LIFE IN THIS HOUSE IS OVER

Life in this House is Over, a collaboration of Source Material, Teatr ZAR actors, the Pina Bausch Zentrum (Wuppertal) and the Grotowski Institute (Wrocław), brings to the fore the awkwardness of a funeral reception, the stilted interactions and strained conversations of people thrown together in a somewhat odd time and place, doing their best to stick to the social etiquette. The mourners form a live community whose members are caught between their incomplete memory of the past and an unpredictable future. Tensions mount, intergenerational fissures grow. The stories recounted, both individual and shared, come under scrutiny: which, if any, can be saved and preserved?

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Hovering above the events, as it were, is a multilayered reflection on time and how an intergenerational and multicultural creative community is making its mark on it. The performance also revisits the Chekhov-inspired question of how one can live with the prospect of uncertain future eclipsed by memories of a still resonant past: how to inhabit a world constantly battered by the force of inevitable change?

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In exploring this territory, the creators of Life in this House is Over enlist the tools of theatre, dance and improvisation. Samantha Shay has brought together artists from two leading arts hubs, including dancers working with Pina Bausch’s legendary Tanztheater Wuppertal and Teatr ZAR actors, whose work is deeply rooted in the ‘theatre of sound’. The teaming up of artists working in two different fields: dance and movement, on the one hand, and voice and song, on the other, has produced a kaleidoscopic blend of influences with no fixed point of view, leaving the audience free to choose from the many strands, layers and forms of the story and to draw their own conclusions.