S 62° 58’, W 60° 39’ 2023

         To the fathers I keep staging

The wreck of a sailboat, a vast icy landscape on the background and a crew of hopeless survivors. S 62° 58’, W 60° 39’ starts with an impossible and frightening situation: to survive. To go back to the life they knew. It is unclear how they got stuck in this predicament. Their GPS coordinates – S 62° 58’, W 60° 39’ – indicate their precise location in the Arctic water of Deception Island. But before we get any answers, a performer adresses the director. The story falls apart to reveal something else, a delicate trauma that has fueled the director’s oeuvre. A trauma the performers do not want to play anymore.

In Franck Chartier’s newest creation, fragility takes center stage. A search for truth and authentic emotions takes everyone past their limits. The performers lay bare their emotions and lives, but also fight against the director’s push to go even deeper. After years of sacrifice, willing or forced, they start to wonder what would happen if they refused. Fiction and reality are ruptured in an attempt to escape the vicious cycles of violence. Performers try to stage a revolution, an end to everything, a new beginning. But that might just be another work of fiction.

In a constant rewinding and repeating process of rehearsing trauma, set against an unrelenting Arctic landscape, S 62° 58’, W 60° 39’ touches on new discussions about what we want to create on stage in this day and age. Is this the only way we can process our traumas? What poetry do we want to leave behind? What message? Or should we actually stop creating for once? Should the director let go of it all?

Concept and direction
Franck Chartier

Creation and performance
Marie Gyselbrecht, Chey Jurado, Lauren Langlois, Yi-Chun Liu, Sam Louwyck, Romeu Runa, Dirk Boelens, with the help of Eurudike De Beul

Artistic assistance
Yi-Chun Liu, Louis-Clément da Costa

Script assistant
Imogen Pickles

Sound composition and arrangements
Raphaëlle Latini

Scenography
Justine Bougerol, Peeping Tom

Light design
Tom Visser

Choreography
Yi-Chun Liu, Peeping Tom

Costumes
Jessica Harkay, Peeping Tom

Technical artistic assistant
Thomas Michaux

Technical creation and props
Filip Timmerman

Touring technicians
Filip Timmerman (stage manager), Clément Michaux (first stage technician), Jo Heijens (sound engineer), Bram Geldhof (light engineer)

Technical assistant (creation)
Ilias Johri

Technical coordination
Giuliana Rienzi

Construction set
KVS-atelier, Peeping Tom

Internship
Arthur Demaret (lights)

Production
Peeping Tom

Coproduction
KVS – Koninklijke Vlaamse Schouwburg (Brussels), Biennale de la Danse (Lyon), Teatros del Canal (Madrid), Théâtre de la Ville (Paris), The Barbican (London), Tanz Köln (Cologne), Festival Aperto/Fondazione I Teatri (Reggio Emilia), Torinodanza Festival/Teatro Stabile di Torino – Teatro Nazionale (Turin), Teatre Nacional de Catalunya (Barcelona), & Espoo theatre, Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, CC De Factorij Zaventem.

Distribution
Frans Brood Productions

Peeping Tom wishes to thank Lio Nasser, Leietheater (Deinze)

S 62° 58’, W 60° 39’ is being created with the support of the Tax Shelter of the Belgian Federal Government.