Sammy Van den Heuvel — scenography            

Each space grows within a specific frame that is shaped through dialogue; with the director, with the choreographer, with the text, the music, the materials, with the dramaturg, with the production team, with the artists and builders in the workshops, with the stage technicians. Ultimately, the built space engages in a dialogue with the performers, and, through them, in a conversation with the audience.

/Steirischer Herbst 2022
The possibility of Europe becoming a theater of war has recently become more real than we ever feared — and with it the prospect of being drafted. In this performance we focused on those who would be mobilized in wartime, namely young males fit for military service.

In the spaces of Neue Galerie Graz’s BRUSEUM, we collaborated with a group of men who have been trained in the Austrian military service, the Bundesheer. Creating a “safe space” in precarious times, we invited the audience to take a closer look at the shifting perception of the male, potentially militarized body in the context of an approaching war.

The performance challenged the images of heroism and masculinity associated with the military and explored the incomprehensible contradictions of young male bodies that might be trained, armed, and finally destroyed in the name of peace.

concept and direction Giacomo Veronesi / scenography and costume design Sammy Van den Heuvel / video design Anita Kremm