THE COMMON PEOPLE is a social experiment, an installation and a performance in one. Working with forty inhabitants of a city, Jan Martens and Lukas Dhont create a series of duets and an installation with which, in an age of increasing digitization, they reclaim the theatre as a meeting place from person to person.

In our society, the need to connect is increasingly important: the more people you know, the more networks you belong to, the more “likes” you get, the better. Smartphones and social networking sites bring us in contact with one another, but also encourage individuality and loneliness: we are no longer connected to one another but to a screen. THE COMMON PEOPLE emerges as a sober antidote to the growing digitization of our social contact. Wherever the project takes place, forty citizens are brought together for a series of twenty blind dates on stage. The encounters are humane, intense and intimate, and contrast with the accompanying installation in which the digital identity of the participants is literally put on display.

Lukas Dhont first worked with Jan Martens during the creation of THE DOG DAYS ARE OVER (2014), a show whose creative process he recorded on film. For THE COMMON PEOPLE (2016), Jan and Lukas developed the concept together. Lukas pursued film studies at the New York Film Academy and graduated from the KASK (School of Arts) in Ghent. His short films Corps perdu (2012) and L’infini (2014) won various prizes at Film Fest Gent and the International Short Film Festival Leuven. In the summer of 2017 he will shoot his first full-length film, Girl.

CREDITS
PREMIERE: 12 May 2016, tanzhaus nrw Dusseldorf (DE)
BY: Jan Martens and Lukas Dhont
WITH: 40 inhabitants of the city
ARTISTIC TEAM: Yanna Soentjens, Joris van Oosterwijk, Steven Michel, Kimmy Ligtvoet, Laura Vanborm, Sebastiaan Eggermont, Brian Windelinckx, Rudi Meulemans and Louis Richard
LIGHTING DESIGN: Jan Fedinger
TECHNICAL SUPERVISION: Michel Spang
DURATION: about 180 minutes
PRODUCTION: GRIP
INTERNATIONAL DIFFUSION: A Propic / Line Rousseau and Marion Gauvent
CO-PRODUCTION: tanzhaus nrw, SPRING performing arts festival, ICKamsterdam (in frame of Nieuwe Makers Regeling), Wiener Festwochen and CDCN Le Gymnase
WITH THE SUPPORT OF: CAMPO, STUK, deSingel international arts campus, vaba lava & r.a.a.a.m. & mousonturm and wpZimmer
WITH THE FINANCIAL SUPPORT OF: The Government of Flanders, Performing Arts Fund NL, the city of Antwerp & the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union as part of Dance On, Pass On, Dream On

For more information, presmap, riders and technical conditions please contact Line Rousseau or Marion Gauvent