In the production REST AND RELAXATION, the new players’ collective OTTESSA responds to Ottessa Moshfegh’s popular novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation about a young woman’s efforts to hibernate for a year. Drug-induced sleep will, she hopes, be the solution to her inability to relate to the world around her.
In REST AND RELAXATION, four young actors put life on hold. They doze between sleeping and waking. They know that sleeping has an effect: they will play in a frozen landscape and become increasingly detached from life. They will simply disappear as they search for something, each other perhaps. Then they will wake up and see that the world has changed radically. That is the hope. That is the dream.
OTTESSA is Matilde Casier, Colette Goossens, Lilith Pas and Eliza Stuyck. Selected for the Eigen Kweek project, this young collective cannot wait to unleash its first play.
I have a plan.
I’m going to take some time out.
I just want to sleep.
This is my year of rest and relaxation.
“Beginning and ending thus deliver the performance's most impressive moments. They are not only carried by the collective breath between stage and audience that makes theatre so much its own, but also give all the air to the life-size question that rests beneath this image: why decide to go to sleep for a year? The fullness you feel is that of a proposal for life. You can't interpret it, but it speaks. It cannot be read directly, but it is bursting with meaning.” - Wouter Hillaert in PZAZZ, 9 oktober 2024
cast and concept Matilde Casier, Colette Goossens, Lilith Pas and Eliza Stuyck acting coach Kristien De Proost scenography/technical aspects Lars Uten dramaturgy Abigail Gypens commercial management Luca Persan production and support Eigen Kweek and Trappelend Talent promotional image Alice Dooreman and Lilith Pas with the support of the Flemish Community with thanks to TAZ, Vincent Company, CAMPO
