Welcome to the Real is an examination of Disneyfication and authenticity in a kind of spectacle society, where pink filters colour the truth and day-trippers block our way.
Sand crawls between the buttocks of a solitary woman on a landscaped beach and triumphal arches sprout like mushrooms out of the ground. Somewhere on a square, someone is selling only the same balloons. A tour guide under a towering red parasol repeats herself. Tourists continually show up in front of famous buildings. Picture-perfect scenes one and all. Until a thick red line is drawn through this seemingly immaculately clean painting. Ruins of reality appear. Who is still real, and what is fake?
The world is fake.
The world fakes its layout.
The picture imitates the building.
The computers simulate the actors.
The actors play the tourists.
The tourists copy each other.
The triumphal arch imagines it is a letter.
The letters imitate sounds.
The sounds want to be animals.
The animals are layabouts.
The layabouts play Mickey Mouse.
Mickey Mouse is real.
Real is fake.
The world is fake.
In Welcome to the Real, the characters seem to have effortlessly engaged with a system in which they have gradually lost themselves. Under the light of large spotlights, they give glimpses into the universes with which they seem to have become one.
Spoken in English and Dutch
Direction: Suzanne Versele - Performers: Manon Soberon, Kiana Porte, Farbod Fathinejad, Gonzalo Nengo, Louise Versele, Victor Vermaerke, Erika Diane, Zoë Ceulebroeck, Rhona Vandenberghe - Live Music: Jérôme Pringiers - Audio: Lars Callewaert - Lighting: Astrid Vansteenkiste - Scenography: Astrid Vansteenkiste, Rune Floryn, Louise Versele - Sculpture: Louise Versele - Production: Lars Uten - Coaching: Lies Pauwels, Renée Goethijn - With thanks to: Dirk Verstockt, Bart Capelle, Lars Uten, Dieuwke Raymaekers
