TAKING THE ACTORS SERIOUSLY: MICHIEL VANDEVELDE’S “PARADISE NOW (1968–2018)”
TAKING THE ACTORS SERIOUSLY: MICHIEL VANDEVELDE’S “PARADISE NOW (1968–2018)”

Summary/Abstract: The article departs from a phrase in Paul Ricoeur’s “Memory, History, Forgetting” (2003), and attempts to take Ricoeur at his word, by taking seriously the troupe of Flemish teenage actors performing Michiel Vandevelde’s “Paradise Now (1968–2018)”, a re-working of the iconic performance by The Living Theatre, which when it was presented fifty years ago at the Avignon Festival offered itself as a preparation for its audience to take action, individually and collectively, personally and politically, beyond the space of the theatrical representation. Vandevelde and the teenagers’ re-do functions rather differently. Drawing as much on film history and news and popular media as on theatre history, it offers a compilation of iconic images winding back to 1968, an occasion for these young 21st century performercitizens – at once theatrical actors and “actors” of their own history – to voice their ambivalence about the potentials for common action in the present moment and the times ahead.

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