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Marijn de Langen / Research
My PhD project 'Mapping Mime' focuses on an avant garde, little-researched field in the Dutch post-World War II theater landscape. There are striking contrasts and connections between Dutch Mime and what is defined in the international context as 'Mime'. The question arises: what exactly is Dutch Mime? What kind of theatrical (and other) thinking can be inferred from its practices?
Inspired by the work of Etienne Decroux (1898-1991), since the 1960's Dutch Mime has developed as a subversive stream undermining the poetics of text-based theatre and situating the body-in-space as the explicit center of a performance’s focus. Visual arts and performance art have been major influences on its development.
The subject of my research is the recent Dutch mime landscape and its connection to its genealogy. I aim to contextualize, historically, five key issues in recent Mime discourse. These all connect in different ways to the notion of Presence, and include the Decrouxian notion of 'Zero', and the concepts of 'Here-and-Now' and 'Landscape'. Theoretical texts that will be cited include and consider Lehmann’s discussion of the Postdramatic, Barthes’ writings on Neutrality, and Foucault’s notion of the Archeology of Knowledge. Developments in modern visual art and sculpture also provide sources of reference.
My project addresses the question of how these five key issues are connected to an international theatre landscape. With Kassys’ upcoming performance at the Under the Radar Festival in New York, Boukje Schweigman and Theun Mosk’s collaboration with Robert Wilson, and the recent international successes of directors Jetse Batelaan and Lotte van den Berg, it appears that Dutch Mime is intrinsically tied to an international avant garde, and could be addressed in that context.
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