Aantal personages
Mannen: 1
Vrouwen: 1

Personages
Jorn, Manja

Genre(s)
Drama

Synopsis

A man and woman can be seen in an almost empty room. They are wearing their everyday clothes and only change into costume when the audience is seated. The exchange of clothes and the position subsequentle taken up by the actors on stage - on a small platform directly in front of the first row of the audience - emphasise the unaffected immediacy of the encounter which is about to take place.
From the moment they start to speak, there is actually only one question that counts between this man and woman: what is it that they have in common? Speaking softly, but always insistently, without undue emphasis and never losing control over themselves and the other, they engage in a confrontation: a confrontation which, though in form only verbal, achieves a physical, sensory effcet, through the intensity with which it is enacted.

The characters bombard each other with questions, fantasies, challenges and revelations. The contours of what their relationship might possibly become loom up before them: two 'strangers in the night' who have bumped into each other and formed a temporary attachment in an anonymous room: bodies which seek gratification and voices which can finally speak freely, because the listener is a stranger. They talk about love and death, memory and decay, the warmth of the sun and the chilliness of a silent street. Over and over again a temporary reality is constructed, only to fall apart and be replaced by another - until weariness sets in, the night is over and the players each go their separate ways. Much is said, and longed for and fought over; approaches are made and painfull areas touched - and at the same time nothing has happened, nothing except that two people have become so much older, as can sometimes happen in a single night.


language
The language of 2SKIN has a poetic, associative quality. It is never affected, always clear. The sentences are often indirect, emphasizing the roles that each of the characters plays.

performances
The premiere of 2SKIN by the Dood Paard Theatre Company took place on Saturday, 6 April 1996, in the Utrechtse School in Utrecht. The play's tour of The Netherlands and Belgium was continued during the 1996-1997 season. 2SKIN has now been performed about forty times.

The Language Association's Playwrights' Prize
The play won the 1996 Language Association's Playwrights' Prize. From the jury report: 'In 2SKIN, a woman picks up a man at random from the street with the intention of 'tasting pleasure' with him just one more time. The accidental encounter ends in a hallucinatory journey through the world of passion and longing. A simple role play becomes a subtle battle in which the characters attract and repel each other on the basis of their recollections of feelings. Nowhere are the tapped emotions unconditional; they are always familiar and penetrating. 2SKIN is an ode to longing, but this longing chokes on the sour aftertaste of society's heartlessness. Rob de Graaf omits every form of anecdote and never employs the tricks of complicated plots.'

Deze tekst is vertaald door
Rob De Graaf (2 Skin (E), engels, 1996)

Opvoeringsgeschiedenis
2 Skin (E) (1996 door Dood Paard)

Foto's