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Treibgut
We had bad weather on Saturday evening. Every now and then it rained and in the distance we heard the rumbling of heavy thunderstorms all evening. That was not very convenient, because we had planned to go and see a theatre performance in the open air on the Philips High Tech Campus.
Water breathes, water lives, water trembles. Water reacts, stimulates and takes revenge … The dramatic events involving flooding disasters all around the world were the inspiration for the theatre production ‘Treibgut’ by the German theatre group Titanick. Last year this performance attracted an audience of 12,000 spectators in Munster (Germany) and got a very enthusiastic reception. After ‘Onno’, ‘Titanic’, ‘Picnic’ and ‘Malaya’, ‘Treibgut’ is the fifth spectacular opening event of the theatre season organized by the Eindhoven City Theatre.
Flood catastrophe ‘Treibgut’ is about the way people deal with a flooding. How they are faced again and again with the enormous forces of nature. ‘Treibgut’ show the relationship between man and nature, between civilization and chaos. But it also reminds us of the suffering of the tsunami victims in Asia in 2004.
All spectators had to assemble at ‘The Strip’, that is the new building with
restaurants, shops and meeting-rooms that has been built along the large pond. There were very many spectators! They queued up on the quay between the strip and the pond, but the queue was not moving at all!
We had a good time anyway, because a small band was playing groovy music. And it turned out my umbrella was also very suitable to use as a baton for a little twirling (even synchronously with my brother-in-law for a moment).
After we had been waiting for half an hour, it was announced that the gate wouldn’t be opened before 9:30, because another thunderstorm was expected first. So we decided to go sit inside one of the restaurants for a while. Everything looks so beautiful on the campus. It was very nice to be able to show that to my family for the first time.
When we were finally seated on the gallery to watch the play it became even more clear how many spectators there were. It took more than 40 minutes before everybody was seated. The play had already started: Strong men and women were carrying sandbags to re-enforce the dike.
When everybody had found a place to sit, a large shower was switched on. Just in front of the front row of seats, water kept coming down over the full width of the gallery. This formed a gigantic curtain of rain and there, exactly under this monstrously cold shower, the players were handing over sandbags to each other in a rhythmic way. It was beautiful to watch, but it must have been quite heavy for the players!
The players were wet already, so a little rain shower wouldn’t bother them any more, but for the audience it was different. We were promised there wouldn’t be any heavy thunderstorm, but a little shower was certainly possible. And we also got a little wet from some stray water from the rain curtain in front of us.
The thunderstorms in the distance were really a beautiful scenery for this play. It matched the atmosphere very well. After a concert by Neptune’s nymphs, we saw the ‘Treibgut’ (floating objects) come into sight. Part of a house, half a camper van, a bathroom… All leftovers that had once been part of a city. And on each piece of Treibgut we saw one or more survivors of the disaster. At first they were very sad, but we saw them regain their strength and their will to go on with their lives.
We didn’t get to see any more. The meteorological agency had warned that another heavy thunderstorm was heading our way and that might be dangerous, so the performance had to be stopped.
For a moment I was afraid people would panic, but that didn’t happen. The audience left the gallery in a peaceful, orderly way. So that was all. We hadn’t seen more than half an hour of the performance. What a disappointment!!!
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