Eg er vinden, Ik ben de wind

It’s a rare thing for performers to read a theatre text and immediately decide to put it on stage, but that’s exactly what happened when Matthias de Koning (Maatschappij Discordia) and Damiaan De Schrijver (tg STAN) read Jon Fosse’s ‘Eg er vinden’. Between the large scale productions of their respective companies, they turned ‘Eg er vinden, Ik ben de wind’ into an intimate performance that requires just their presence, the bare language of Jon Fosse and the imagination of the audience.  

Two men without a name, simply referred to as the One and the Other, meet again years after one of them left. They are together in an imaginary sailboat on a trip across the ocean. Their action is conceived, invented, and must not be performed but remain imaginary. As in much of Fosse's work, language is very important. His language passes in minute variations and wraps around the voids. Silences mean as much as the words and what is not said is at least as important as the words spoken. It is up to the audience to fill the blank spaces. And to the actors. Damiaan De Schrijver and Matthias de Koning explore themes such as loneliness, identity and loss in this meditative dialogue with the minimum of props. Tragicomically, sometimes desperately, they get entangled in existential philosophies and the abstract text of Fosse.

'Eg er vinden, Ik ben de wind' is an intimate, poetic performance. A melancholic dialogue between two men who meander between loneliness and connection.

The performance was selected by the Flemish TheaterFestival as one of the leading performances of the theatre season '18 -'19.

The press about Eg er vinden, Ik ben de wind:

"Performances such as 'Eg er vinden, Ik ben de wind' (...) enrich the art of acting and they should really be the benchmark for all theatre. The simplicity, however, is an insidious one; behind it lies an infinitely rich expressiveness and theatrical tension."
- Kester Freriks, Theaterkrant

"The extremely unadorned form that the makers have given the text fits the theme perfectly. The modest acting of the otherwise explosive De Schrijver strongly reflects his despair. On the contrary, De Koning intensifies his characteristic searching, almost absent-minded play, making the errant vulnerability of his character tangible. The chemistry between the actors, who have been opposing each other for decades, ensures that the friendship between the two men also feels layered."
- Marijn Lems, NRC

"It is pure poetry, imbued with meaning both in the design with primal elements (the brown sail, the sea, the bare rocks, the gray stones, the black suits) and in the philosophical texts."
- Margriet Prinsen, Haarlems Dagblad

From the Jury Report from the 2019 TheaterFestival: 

Norwegian author Jon Fosse's piece I am the wind reflects a conversation between two men. One is weighed down by something he is not told. They go on a boat trip together, because “there is silence at sea.” That trip has a fatal end.

Damiaan De Schrijver and Matthias de Koning do not need a large stage image for this story. They do it with almost nothing more than two crutches. The only decor is a box hanging on a string between them, and two rickety repaired tables to the left and right of the stage.

Already after the first sentences you understand what those objects represent. The box represents the doom that hangs over De Koning, the tables the impossibility to offer solace with words. They remain patches. But all the weight in this piece rests on those words, which only mean something because of what remains unsaid, because of what appears skittish in the silences between the words.

Although we should certainly not forget both players. They do not depict the action. They just sit there on their seats. De Schrijver chain-smoking, restless. De Koning on the left. Their way of being present flawlessly gives substance to the words. But they also do something more. Their bumbling, almost clownish attempts at conversation bring in a homeopathic dose of humor. That is exactly what makes it really catchy. Eg er vinden, Ik ben de wind is a textbook example of how you can do a text justice at the same time and bend it to your will.