EVENING PROGRAMME

In COPYRIOT, the main character Gloria encounters her own double at work. It is an exact copy of herself, with the only difference being that this replica seems to do everything better. 

Krapp Collective

COPYRIOT is the fourth creation by Krapp — the theatre collective of Mats Vandroogenbroeck, Nona Demey Gallagher and Timo Sterckx — and their second production in collaboration with KVS. In 2023, they created De Duivels / Les Diables, about the Loudun witch trials. As always, they collaborate with new performers from outside the collective. In this case, these are Abigail Gypens and Colette Goossens, who share the stage with Mats and Timo. Nona takes on the role of director. 

Krapp is committed to creating new repertoire, preceded by in-depth textual research. Drawing on literary and audiovisual material, they develop new narratives that are shaped through a distinctive theatrical language. The members of Krapp share a fascination with the grotesque and the gothic, the magical and the monstrous. Previous research has included conspiracy theories, the fantastical nineteenth-century creatures of Romanticism, and the devil exorcisms of the early modern period. This intense interest in the strange and the occult does not result in hermetic work, however. Through these magical worlds, Krapp consistently seeks to speak — in an accessible way — about the present moment: a contemporary world in which the boundary between truth and illusion, theatre and reality, fact and fiction appears more blurred than ever, with all the consequences that entails. 

‘We share a fascination with the grotesque and a kind of campiness, and that’s something we like to incorporate into our performances, aesthetically or formally. We’re drawn to excess, theatricality, the grotesque — and also, to some extent, a kind of bad taste.’ 
— Nona Demey Gallagher 

COPYRIOT is once again an attempt to look the ‘monstrous’ straight in the eye. After previously confronting paranoid cyborgs, gothic ghosts and the Devil himself, Krapp now turns to the greatest monster of modernity: the self. As always, they do so in an absurd and magical way. 

The Double as a Metaphor for Our 'Unlived Lives'

‘We feel that many people today experience pressure from their unlived lives. Everywhere you see versions of yourself you could have been; everywhere there are opportunities for self-improvement. That obsession with a better version of ourselves makes us lonely — and that’s what the piece is about.’ 
— Nona Demey Gallagher 

Krapp loosely bases COPYRIOT on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 1846 novella The Double. In this early work, the doppelgänger functions as a metaphor for an ‘unlived life’. Human beings have always had to learn to live with countless imaginary lives they do not lead: paths not taken, missed turns and lost opportunities. In this sense, we are defined as much by what we do not do as by what we do. Our unlived life can make us feel mournful, but it is also a necessary force that shapes our identity. Krapp updates Dostoevsky’s story and places it in a timeless setting that resonates with our contemporary world. 

‘I think that anxiety — that existential fear — is what inspired us in Dostoevsky’s story, and we feel an urgency in it that perhaps speaks even more strongly today.’ 
— Mats Vandroogenbroeck 

According to psychoanalyst Adam Phillips, we live in a world in which a frenzied inflation of unlived lives runs rampant. Through advertising, social media and intensive therapeutic cultures, we are constantly confronted with potentially better, happier and more successful versions of ourselves. This breeds insecurity, and according to historian Christopher Lasch, such an identity crisis gives rise to a narcissistic subject turned inward — increasingly lost in a narcissistic hall of mirrors, where empathy for ‘the Other’ gives way to autobiographical reflections on the self. 

With COPYRIOT, Krapp holds up a dark, tragicomic mirror world to the audience, one in which everything endlessly duplicates and chokes on itself. A world where supposedly ‘unique’ life stories are constantly stolen, copied and parodied. Because if you are relentlessly haunted by all the other versions of yourself that you are not, what remains that is truly real — and truly, uniquely your own? 

‘Our work isn’t necessarily overtly political, but there is an underlying gut feeling that says something about today.’ 
— Nona Demey Gallagher 

In contrast to their previous, more restrained KVS production De Duivels, Krapp returns in COPYRIOT to the grotesque style of their early work. Both formally and linguistically, they seek out absurd and tragicomic imaginations. A surreal scenography is deployed as a mental landscape in which the protagonist tries to cling to her identity, yet appears to be literally falling apart. In doing so, Krapp creates an unsettling world of magical duplications, where sense and nonsense blur, and where an ending can just as easily be a beginning. 

In the studio with

Meet the team

Inspiration

Credits

CONCEPT Mats Vandroogenbroeck, Nona Demey Gallagher & Timo Sterckx (KRAPP) DIRECTION Nona Demey Gallagher CAST Mats Vandroogenbroeck, Timo Sterckx, Colette Goossens, Abigail GypensTEXT Mats Vandroogenbroeck SCENOGRAPHY & COSTUMES Daniela Zorrozua SOUNDDESIGN Mozes Mosuse LIGHT DESIGN Margareta Andersen DRAMATURGY Dina Dooreman PRODUCTION MANAGERElla De Gregoriis STAGE MASTER Caroline Wagner SOUND TECHNICS Bram Moriau LIGHT TECHNICSMargareta Andersen CONSTRUCTION DE DÉCORS Danny Vandeput & Luc Vogelaerts SCULPTORGrégory Larroy INTERN COSTUMES & SCENOGRAPHY Aukje Bosmans INTERN DIRECTING ASSISTANT & DRAMATURGY Anna May Christmas VOICE ACTORS Mieke Verdin SURTITLING Inge FloréTRANSLATION Anne Vanderschueren (NL-FR) & Trevor Perri (NL-EN) POSTER IMAGE Alice DooremanARTISTIC ADVICE Joachim Robbrecht PRODUCTION KRAPP & KVS COPRODUCTIE Perpodium WITH THE SUPPORT OF The taxshelter of the Belgian federal government