from avignon to the armory: designer jan versweyveld on \'the damned\'

Last week, director Ivo van Hove adapted the play for \"Damn Lucino Visconti\" at the Park Avenue Armory in New York.
The film premiered in public on 2016.
Set in the air at the Papas Palace in Avignon.
The exercise Hall of the Park Avenue Armory is a command space, covering an area of 55,000 square feet and 80 square meters. foot-high roof.
Damn people take advantage of its emptiness
Like quality, 130-foot-
Wide stage, huge LED screen to play live photography, changes and production of clothing
There are six yawning coffins and factory bagpipes with eardrum.
Exclaimed.
As anyone familiar with Van Hove theater knows, the design of his partner in January at the verweyveld theater and life is indispensable.
Few people can see bloody boxing matches from the bridge, few can forget the live photography of the King of war, and few can forget the black abyss of American Angels.
Van Hove and waverder meet in a week
Summer Dance course in Antwerp in 1980.
Their first drama collaboration, rumor, was an immersive work performed in an abandoned laundry building in the second year.
Since then, they have been working together on every work of van Hove.
I spoke to Versweyveld about the collaboration he was working on with Van Hove, damn, their main art brawl, a penguin
Related \"happening\" and so on.
In January, how strong are your memories of 1981 when you first worked with Ivo, rumors?
Maybe, for some reason, it\'s kind of like what I did to the damn people.
We specify certain parts of the space for the actors.
The overall impression of the space is that it is very bare, very stone, very cold, wet and humid.
Not a good space.
This is huge.
This is of course in Antwerp, a very central period in the punk era.
I think the rumor is a complete visual reflection of this.
As far as I know, your collaboration with Ivo since then feels like your whole job has been in conversation.
Yes, I think we have already talked about it.
This is something we started developing in our early 20 s.
And continue.
It has become a part of our lives.
We take the work seriously, but we are also very happy.
This is something we cherish very much.
How did you design for the damn people?
When we succeeded, Ivo and I felt very strongly that it made us suddenly return to the rumors 35 years ago and also let us start the first step in the drama.
All these works we made in the first five years of our career.
This is about allowing space to exist without changing space --
Embrace a real space.
In this case, it is the Papas palace of Avignon.
In New York, of course, it will be the armory and a considerable space.
It\'s also our approach to the extreme flesh of actors.
This is a real revival process for us.
Like the rumor I said, the space I designedfor The Damned]
It is actually equivalent to the space designed for the ceremony.
Like a court ceremony, or a mass of any religion.
There are a lot of rituals going on in the damn place.
In our common memory, the space in which the ceremony takes place is very powerful.
It\'s all about community thinking and how to think about a community --How can I say-
Trying to get rid of their demons, what they don\'t want to do in their daily lives.
I think the space for the ceremony is for this.
Trying to control the evil and dark side of our human existence.
Sounds like the origin of drama.
As a theater for venting space? Yeah.
Moreover, in a more direct way, the choice of materials, colors and design styles is related to the German steel industry --
The fire, the melting of steel, the steam flute and other instruments in the factory announced the beginning of the transformation.
We use a lot of these designs, which I think are very modern.
You feel the audience at Amory to experience this with open-
Air conditioning for Avignon?
There is a big difference in perception.
Sometimes it blows in Avignon.
It\'s not always warm either.
Of course, this has also played a certain role.
You are in a medieval palace with a long history.
But I think this applies to the armory to a certain extent.
Of course it\'s covered, it\'s not open
But we can build the complete scene, the complete scene, as we did in Avignon, which is really special.
It has a full 40-meter stage we can use and allows us to show off the entire set of machines we built.
I\'m glad we can do it in the armory.
This is a huge extra cost for this kind of production.
There\'s live photography in this movie, and this is what you \'ve been incorporating in the theater since the middle90s.
Can you tell us that you are interested in this?
From the moment we started working in the bigger theater, it has always been our desire to start in Belgium and the Netherlands, and of course Europe, the United States and the world, to bring actors close to the audience.
The real purpose of using the camera each time has a slightly different purpose, but the main goal is always to be able to bring the emotion, the actor\'s truth to the public.
Of course, there is some freedom to show things for Ivo.
But it also allows actors to enter certain areas of the scene that the public cannot see.
So meet them in a more intimate way.
As far as I know, the two of you have what Ivo calls an \"art quarrel \"--
He prefers warm stage lights to the cold light you like.
I think Ivo misunderstood the warmth of experiencing a warm audience.
I feel very sorry.
I try to show what things are like with lights.
Therefore, I prefer the color temperature of sunlight to the color temperature of candlelight.
I really like the contrast between using color temperature.
I want warm light. he wants to take one of my tools.
If you put people in a space with tungsten lamps and nothing else, they will experience it like normal light after a while.
However, if you suddenly light an HMI bulb in the same space, then you will feel the warmth of it, because you will see the sudden cooling of the lamp.
I also think that the warm light, after a while, creates sleep.
I don\'t want to make it better.
\"Oh, good light!
I don\'t see any reason to do so.
In the operating room, when a surgeon does surgery on a patient, it is necessary to have a very clear understanding of what is happening there.
So is the theater.
Last question about the early days of Antwerp.
I know you run a beer shop together.
You once convinced a zoo keeper to take Penguins to a restaurant for the Penguin Party, right?
Very good! [Laughs. ]
We like to create events and do things that no one dares to do or even think about.
We work closely with the artists in Antwerp, and at the same time there has been a lot of creativity in Antwerp.
We did not know at that time.
Only by looking back can you see exactly what\'s going on in Antwerp. A medium-
In a small country, big or small, it\'s actually very special.
Perhaps our constant exploration of creativity and ideas and the occurrence of creative events, just one night --
There\'s no excuse like a theater-
This is indeed a wish for us to explore.
The Penguin Party is one of them.
Are those days?