Arts Centre Vooruit, Ghent, Belgium

O_Rex annulled!

Normally, theatre company CREW would be presenting their newest show, O_Rex, this week.
The experimental company, led by artist Eric Joris, operates on the border between drama and science. They use the newest technologies to explore the limits of modern-day theatre.
However, the company has decided to postpone the presentation of O_Rex (which was planned for this week at Vooruit as part of the Flanders Festival). The software that was especially developed for the play is as yet too unstable. This caused delays in the creation process. Crew feels that the play is unfinished and therefore has decided to postpone it to a later date.

CREW, one of the most adventurous Flemish companies, bases its performances on technology, theatre, and science. The company raises questions about the tragic condition of present-day “homo technologicus”. This also applies to ‘O_Rex’, a performance of which a tryout was performed at the Vooruit festival ‘the game is up!’, and which will première at Vooruit.

‘O_Rex ’ is an exploration of a three-dimensional virtual world. One person from the audience is chosen to be completely immersed. He becomes an actor among actors and has to wear 3D glasses and headphones through which a voice speaks to him. For a while, that person represents the line that separates reality from fiction, feeling from thinking, the self and the environment.

The performance does not mention the Oedipus tragedy as such, but it uses the tyrant’s tragic destiny as a metaphor for what is going on inside the actors’ and audience’s heads. Who can see and who is blind? And who owns reality anyway?
An electronic adaptation of Jean Cocteau’s text for Stravinsky’s opera “Oedipus Rex” provides the canvas for the piece.