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1983 » Belgium » Scénická a kostýmní tvorba národní expozice
| Curator: | Serge Creuz |
Belgie
Belgium, true to its presence at all former Prague Quadrennial, is also returning in 1983. Nevertheless, some changes have occured: this time the Flemish community has a common exhibit with the French community. Thus visitors will find side by side the exhibits of two stage design sections, one concerned with the theatre for French-speaking children and the other with the Flemish theatre. A truly professional theatre for children and youth has already been in existence approximately ten years (10—15 companies). Theatres which regularly play in different places like to stage design arrangements which can easily be set up in auditoriums with a minimum of installations, sometimes even in gymnasiums. In some performances the only "stage design" are the masks and costumes. The stage designer must use his ingenuity in thinking up various objects or props which can be made maximum use of. Thus machinery and uncountable changes of sets in a theatre a Fitalienne are often found in a single piece of furniture used by these touring theatres: they include "truquée" cupboards in the Isocele Theatre and "surprise" tables, as in the Galafronie Theatre baroque masks and costumes used by the Guimbarde Theatre which transforms its 8 actors into 19 different characters, or the huge trunk decorations used by the Ateliers de la Colline. The Belgian theatre for children does not have a repertoire. Everything must be invented. The majority of companies work on the basis of collective creative activities; from the writing of the play to its finished performance, from inventing a stage set, designing the costumes and finding new relationships between the stage and audience, sometimes right up to inventing a system of variable step-like areas for the audience (at the Galafronie Theatre).
