After graduating from the Toneelacademie Maastricht Institute of Performative Arts in 2018, Meirhaeghe frequently combined music and theatre, and Shelly Shonk Fiffit is no exception. The murmur of the audience is silenced by the swelling electronic music of Italian composer Caterina Barbieri, a space ship is revealed from behind the curtain. The light design is masterful, at first we can’t grasp just how big the space ship really is. It’s slowly spinning in the air, and we’re all suspended with it, the epic odyssey is about to begin.

Our inflated hopes are, however, popped by the wooden clogs of Fumiyo Ikeda, the first performer to enter the stage. She’s soon followed by 7 friends (Malique Fye, Bully Fae Collins, Alphonse Eklou, Hanako Hayakawa, Euridike de Beul, Nathan Felix-Rivot, Faust de Winne) all loudly stomping on the stage. They’re moving in and out of sync, happily skipping, dancing a folk dance we can’t recognise, they’re from another planet. Their otherness is like that of people from Coline Serreau’s film La Belle Verte (1996). They all wear simple clothing that bears no signs of constrain, they don’t belong to a profession, a belief system, a caste. Serreau’s people are able to access the hive mind, communicate their physical and mental needs through it, but in order to do that they have to poke their ears, sign to the air, do all sorts of weird actions. So does the cast on stage: they run, sing, wiggle and some of us giggle too.

In the age of extreme individualism Benjamin assembles a diverse cast to bring up the need for community. None of the performers talk much but they’re always attentive and listening, and for a while we follow their example. The invitation to bridge our thirst for adventure with the need to stay on the ground, connect to nature and attune to one another, is there. But it’s also somewhat removed from us. Halfway through the play I see lights illuminating my neighbours’ faces, they’re checking the clock, the messages, their calendar. They’re bored and saturated with the somewhat pointless weirdness we see on the stage. It’s great that the cast is beautiful and talented, the music titillating and the space ship grand, but the lofty promise of attention resulting in beauty and connection doesn’t relate to the audience. Some of the performers deliver monologues about sending ripples through the stars, exploration and movement but it’s alien speech. Thursday evening after work we’d like to be alleviated from our routine, that’s true, but here we’re asked to also extend our attention and continuously watch performers aimlessly running on the stage. When I was getting my coat a couple cut in line saying “Well at least it was beautiful”.

“The stage is disconnected from the audience, and the utopian world from the Earth.”

In La Belle Verte the alien people actually go back to Earth and interact with what they consider old-fashioned ways of life: prioritising car infrastructure, the caging of the trees, dreaming and living in between four walls, individualism, smoking. Shelly Shonk Fiffit seems to take the beginning of Serreau’s film at face value, only showing the utopia of their beautiful planet. What’s even more saddening is that at the end of the play the space ship is taken apart – they’re not flying to us, nor are we flying to them.  This deliberate and painstakingly slow deconstruction feels like a rejection, like a breakup even. The stage is disconnected from the audience, and the utopian world from the Earth.

I’m no “style over substance” lover, especially not when the substance is there but it’s somewhat irrelevant. Showing freedom on the stage is difficult, especially the kind of freedom that does not relate to the constrains of planet Earth. On Shelly Shonk Fiffit’s planet people wear pretty summer fashion, are happy, they listen to each other and dance. Well, that’s unrealistic for us. On my planet people are tired, don’t see each other and are disappointed when reminded of that without relevant inspiration to change, without a spaceship that connects.

(c) Fred Debrock

Shelly Shonk Fiffit is on tour until april. Performance dates can be found here.