Once And For All We’re Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut And Listen - Alexander Devriendt and Ontroerend Goed Get Teenage Kicks Right Through The Night
School holidays. They may be much longed for, but too often the sheer restlessness of youth can make them long, dull and boring. Unless, that is, you get to tour the world with your immediate peer group, tearing up each city you visit with a riot of hormonal adrenalin so raucous, so noisy and so pure that anyone who encounters you will never forget the experience. This is exactly what’s been happening to the thirteen Belgian teenagers who caused a storm in the 2008 Edinburgh Festival Fringe with the magnificently titled Once And For All We’re Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up And Listen. As the title suggests, this was more of a provocation than a play, a notion confirmed by the show’s poster, which displayed a clenched fist, the middle finger of which was defiantly cocked skywards.
Co-produced by Gent-based companies Ontroerend Goed and Kopergietery, Once And For All was an evocative burst of life, as the bright-eyed youths onstage fought, flirted, danced, made a mess, laughed, cried and went way too far, threatening to spill all their formative experiences ino an audience who may have seen it all before, but never quite like this. The result was one of the most life-affirming hours you’re ever likely to see on a stage, a fleeting moment of exuberance captured and compressed, but which, with the onset of adult-hood, will disappear just as quickly. For those intent on staying terminal adolescents awhile longer, Once And For All is back for what are likely to be the show’s last ever UK shows as part of The Arches genre-bending Behaviour festival.
“You always hear how everybody longs to get their childhood back,” director and co-creator of the show Alexander Devriendt observes. “But you never hear people say how they long for their teenage years. That was the intention for me when we started to make Once And For All, because as people grow up, they can become too serious and eliminate that part of them. Especially when you’re twenty-one, you don’t want to be a teenager anymore. It was never my intention to say that teenagers are a problem, which is a political attitude in the UK I was surprised by. I wanted the audience to find the teenager within.”
For the thirteen actors at various stages of their own real-life difficult years, the result was akin to all three series of British teen drama Skins had been squeezed into a genie’s bottle, then unleashed onto the world like the messiest, most disorderly, most anarchic Jack-in-the-Box on the planet. As the wildest of show-and-tells, Once And For All is an experience that taps into something everyone’s been through. ‘Everything’s been done before,’ it screams, ‘but not by us.’
“I felt we were onto something when we were creating it, “Devriendt reflects. “We had such a good experience, and I always hoped people would see the beauty of it. When I was young I saw plays and dances, but you never saw the fun of them onstage. I always had fun behind the curtain, but never onstage. With Once And For All, I wanted to get that fun onstage. Fot the cast, it ewasn’t so difficult for them to grasp the idea of discipline amongst the free space we created, which was the sort of space I long for as a teenager. By restricting that freedom, that gives them a sense of responsibility, because that’s what they’re living.”
“The group became very strong,” according to eighteen year old Charlotte De Bruyne, who was seventeen when she started working on the show. “I’ve learnt how to have more fun doing things, being wilder and being more myself. Everybody changes all the time, but in the show I’m staying the same adolescent, except maybe more noisy and a bit more full of things, I guess.”
At nineteen, Aaron De Keyzer is the oldest member of the cast. He was eighteen when he started on Once And For All, and at the time “had some problems with finding what I wanted to do. Now I’m doing something I believe in, and which has given me something with which I can start my life.”
Once And For All has dates booked in every school holiday right up to February 2010, when it will play in Toronto. Beyond that, though, growing pains look set to get the better of its cast, and any further tours are unlikely.
“It has to stop some time,” Devriendt states. “It’s their story, and I don’t want to bring in a new cast. Also, like the actors in Once And For All, I’m not the same person I was when we started out, so I have to move on as well. I want to tell a different story with different people, and I’m working on a new piece, which may go even deeper.”
This new show’s working title? Teenage Riot. Devriendt is also working on another show for an adult cast called Under The Influence.
“It’s about losing yourself in a party and the advantages of that.,” he explains of a grown-up show set to play in a Gent apartment, with possible Edinburgh dates to follow. “I want to show the audience how the fifteen people in it go for it.”
While parallels with Once And For all are obvious, Under The Influence will be played by professional actors.
“I’m looking to find that same energy with professional actors we had with Once And For All,” Devriendt says. “If we achieve it, we might end up with something else entirely.”
While Devriendt has his new shows, the obvious question for the young cast intimately connected to the Once And For All experience is what happens next? Three, including De Bruyne and De Keyzer, have decided to pursue performing full-time, and will appear in Under The Influence. Another has just won an award for her photography, while De Keyzer expresses a desire to make his own shows.
“They use the experience for their own development,” Devriendt says. “There will be a black hole of course, but they are still able to use it for their own benefit. That’s what happens in good collaboration.”
Like the end of summer camp though, the emotional wrench of finishing the show looks set to inform Once And For All’s dynamic young company with yet another life lesson, this time one of loss.
“I think it will be a black hole for some people who only have that show,” De Keyzer points out, “but we’re all getting older, and I understand why it has to end. I accept that.”
De Bruyne goes even further, instinctively recognising tha she’ll never be as young as this again.
“I’m going to cry for three months,” she mourns, though not without tempering her sorrow with some surprisingly mature pragmatism. “I love this show, and I’m not looking forward to it ending, but by then I’ll be busy with other things. I can’t stay the person I am in the show. It’s logical, I guess. Things have to end.”
Once And For All We’re Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up And Listen, The Arches, Glasgow as part of the Behaviour festival, Monday April 13, 3pm and 7.30pm
www.thearches.co.uk
www.ontroerendgoed.be
The Herald, April 7th 2009
ends
Co-produced by Gent-based companies Ontroerend Goed and Kopergietery, Once And For All was an evocative burst of life, as the bright-eyed youths onstage fought, flirted, danced, made a mess, laughed, cried and went way too far, threatening to spill all their formative experiences ino an audience who may have seen it all before, but never quite like this. The result was one of the most life-affirming hours you’re ever likely to see on a stage, a fleeting moment of exuberance captured and compressed, but which, with the onset of adult-hood, will disappear just as quickly. For those intent on staying terminal adolescents awhile longer, Once And For All is back for what are likely to be the show’s last ever UK shows as part of The Arches genre-bending Behaviour festival.
“You always hear how everybody longs to get their childhood back,” director and co-creator of the show Alexander Devriendt observes. “But you never hear people say how they long for their teenage years. That was the intention for me when we started to make Once And For All, because as people grow up, they can become too serious and eliminate that part of them. Especially when you’re twenty-one, you don’t want to be a teenager anymore. It was never my intention to say that teenagers are a problem, which is a political attitude in the UK I was surprised by. I wanted the audience to find the teenager within.”
For the thirteen actors at various stages of their own real-life difficult years, the result was akin to all three series of British teen drama Skins had been squeezed into a genie’s bottle, then unleashed onto the world like the messiest, most disorderly, most anarchic Jack-in-the-Box on the planet. As the wildest of show-and-tells, Once And For All is an experience that taps into something everyone’s been through. ‘Everything’s been done before,’ it screams, ‘but not by us.’
“I felt we were onto something when we were creating it, “Devriendt reflects. “We had such a good experience, and I always hoped people would see the beauty of it. When I was young I saw plays and dances, but you never saw the fun of them onstage. I always had fun behind the curtain, but never onstage. With Once And For All, I wanted to get that fun onstage. Fot the cast, it ewasn’t so difficult for them to grasp the idea of discipline amongst the free space we created, which was the sort of space I long for as a teenager. By restricting that freedom, that gives them a sense of responsibility, because that’s what they’re living.”
“The group became very strong,” according to eighteen year old Charlotte De Bruyne, who was seventeen when she started working on the show. “I’ve learnt how to have more fun doing things, being wilder and being more myself. Everybody changes all the time, but in the show I’m staying the same adolescent, except maybe more noisy and a bit more full of things, I guess.”
At nineteen, Aaron De Keyzer is the oldest member of the cast. He was eighteen when he started on Once And For All, and at the time “had some problems with finding what I wanted to do. Now I’m doing something I believe in, and which has given me something with which I can start my life.”
Once And For All has dates booked in every school holiday right up to February 2010, when it will play in Toronto. Beyond that, though, growing pains look set to get the better of its cast, and any further tours are unlikely.
“It has to stop some time,” Devriendt states. “It’s their story, and I don’t want to bring in a new cast. Also, like the actors in Once And For All, I’m not the same person I was when we started out, so I have to move on as well. I want to tell a different story with different people, and I’m working on a new piece, which may go even deeper.”
This new show’s working title? Teenage Riot. Devriendt is also working on another show for an adult cast called Under The Influence.
“It’s about losing yourself in a party and the advantages of that.,” he explains of a grown-up show set to play in a Gent apartment, with possible Edinburgh dates to follow. “I want to show the audience how the fifteen people in it go for it.”
While parallels with Once And For all are obvious, Under The Influence will be played by professional actors.
“I’m looking to find that same energy with professional actors we had with Once And For All,” Devriendt says. “If we achieve it, we might end up with something else entirely.”
While Devriendt has his new shows, the obvious question for the young cast intimately connected to the Once And For All experience is what happens next? Three, including De Bruyne and De Keyzer, have decided to pursue performing full-time, and will appear in Under The Influence. Another has just won an award for her photography, while De Keyzer expresses a desire to make his own shows.
“They use the experience for their own development,” Devriendt says. “There will be a black hole of course, but they are still able to use it for their own benefit. That’s what happens in good collaboration.”
Like the end of summer camp though, the emotional wrench of finishing the show looks set to inform Once And For All’s dynamic young company with yet another life lesson, this time one of loss.
“I think it will be a black hole for some people who only have that show,” De Keyzer points out, “but we’re all getting older, and I understand why it has to end. I accept that.”
De Bruyne goes even further, instinctively recognising tha she’ll never be as young as this again.
“I’m going to cry for three months,” she mourns, though not without tempering her sorrow with some surprisingly mature pragmatism. “I love this show, and I’m not looking forward to it ending, but by then I’ll be busy with other things. I can’t stay the person I am in the show. It’s logical, I guess. Things have to end.”
Once And For All We’re Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up And Listen, The Arches, Glasgow as part of the Behaviour festival, Monday April 13, 3pm and 7.30pm
www.thearches.co.uk
www.ontroerendgoed.be
The Herald, April 7th 2009
ends
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