Dear Spectator,
We are five performers in search for a partner. We’d like to invite you to the next performance of ‘Internal’, our individual playground, where you can get to know us in a cosy and spontaneous atmosphere. We guarantee you an intimate and highly personal treatment. Please, inform us in time if you are unable to control your feelings. We will provide an elegant and discrete solution.
Yours sincerely,
The Actors
What's remarkable about this 25-minute experience is the extent to which it seems to make people both think and feel… So is it true that real relationships are becoming too difficult for us? Are we such a bunch of sad cases that we need to buy a theatre ticket to get a date? Or have we just forgotten, in our earnest quest for autonomy and self-sufficiency, how to make that first move towards something that notoriously brings pain and need as well as joy and fulfilment? Ontroerend Goed's performance never pretends to answer these questions, but it certainly raises them, more powerful than any theatre experience I can remember.
What is surprising is the extent to which almost everyone, even knowing that this is a carefully staged performance, is drawn into the fiction … There’s something intriguing, even profound, going on here about the lack of simple intimacy in our lives and our susceptibility to a kind word or glance that gets to the heart of our alienation from one another.
Afterwards was a rip tide of regret at not making more of the moment - and giddily confused elation. I wouldn't have missed it for the world.