ABOUT

JOKO CELEBRATES HIS BIRTHDAY

Trouble and lust,
Eros and Thanatos,
besmirched innocence which turns into guilt…

Joko, very roughly based on the text by the French cartoonist, Roland Topor, is a hallucinatory and infernal trip with Dantesque proportions and Bosch-styled images.

Joko shows us a rite of passage into the world of adults. An horrific child’s sacrifice is executed. Joko is subjected to psychological and physical tortures aimed at losing his self-respect, self-image and identity.

The stage is dominated by chaos. Some situations are developing on stage and it is up to the spectator to invent a story. And that story is one of doom set against a ritual backdrop. The theatre’s formula is birth and death. As defended by Heiner Muller, theatre results into fear for change, because the last change is death. People can deal with this fear in two different ways: we can ridicule this fear for death in a comedy or we can pay tribute to death in a tragedy. Performances such as Joko fit into this picture.

‘Joko’ is nominated for the Flemish-Dutch Theatre Festival and is selected for the ‘Choice of the theatre’ at the playhouse of Rotterdam. One year later ‘Joko’ is programmed for the Theatre Festival in Zürich. At the Flemish-Dutch Theaterfestival ‘Joko’ is awarded the Dommelsch Theatre Prize, which is annually presented by a jury of theatre professionals to the most eye-catching performance.