Bitef

We play in a wide variety of sites; in halls, which we divide up in various ways during the performance, or in buildings in which we make use of every room there is. Out of doors we play in enclosed areas, or we walk though the streets, stopping in squares, while the audience walk with us. Sometimes the audience is completely disorientated after a performance: time and again we have to help someone to find the exit after the performance is over. We and the audience are at close quarters, and the public is not always that easy to get on with. For instance, there are the young men in the doorways of the five bars which look out on the Groenmarkt in Amersfoort, who shout their comments in the distance even though they can hardly see what is going on. It's our job to shut them up. A hardy free-lance artist who took part in trendsetting productions in the sixties says: »We did everything with the public then too, but it was still artificial! Dogtroep does it in a natural way«.

We develop an enormous arsenal of situational forms (which we fall back on now and again). They include: Bars: The audience are sitting in groups at the tables, scattered over the floor: the players move between them in small groups, with lively acts aimed at the spectators. Sculptural gardens: Ten or so simultaneous acts which repeat themselves are set up in a garden landscape like an outdoor sculptural museum. The audience wander around, moving from one act to another individually. The atmosphere is dreamlike and calm. Corridors: Solo acts in a row, sometimes literally in a coridor, or in adjoining rooms. The spectators experience them one by one and thus enter the intimacy of an act specially played for each one of them. Landscape pieces; Dream images played on large areas with large objects. The audience sit in a single long line, gazing at another world.