vehicle's reverse-gear
bleeps, the beat of some unbearable music."
Who can hear one's own fury in that outward cacophony ? An example of the power
of a rap battle and slampoetry :
https://youtu.be/O49_SEWL-Dg
https://youtu.be/FQj4DnhIJnl
Timing
-----Sara will start
work on this project in intervals at the Krokusfestival lab
/workspace in 2016-2017 by inviting children to talk about what they worry
about most for their parents (divorce, pressure, money ?) so this can be
incorporated in the text. She also will have local urban artists (Mon,
Tiewai...) collaborate with her on the techniques of rapping to help shape the
musicality of the text and the performance of the actors.
Haroun will premiere at the Krokusfestival 2018 with a minimum of 2 performers
and 2 musicians on stage.
Partners
-------Partnerships: Krokusfestival (Hasselt, Belgium), NTJong (The Hague, the
Netherlands), (to be confirmed:) Laika (Antwerp, Belgium).
Collaboration: Het Paleis (Antwerp, Belgium).
More info & contact
------------------contact us: [email protected] / check: www.nieuwstedelijk.be/international
bookings: [email protected]
first hand information via [email protected]