Dark Habits

Dark Habits is a theatrical performance epic structured around seven chapters. Performers Micha Goldberg, Rosie Sommers, Castélie Yalombo, Hanako Hayakawa, Charlotte Nagel and Simon Van Schuylenbergh take the audience on an absurd and physical pilgrimage of a perverted nuns' cult, against a backdrop of various pseudo-historical landscapes and falsified religious scenes and icons. During this frenzied journey, there is singing and healing, but it also strays into the hidden and dark side of religion, mysticism and sexuality.

In Dark Habits, the performers question and depict the longing for community in times of spiritual crisis and hyper-individualism. You could see it as a gathering of hypocritical saints, merchants who are not out for profit, deceitful fortune tellers, misleading messengers, fake magicians, conspiracy theorists, stuttering storytellers, honest charlatans, loving deceivers and grotesque translators of all kinds. The ordeal is total and theatrical: on the road, various natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts and forest fires pass by on stage. All of the most ferocious kind. They create unforeseen circumstances for the performers (and audience); disasters that expose fears and sharpen the hope for a better world. Van Schuylenbergh works with the theatricality of rituals, intense mystical experiences and religious practices, but also cheap disappearing tricks and easy-to-learn magic from YouTube tutorials. He incorporates the imaginary world and the material from his research into an escalating epic whole with a megalomaniacal, almost impossible imagination.