tg STAN The Cherry Or­chard

STAN's Cherry Or­chard is in­cred­i­bly witty - not side - split­ting but gen­tle chuck­les at reg­u­lar in­ter­vals. At the same time it is sad - not tear - jerk­ing, but heartache.－De Volk­skrant

In this airy Cherry Or­chard human tragedies are hid­den be­hind non­cha­lance as the char­ac­ters jaun­tily dance their way to­wards their de­struc­tion.－Het Pa­rool

The Cherry Or­chard is Anton Chekhov’s last play, and cer­tainly the most enig­matic of his works. The play tells the fall of the aris­toc­racy and the rise of cap­i­tal­ism: when the fam­ily es­tate is due for auc­tion, should they try to keep the cherry or­chard, home to many a child­hood mem­ory, or sur­ren­der it to real es­tate de­vel­op­ers so they can pay off their debts? Yet as bleak as the fam­ily’s for­tunes seem, Chekhov orig­i­nally in­tended this play to be as much a com­edy ‘a farce, even’ as it is a so­cial com­men­tary.

For their Tai­wanese debut, the Bel­gian the­ater col­lec­tive STAN rein­ter­prets this clas­sic piece for our mod­ern day and age. Equal parts tragedy and com­edy, their pro­duc­tion high­lights the in­evitabil­ity of shift­ing val­ues as times change.
 

tg STAN
STAN, an acronym for Stop Think­ing About Names, is a the­atre col­lec­tive con­sist­ing of Jo­lente De Keers­maeker, Dami­aan De Schri­jver and Frank Ver­cruyssen. The com­pany op­er­ates on the de­mo­c­ra­tic prin­ci­ple that every­one par­tic­i­pates in de­ci­sions about every­thing, from text se­lec­tion, set and light­ing to cos­tumes and posters. STAN puts the per­former at cen­ter stage and firmly be­lieves in the prin­ci­ple of the sov­er­eign actor, i.e. that the actor is both player and maker.

STAN nur­tures a firm be­lief in the ‘liv­ing’ power of the­atre: the per­for­mance is not a re­pro­duc­tion of some­thing that is learned, but some­thing that is cre­ated anew every night to­gether with the au­di­ence. So a STAN per­for­mance is not a fin­ished prod­uct, but rather an in­vi­ta­tion to a di­a­logue.

Pro­duc­tion Team
Text / Anton Chekhov
Script & per­form­ers / Evelien Bosmans, Evge­nia Bren­des, Robby Cleiren, Jo­lente De Keers­maeker, Lukas De Wolf, Bert Haelvoet, Minke Kruyver, Scar­let Tum­mers, Stijn Van Op­stal, Frank Ver­cruyssen
Light­ing De­sign / Thomas Wal­grave
Cos­tume De­sign / An d'Huys