O_Rex

The experimental performances by CREW_Eric Joris develop a hybrid theatricality that confronts the viewer with the technological condition of his own existence.
The mythological figure Oedipus symbolises modern man and his tragic fate. In other words, his tragedy is that he never succeeds in gaining a central perspective on the world. The CREW theatre visualises the situation by undoubling the spaces in which the drama takes place and making Oedipus part of a multi-room system without an overview. Using technological interfaces, a unique ensemble between real and virtual rooms is achieved. Tragic figures inhabit these spaces. The fate of these figures – and of the spectator – seems to be that they can only see a fraction of the world at a time. And they cannot even be sure of that. The auditorium bursts open, in a manner of speaking, into a collection of separate spaces that are linked together at the same time.
The result is not an opera but a multiplication of visual and acoustic spaces. The libretto that Jean Cocteau wrote for Stravinsky forms the starting point for a broader view of modern man than his tragic fate. Who possesses true reality? In O_Rex, the horizons of the ‘immersed’ (and the spectators) are actually switched. Man straddles shifting realities.