Australian Premiere
THEATRE
“The most beautiful
and truest
performance of
the year.”
CAMPO / Gob Squad (International)
Süddeutsche Zeitung (Germany)
Before Your
Very Eyes
The dreams of youth give way to the
realities of life in this utterly unique
theatre work – a grown‑up tale told
with youthful humour, warmth
and candour by seven children.
By turns playful, poignant and inspiring, Before
Your Very Eyes is a vivid tribute to the joy and
promise of youth, a sobering reminder of how
easily we lose our way, and as heart-warming an
evening of theatre as you’re ever likely to see.
CAMPO’s Artistic Director Kristof Blom
presents a free talk as part of Ringside: Artists
in Conversation (see page 51).
Seven sets of hopes and dreams; seven flashes of
blinding promise; seven lives broken apart and
reassembled. Seven children play out the totality
of their lives, decade after decade, before your
very eyes.
Performed in English and Dutch with
English surtitles
The Malthouse, Merlyn Theatre
Wed 24 – Sat 27 Oct at 7.30pm
Performed by children for an adult audience
1hr 15min no interval
Warning Adult concepts, coarse language,
onstage smoking
$70 / $52.50 / Grp $63 / Snr $59.50 / Student $25
Transaction & booking fees may apply
Produced by CAMPO, Ghent and Gob Squad
Concept, Design & Direction Gob Squad –
Johanna Freiburg, Sean Patten, Berit Stumpf,
Sarah Thom, Bastian Trost, Simon Will
Performers Martha Balthazar, Spencer Bogaert,
Faustijn De Ruyck, Gust Hamerlinck, Zoë Luca,
Jeanne Vandekerckhove, Ineke Verhaegen
Voice Over Rigley Riley
Performance Coach Pascale Petralia
Costumes An Breughelmans, Gob Squad
Technical Korneel Coessens, Bart Huybrechts
Camera Philippe Digneffe, Pol Heyvaert, Gob
Squad
Production Assistance Stephanie Dewachter,
Hilde Tuinstra
Childcare Siel Van Daele
The Malthouse (03) 9685 5111
malthousetheatre.com.au
Ticketmaster 136 100
melbournefestival.com.au
German/UK theatre heavyweights Gob Squad
join forces with Belgian arts centre CAMPO to
bring us a bitter-sweet tale of dreams forfeited
and promise lost, laced with youthful humour,
zeal and wit.
The exceptionally talented child actors each
play themselves; performing inside a room made
from one-way mirrors (watched from outside
by the audience, like a kind of theatrical science
experiment), they lay out their personal dreams
and ambitions in their own words. But as the
play unfolds and they begin to age – to study,
to work, to fall in love, to compromise, to fail –
the contradictions and travails of adulthood
steadily unpick their carefully laid plans.
Event Information
Photo Phile Deprez
This production is coproduced by Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin; FFT
Düsseldorf; Noorderzon/Grand Theatre Groningen; NEXT Festival,
Eurometropole Lille-Kortrijk-Tournai + Valenciennes, Künstlerhaus
Mousonturm, Frankfurt; La Bâtie – Festival de Genève (CH).
Gob Squad is funded by the Regierenden Bürgermeister von Berlin –
Senatskanzlei Kulturelle Angelegenheiten.
Gob Squad first met the children in early 2009. The texts were
developed during improvisation and in collaboration with the
performers, with some passages adapted from Woody Allen’s
Husbands and Wives and Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche New York.
Before Your Very Eyes premiered in Berlin in April 2011.
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