Animal / 8+
photos: Clara Hermans
A headbanging parakeet.
A butterfly faking its own death.
A gorilla recognizing itself in the mirror.
A crocodile saving a deer from drowning.
A monkey carefully petting a bird.
Animal is an imaginative, colorful and physical theater piece about animals that look like people and people who look like animals, for young and old (age 8 and up).
Alongside YouTube-videos and conversations with people both big and small, two actors attempt to become animals on stage: they interpret and experiment, act out situations and marvel at the result. Animal is about funny flamingos, smart pigs, and plodding people. About how we interact with animals, how we see them as human or chop them into pieces.
Animal is inspired by (among others) the work of the Dutch biologist Frans de Waal, who has tried to explain human behavior by analyzing animal behavior - and the other way around. For Animal, Tom Struyf spoke with Bas Haring (philosopher), Tinkebell (artist), Charel Van Riet (WWF-ranger and tree-climber), Astrid Elburg (personal leadership coach), Dirk Draulans (biologist and journalist), Joske Van Tiggelt (who owns over 200 animals), Matthijs Schouten (ecologist and philosopher), and Ruben Vandewalle (butcher).
Animal premiered January 25, 2020 in DE Studio (Antwerp, BE), and was performed in Flanders and the Netherlands in the spring and autumn of 2020.