Respublika

How can we develop a free, more peaceful and more environmentally friendly society? What kind of future could we build? In Respublika – literally, ‘public thing’ – techno, film, theatre, literature and visual arts are brought together to create a distinct world. 

The members of the multilingual troupe brought together by director and video-maker Łukasz Twarkowski conducted a radical experiment on themselves. For several weeks they withdrew from civilization to the forests of Lithuania, cutting themselves off from everyday concerns. Exploring the idea of basic income, they came to the conclusion that music and rave were their escape. All actors started DJ’ing and explored what living in a rave community would look like. The director followed this process with his camera and recorded their fears, desires and existential concerns. Using this raw material together with fictional scenes and working in collaboration with a playwright, a set designer, a video artist, a composer, a DJ, a choreographer and with various cameramen working on livestream, he created a colossal six-hour documentary for the stage. 

Here, the audience comes and goes as it pleases. Spectators can be simple observers or if they want, they can sit down at a table with the artists, immerse themselves in a collective movement or in a meditative sauna, and of course they can dance! After all, isn’t dancing to rave music in all its sensual and ritual dimension also an act of resistance? 

Corealisation Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Les Halles de Schaerbeek, Théâtre de Liège, Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles