THE ART OF ENTERTAINMENT - Needcompany

THE ART OF ENTERTAINMENT
NEEDCOMPANY PLAYS THE DEATH OF DIRK ROOFTHOOFT
‘Here we are, six strangers on an island, and we have to survive. The big bad outside world is
knocking at the door. We’ve got good music, delicious food, excellent drinks and genitalia. So what
do you suggest, you beautiful new woman who has just slipped into my life?’
Dirk Roofthooft in ‘The art of entertainment’
The art of entertainment is Jan Lauwers’ new play, commissioned by the Burgtheater.
The art of entertainment is a black, comedy about a famous actor, who decides to end his life
because he feels that his memory, the home of the soul, is slowly breaking down. He is invited to
kill himself in a reality show with a worldwide audience: ‘The Art of Entertainment’, a cookery
programme in which a celebrated French chef prepares the suicide’s last meal. Here the story
unfolds of an exhausted actor who has been overtaken by time. The profession he has lovingly
practised for so long has become inaccessible to him. After all, what remains for an actor who is
no longer able to remember his lines, who, with his memory, has also lost his most important
weapon in the struggle against reality. But he doesn’t give up that easily. For the last time he takes
up the challenge of history. Until the bitter end he continues to play his role. By consciously
choosing death where and when he wants it, he retains control until the end of his life. This is his
final act.
The art of entertainment thus unfolds as an entertainer’s apologia, the death-song of an actor who
can only exist in the play. In confrontation with his great love, Gena, the woman with whom he
had made love more than a thousand times, Mr Joy, the embittered doctor-without-borders, and,
of course, Liliane Van Muynck, the world-famous host of the programme, an older stand-up
comedienne on the decline, a conversation arises about the decadence of the Occident and the
actor launches into a tirade about the loss of his profession: acting.
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