LEX
An ode to the body, beauty and language
The poet, novelist and theatre-maker Peter Verhelst created LEX together with the actor Kristof Van Boven and the composer Dominique Pauwels. The text of this monologue resembles a feverish dream or an oracle. The person speaking is a man whose being we cannot immediately identify. Is this God in his true guise? A god born of words and images? Or is this man an Idol? A divine figure?
Verhelst’s inspiration was Alexander the Great, the man who succeeded in uniting west and east, the Macedonian general who was proclaimed a god king in Egypt and succumbed to a fever en route to India.
The script contains passages from Dante’s Divine Comedy, Joyce’s Ulysses and the collected works of Shakespeare, as well as early Sanskrit, Hebrew, Latin and Greek writings, edited and supplemented by Peter Verhelst. The performance is an ode to the body, beauty and language. As in Verhelst’s last project, UTOPIA GmbH, (inspired by the story of the Bacchants), the audience is invited to surrender to the imagination.
text & direction Peter Verhelst | music Dominique Pauwels | with Kristof Van Boven, Roel Smedts | production NTGent (Ghent), LOD (Ghent) | support Theaterfestival Boulevard / Verkadefabriek (’s Hertogenbosch)
