HUTAN-HANTU - Toni Kritzer & Lou J. Seidel - Theater Bellevue

Empty spaces do not exist: the floor on which we perform in Dutch theatres is usually made of Keruing wood. Keruing mainly grows in Indonesia and is a seriously endangered tree species due to illegal deforestation. Where this tree comes from, a life-threatening whirlwind blows through its roots. The floor of our stage is smeared with blood. What does it mean to stand on this no-longer tree, but not yet ground, on this body murdered by colonial violence?

HUTAN-HANTU - Toni Kritzer & Lou J. Seidel - Theater Bellevue

Location

Theater Bellevue

Leidsekade 90

1017 PN Amsterdam

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Like ghosts

We look at these trees as ghosts. They haunt the space and whisper stories about the rainforest beneath our feet. Walking through this botanical evidence of genocide makes our movement restless, and innocence feels impossible. The ghosts show themselves in traces of wooden memories: scars, scratches, marks, and cuts.

They hold a séance for these spirits to keep with their memories: to make the loud sound of a tree falling in a forest.

About the makers

Lou J. Seidel is a visual artist and set designer with a background in props and furniture making who understands her own body as part of her work. Lou likes to call himself a compassionate trespasser. Her work is usually spatial, often interdisciplinary and explores the boundaries between installation, performance and experience. Her landscapes want to take over where words reach their limits. In her practice, she is based on the idea that empty space does not exist and therefore pays attention to the fact that every space has a certain history, time and materials that were once part of something else.

Toni Kritzer is a trans nonbinary performance artist, born in the German countryside and now based in a forest in the Netherlands. With a background in theatre and theatre directing, their work is interdisciplinary and hybrid, from performance, writing, and herbalism to community gardening. An undercurrent of utopian thinking flows in all their works. Their artistic practice is committed to queer ecology, to wild artistic responses to the climate crisis. Toni graduated from the Theater Directing course in Amsterdam but is more interested in providing tools for collective navigation than in giving directions.

This performance is part of the Amsterdam Fringe Festival.