PREY

“We are food”
— The eye of the crocodile by Val Plumwood 

How can we rethink being human from a radical ecological perspective? What stories can help us grapple with the disruptions of the climate crises? These questions lie at the basis of PREY, consisting of three solos by three generations of women. All three offer a different perspective on the same theme,  via a different medium – text/speech, song/music or dance/performance. Be prepared to delve into a scenography in which humans do not play the main role. Can we find consolation in the horrific fact that we are food and that we belong to an ecological cycle of life and death? 

The starting point for this quest is the life and work of the Australian ecofeminist Val Plumwood (1936-2008). After surviving a deadly attack by a saltwater crocodile during a canoe trip, she was one of the first to call for a new humility by reinserting the human into the food chain, and placing death center stage. Hereby she forms an important yet often overlooked reference for contemporary writers such as Donna Haraway. The performance PREY takes off from this story, confronting us with a friction between figures who cannot but see themselves as the center in an environment that keeps pushing them away from that position.   

• As a director, Kris Verdonck explores the intersections of the visual arts, theatre, performance and architecture. He found beauty in the catastrophic in Conversations (at the end of the world) (2017) and Untitled (2016). With PREY, Kris Verdonck continues a trajectory in his work around a world in which humankind disappears into the background. Composer Annelies Van Parys has brought her compositions to Kaaitheater before in The Diary of One Who Disappeared (2017). The Brussels music ensemble ICTUS is a fixture in the Kaaitheater programme.