Telephone sex. Can you transform it into a play? Yes, and a good one at that. Bart Meuleman shows us how it’s done by having a somewhat older man and a younger woman engage in conversation. The only contact they have with each other is through their voices, along with ambient background noise. Strangely enough, the distance creates a kind of intimacy. Is the intimacy an illusion? Is intimacy enhanced because of it?
If The Bult and the Beautiful tends toward pornography, it’s because “I wish to take pornography, and the human drive that lies behind it, au serieux," says Bart Meuleman. You've been warned.
The production was selected for the Theaterfestival 2007. From the jury's report: “In The Bult and the Beautiful Bart Meuleman has written a script that focuses microscopically on the vulnerable intimacy that arises when a man rings a woman for telephone sex. (...) In four austere and dark scenes between Mark Verstraete and Amara Reta, Meuleman portrays the effect of the impossibility of a meeting in seemingly banale communication, in which the things left unsaid seem louder than what is spoken.”
text, direction
- Bart Meuleman
performance
- Mark Verstraete
- Amara Reta
light design
- Mark Van Denesse
sound design
- Senjan Jansen
production
- Theater Antigone
- Toneelhuis
- Bart Meuleman
- Theater Antigone
executive producer
- Toneelhuis
