Theater Malpertuis / Louise Bergez & Laurens Aneca // TA MAL OU

When I was sick as a child, I re-enacted the death scene of Nicole Kidman from the film 'Moulin Rouge'. I thought it was a game. Meanwhile, I know better, because I have trained, for five years. I have trained in waiting in waiting rooms, hopping from doctor to doctor, longing for an answer. Trained in staying inside, not daring to go outside, in taking pills, in dancing in the hospital. (Louise Bergez) TA MAL OU is a brand-new performance by Theater Malpertuis, played by Louise Bergez. The performance places a chronically ill patient in the middle of the stage. A deserter in a world that at first glance looks healthy and 'unbroken'. Illness disrupts. First of all your body: the body refuses. Then your head. Pain withdraws from the logic of sentences and grammar. Language is missing. A sick person who wants to explain a headache to the doctor soon notices that the words from the dictionary are too flat and too distant. What remains is the search for new forms, new expressions that make the unspeakable graspable. By pressing pain and raw sound against each other, wringing and kneading them together, something new arises: a word that never existed before but that presents itself as the only possibility. In collaboration with musician Jasper Segers, the performance becomes 'a comic strip trip with a beating heart'. Theatermakers Laurens Aneca, who previously scored high with his direction of F a g g o t s, Zero Feet Away, and Under the influence and Louise Bergez (Camping Sunset, Werktoneel) join forces for the first time in TA MAL OU.