21^st April 2003

……………..……………..…

Hoogstraat

No team 14h40 – 15h50

Characters, Rumsfeld, Bush, Saddam, Balkende and for the first time Gerrit Zalm - head of the VVD, the party that will form the coalition with the CDA for the new government.

As usual I left from Piet Zwart, today but with the idea of staging the theatre structure, alone and for the last time. I headed to Binnenwegplein, the selected spot and where I’d already been many times before. But when I arrived, a couple, dressed in 19^th century copper coloured outfits were playing "statue" for the by-standers - the patat eaters, seated on the wooden benches on another shiny "holy" day.

Since I didn't plan to "compete” with them, I decided to move to a similar spot, the beginning of the Hoogstraat, another commercial and "promenade" area. Even though on today Easter Monday, the shops are not open but the coffee and tea houses, ice-cream shops, and all sorts of snack bars are. I placed my interactive puppet theatre in a quiet place where people pass calmly, and stood there watching, thinking over the development of the world events.

Just a week it felt as though it was a sort of emergency requirement to go out with the platform in order to keep the discussion about the war alive. Today it was completely clear the war was over and somehow people , relieved, no longer find anything that bad or pressing anymore about the whole issue.

It didn't raise so many or as lively reactions today as before, except for a couple of people, and a man who crossed over Saddam Hussein’s image pasted on the box with his car keys. I stood there, inconspicuous, or at least trying to be but I still spotted and talked with a homeless man. some others winked an eye at me as if to say - "Goed man!" ,But I also saw the entire structure collapse onto the ground for the first time, due to the wind. I was thinking O.K. that’s the end of it, but it wasn't the case. It had only a few scratches, which really pleasantly surprised me. The show went on!

A lot of things came to my mind during this hour. Why I started this action, for example - the wish to engage people, by actual interaction with and the manipulation of, hand puppets. To raise deeper questions about people’s position in the world: manipulated beings or able to control their own opinions, desires and destinies. To the development of the issues around the war and the emergency of giving the platform to raise awareness around how mass media manipulate our opinions and to allow the theatre structure to be used and interpreted freely by the participants and passers-by. Or even how to continue now that the feeling of urgency is there again for different reasons. In this case because the war issue seems placed on our backs as something that had to happen, that we realised that it had bad consequences but we should think about the future.

What about the time that millions of people were demonstrating to say that this war was not their choice? Can they go on now in these changed circumstances as if nothing had happened? I have to redefine the role for this structure from now on, and to consider its lifetime. I’ve always thought or intend that it would stop at one point, that maybe this would come when it became so much part of the city life that it is not a surprise anymore, it’s not astonishing or alienating anyone as it previously did.

Today this possibility was hinted at when at one point a couple walking around, asked me to take a picture of them next to the structure. I don't know if they were aware of me as the person responsible for the theatre and the puppets, or whether they just thought of that spot as the one with the best light, but anyway, this enamoured pair will take home 2 pictures of them standing next to a green wooden box, displaying the key world and Dutch political figures of the moment and that until now still functions as an open stage.