Solitude

Solitude is an audio visual music theatre collaboration by Arnoud Noordegraaf and Robert van Heumen, where the audience is let into the mind of a protagonist trying to write. A journey that explores the remotest corners of the soul.

Wearing headphones and separated from the other spectators by gauze projection scrims, the audience is submerged in an isolated, audio visual decor. The smallest detail in everyday sounds and images is given a pressing importance, as we follow the story of an Auster-like character who locked himself in an abandoned building trying to write a novel, but perhaps really just running away from his own past. Solitude dives into his mind and tries to surround it, in an illusive, hallucinative and often rollercoaster-like mind bending experience.

Solitude was inspired on Paul Auster's novel The Invention of Solitude. The performance uses a layered narrative structure similar to Auster's novel; like the Russian petroushka dolls every narrative is linked to the next. The story lines resound in a mutual harmony—there's a clear sense of some unoutspoken truth connecting all these micro stories—sometimes chaotic and disturbing, but often very recognisable. Voice competing with voice, character with character, Solitude is and audio visual narrative that allows every spectator to weave in their own story.

video excerpt below