Theatre showcase London: “You could hear a pin drop”

The British performing arts landscape has a name for being very closed, and of course it did not get that reputation without good reason. But nobody can deny that London is absolutely a world city, which means that it features a suitably cosmopolitan interest in theatre people and dramatists from other countries. We were able to experience this for ourselves recently during the showcase of Flemish theatre at Voila! Festival in London in November 2024. Read our report.

The Voila! Festival is one of those events in which theatrical creatives and writers for the stage from all over the world come together. The festival expanded after 2017 as a reaction to Brexit and during the whole of November it fills nine auditoriums with performances in various languages and genres.

On Friday 22 November 2024 we presented plays from Flanders at the festival for the first time. During two script-in-hand readings in Baron’s Court Theatre, the English translations of Hide (Anna Carlier, translated by David McKay) and Gen X Has Left the Chat (Annelies Verbeke, translated by Liz Waters) were presented in the presence of the authors and translators.

The tiny auditorium of the pub theatre (that’s right: a theatre inside or next to a pub is no oddity in the UK) was packed. During the poetic doomsday scenarios of Hide you could hear a pin drop, and the satirical Gen X Has Left the Chat prompted roar after roar of laughter. A monologue and a play for twelve actors: it’s hard to think of a better way to show how diverse theatrical work from Flanders can be.

Author Anna Carlier: “Overwhelming to reexperience ‘Hide’ through the empathy of actress Lucy Phelps. She brought us more than a reading; she embodied the characters from the script, both mother and child. It took me a little time to get used to the fairly naturalistic style, because here in Flanders we have more of a tendency to keep it abstract. But once I was able to abandon myself to it, she gripped me and it cut to the quick. It was particularly good to meet director Trine Garrett and Lucy, to hear how they set to work during rehearsals. Beautiful how she made the anxiety of the mother clearly visible and palpable. The intimate setting of the Barons Court Theatre lent itself perfectly to the piece. I hope that one day I’ll be able to see Lucy play ‘Hide’ again and that many others will be able to watch it with me.”

Author Annelies Verbeke: “I’m pleased that my theatre script ‘Gen X Has Left the Chat’ (written for Wunderbaum, translated by Liz Waters) could be included in the Voila! Festival in November 2024, the same year as it was originally performed in the Netherlands and Flanders. I spent half a day with the actors and the director for one of the final rehearsals, and was able to answer questions about things that weren’t entirely clear. Great to see how every actor gives their own interpretation to a role, different from the original. It was also different from what I’m used to when seeing a director thinking along with the cast and overseeing the performance; she did all that very well. The resulting dramatized reading took place in a very small theatre, which was not ideal for a play with eleven actors, but they found a way. The speed at which the play needs to be performed was slightly lacking, but that would require a far longer rehearsal period. For me, several actors stood out, perhaps most of all the actor who took on the role of the teacher and performed the final scene with powerful fragility. The English translation of the script has since been read by the German publisher Drei Masken Verlag, and we’ll be discussing a possible German publication.”

Translator Liz Waters: “I found it thrilling to see how the actors brought the script to life. It was all very different from how I’d imagined it during the translation process, but at no point did I have the feeling anything was missing. The way the young characters dealt with the older generation was completely convincing. It could indeed have gone a little more quickly, but perhaps that’s always the case with a script-in-hand reading, especially with eleven actors in a tiny space! I thought the actor playing Edwin was particularly good, and the clashes between Edwin and Robert were very funny. Towards the end, when the teacher was speaking, the audience fell completely silent.”

By means of these readings and in collaboration with Modern Culture, we were able to ensure that in our campaign to help literature from Flanders to cross the Channel (Flip through Flanders) works for the theatre were not forgotten. We hope this is just the start of a lasting and fruitful exchange.