The other(in)side

DESCRIPTION
What if we gave ourselves the liberty to slip behind the scenes? To listen differently to a musical work or a funny story?
The Other(In)Side is an eccentric show bordering on burlesque where Benjamin de la Fuente’s sonic imagination weds the quirky poetry of Jos Houben, joyfully delving behind the scenes of a show as it is created, polished, and falls apart.
On stage, a strangely magnetic vintage recording studio becomes a scenic trap for the musicians who venture there. We hear the increasingly anxious voice of the sound engineer in the control room. We witness a rehearsal of Stravinsky’s “The Soldier’s Tale,” but everything is all mixed up: the musicians, the sets, the music itself… It’s utter confusion. It would be an understatement to say that the recording is not going well.
We know that “The Soldier’s Tale” summons the devil, but still, the devil’s overdoing it here! The instruments play fast and loose, the rhythm trips along until it trips and falls, the musicians and their conductor come undone as the chaos keeps coming. Stravinsky himself seems to give up and join in the prevailing outlandishness.
Jos Houben’s slapstick direction is reminiscent of a Jacques Tati film as he gradually leads us to the brink of farce.
Unknown voices emerge from nowhere to speak about music. We encounter a misplaced conversation of a couple driving to a show they will never get to. Caught up in the sonic jubilation of outrageous worlds, the audience no longer knows where to turn their ear.