SPEECH!

Since Spoken World 2009, Barbara Matijević and Giuseppe Chico have turned up regularly in the Kaaitheater programme. Last season they were the headline act in our Performatik festival, where they presented their trilogy Theory of a performance to come, two parts of which they performed at the last Avignon Festival.

They examine the fact that we experience everything as stories, whether it be social and political matters or everyday events. We commissioned a new piece from them for Spoken World 2011 – Powers of Speech.

Matijević and Chico: ‘A speech spoken in a performance never can be a ‘real’ speech. Though a theatre speech is intended – just like a real speech – to have an impact or an influence on the audience, the ‘contrat de vérité’ an actor is engaged in with his audience is essentially of a very different nature than the relationship between a speaker and a group of people or even a crowd in a ‘real’ situation. But is this true? Can we still be sure about the difference between what is real and what is performed in our super-mediatised world in which we are surrounded by numerous interfaces?’

Perhaps ‘Speech!’ by Barbara Matijević and Giuseppe Chico deals also with that topic. The performance is made up of a series of short speeches delivered by a number of characters in  situations that could be real:  a manager at the 85th anniversary of his company, a professor in semiotics at a student’s protest, a spin doctor explaining to his audience the tricks of the trade, etc.