Review

Roaming with Bowie and Bach
****

An abandoned warehouse in Antwerp is the setting for one of the final performances of Summer of Antwerp 2010. 'HAVEN 010′ is a production by WALPURGIS and 't ARSENAAL in collaboration with Union Suspecte. The show premiered at Theater Aan Zee and is largely set in the port of Ostend. We Antwerpers are only too happy to shift our thoughts to that other port for theatre with a high documentary content.

Theatre-maker Michael de Cock wrote the text based on interviews with refugees. He chose one of them and based his story on the true-life journey of Mourad, an Algerian who wants to get to the new promised land, England, via Ostend. Also appearing is the fictional character Eric Van der Plas, a trucker. He meets Mourad in a car park in Jabbeke and slowly the two become friends. The character of Eric is a very valuable addition. It makes the transition from fact to story and opens up the subject matter by giving us a native perspective as well. Eric, too, is a wandering soul. In Mourad's eyes, he is a lucky guy with a job, an ex and valid papers. But the trucker who glides across the macadam from parking lot to parking lot has his own problems. Mourad is a little mouse, Eric a hard-working, rooting ant.

Yet there is a certain distance from the audience. The documentary content we mentioned earlier seems to hold back further exploration. Video footage shows the testimony of the real Mourad on three large screens, they show the city of Ostend and text messages from Mourad to Michael de Cock. And although the focus becomes more on Eric as the show progresses, we still never get his whole story or a truly fleshed-out picture of him. He wanders on the margins of our imagination, just as the trucker lives on the margins of society.

With the same distance from the story, a five-piece quirky orchestra is also on stage. They perform covers from Bowie to Bach. Without really getting involved in the play, they mainly provide an extra emotional charge. Their music is haunting and provides resting points of reflection in the story.

Migration is a hot topic and at the same time as old as the streets. To the makers' credit, they have created a performance that responds to this theme without repeating itself. There is a strong focus on the West's approach and the doldrums of our welfare state's systems, in which places for asylum seekers are not unlimited. Mourad is angry, Eric nuances, and so there is no harsh judgement anywhere. But we had already realised that something is fundamentally wrong with the policy. And even those who are callous can't ignore the ending, where immigrants come crawling like mice from all corners of the room to come right in front of everyone to chant the futility of human beings. No one will ignore them then.

Jesse Vanhoek, Cutting Edge, 21.08.2010

Would many spectators have seen the refugees? They are just a few steps away from the theatre audience, who are waiting for the doors to open. Enquiry afterwards yields wonderment. Which refugees? Well, the people who were standing right next to us the whole time. They were talking in groups or playing with their children. Not seen? Port 010, a production of 't Arsenaal and WALPURGIS in collaboration with Union Suspecte, announces itself from minute one as an exercise in looking.

'I see him standing as I have not seen so many standing.' It is not coincidentally Eric's (Ruud Gielens) first sentence when recounting his encounter with the Algerian sans-papiers (Mourade Zeguendi). Both men are on the move. The young refugee hopes to reach England via Ostend. The camioneur no longer quite knows where he is actually going, except that it must be far from his possessive mother. Despite the outward differences - the round, serene Belgian versus the skinny, hounded Algerian - they look suspiciously alike: two wandering souls in Jabbeke's car park. Something like destiny arises. Later, both men come to a halt, one more abruptly than the other. The Algerian physically; arrested and locked up in the closed centre of Merksplas. The camioneur bougeert no more - neither physically nor mentally. When the Algerian is released, both men prepare to make a statement.

In Judith Vindevogel's musical direction, Michael De Cock's text dialogues wonderfully with Spanish composer Charo Calvo's sound design. Third artistic interlocutor is the camera, which brings in reality in documentary snippets.

Port 010 proves once again that when raising awareness about social issues, whispering pays more than shouting. The personal story of two men, played extremely vulnerably by Gielens and Zeguendi, is deeply moving in all its anecdotalism. However, the small finds its grand counterpart when incoming refugees reveal that behind this one story is a reservoir of similar stories, ready to break loose like a deluge. The passion with which the refugee choir sings of the preciousness of life makes one shudder. It is these people we saw, or rather: did not see, before the performance. Only now that they are given a face as theatre characters are they seen. By pointing this out to us, Port 010 made his point: theatre cannot save the world, but it can (re)recognise it.

Evelyne Coussens, ZONE 03 of 18.08.2010

THE MOUSE AND THE ANT

'Haven 010' (***1/2), a production by 't Arsenaal and Walpurgis, is for us the real opening performance of TAZ 2010. How different from 'Vliegen tot de hemel' the right atmosphere is created here. The image projections of the deserted harbour and the rippling sea by night have an almost hypnotic effect and the contribution of an international female quintet led by singer Judith Vindevogel is subtle but striking. Here, the actors and musicians shine in the dark.

The show appropriately plays in an old dark shed along the railway. One of those sheds where it's good hiding for illegals unless the police send their dogs after you, of course. And you get bitten in the arm. Or even worse: chewed out an eye. Director De Cock drew inspiration for the show from testimonies with illegals he met over the years. He picked out one story: that of Mourad, an Algerian young man, who wants to go to England and, like so many, thinks that the land of fish and chips is one of milk and honey.

Brussels actor Mourade Zeguendi - who recently gave a stunning performance in Union Suspecte's '25 Minutes to go' - plays Mourad. Union Suspecte colleague Ruud Gielens is the truck driver Eric Van der Plas who meets Mourad along the motorway. One, the mouse who wants to travel along as a stowaway. The other, the ant who transports food with his van across Europe. Both are overlooked by people. A special bond develops between the two. It makes 'Haven 010' not only a story of migration but also one of friendship between two lonely characters.

The truck driver is actually a fictional character, replacing the investigative journalist De Cock from real history, but this fictionalisation here adds a deeper shade to the story. Indeed, at the end of the play, it comes full circle: while Mourad gives up a fake name at the Merksplas asylum centre, Eric confesses how, when he had to go to England by truck, he mingled among the rich people on the boat from Hull and pretended to be computer salesman Eric Uytterhoeven. Don't we all sometimes want a different and better life? No matter how deep the water, the grass is always greener on the other side. That is our tragedy.

The docu theatre that is 'Haven 010' interweaves theatrical fiction and true facts, ingeniously letting reality creep in further and further. There are the real images of Mourad (we only get to see the back of his head), the documents about his placement in the closed asylum centre of Merksplas, the text messages Mourad sent to De Cock, there are the images where the actor Mourade can be seen with Mourad's parents in Algeria. And at the end of the performance, the many asylum seekers, with whom Vindevogel formed a chorus, come onto the scene from among the audience, the sea of people where they were hiding as stowaways, singing the beginning of a Bach cantata: 'Ach, wie flüchtig, ach, wie nichtig is der Menschen Leben'. ('Ach, how fleeting and void is human life).

Fortunately, people exist to record their stories, who do see the ants and the mice. Courtesy of Michael De Cock. Or as Ariadne said to Icarus when they told each other stories as children while sprawled out looking at the clouds: one day we too will become a story.

Liv Laveyne, Knack, 30.07.2010

ONLY THE OTHER SIDE OF THE NORTH SEA OFFERS HOPE

Theatre by the Sea shows Ostend as grim last refuge for job-seeking illegals

Festival Theater Aan Zee in Ostend takes inspiration from raw reality this year. Illegals play the leading role.
"In Ostend, my existence started to decay," he said.

The place to exhibit photographs could not be more appropriate: darkly printed portraits of job-seeking illegal immigrants hang in semi-darkness under a cast-iron railway viaduct in Ostend. Men of Moroccan and Algerian origin are trying their luck in the port city: hidden in a truck or as stowaways on a boat, they want to reach England.

Photographer Stephan Vanfleteren and theatre director Michael De Cock are fascinated by contemporary refugees, whom they call "Europeans or Englanders". Vanfleteren's photos hang in all sorts of places in Ostend during the Theatre by the Sea festival - not just under the railway bridge over which the jobseekers arrived. Vanfleteren gives the frivolous seaside resort a different twist: that of last refuge, grim and bitter.

Director De Cock is responsible for Theatre by the Sea's exquisite and surprising theatre programming. The theme of migration links art expressions, not only photography and theatre, but also dance, performance and visual art. In the dilapidated left wing of the station, the installation Night Shelter offers a sad picture of the port city as a hostile haven for the homeless and illegal immigrants. Dirty beds stand amid crumbling walls. The windows are betralied. An empty gin bottle stands on the floor. Permit and residence papers lie yellowing on official desks. Poet Hugo Claus is present with his verse: "In Ostend, my existence began to decay." For many, Ostend is a terminal station. Illegals, desperate for a better life, are brutalised and expelled again.

This installation is pure theatre, albeit without actors. We can effortlessly imagine the people involved with their tragedy, loneliness and alienation. Further on, in an old goods shed in the station yard, De Cock's own company 't Arsenaal from Mechelen, together with musical theatre company Walpurgis, performs Haven 010. As with Vanfleteren's photographs, raw reality provides the inspiration. De Cock's direction breathes the same atmosphere: dark shadows on the stage floor dominate. Hell's stage light causes fear above all, as the rays depict blinding searchlights. Vanfleteren and De Cock have an emphatic message: they call attention to the fate of illegal immigrants. The character Amor Khaled symbolises all refugees. He comes from the Maghreb, Western Sahara, and is hunted by the police. One of his friends was attacked by a police dog; that animal ate away his eye. He hangs around Ostend, sleeping in the bushes.

He meets a Flemish lorry driver. Giant film footage shows Ostend in the early morning; camions drive to and fro, ships depart. The black shadow of illegal Amro glides across the play floor, a character on the run. Friendship and understanding develop between him and the driver. In hushed scenes, the director intertwines both their life stories; the hunted of one, the relative safety of the other. Amro has no identity papers, the driver does. That makes a world of difference that no one in the free West thinks about. Poignant is Amro's account of the brutal interrogations and the violence involved. He is in a trap: staying can't be done, going back can't be done, only the other side of the North Sea offers hope. A small but dramatically secure reference is to the truck driver who wanted to ferry 58 Chinese stowaways; they found death in his cargo hold.

Port 010 deliberately keeps open whether the driver is going to help the illegal cross or not. At the lock, the pilot doors slide open and the driver takes Amor to the rail tracks, he says: "Look, walk over it and reach the sea. Wait for winter. Sometimes the North Sea is completely frozen and then England is no more than a twenty-kilometre walk. You'll be there in no time."

The staging is in sober, effective style. Committed theatre without effect. Topicality without pathos. Ruud Gielens as the chauffeur and Mourade Zeguendi as Amro reinforce each other's doubts; how sincere is an illegal? With what intentions does he make friends? What the words do not reveal, the music does. Port 010 receives compelling accompaniment by members of Walpurgis. Singer Judith Vindevogel uses Zeerover Jenny from the Dreigroschenoper as a traît d'union between Western and Arab culture. The sound world created with instruments such as accordion, violin and clarinet is menacing and gritty, as if the harbour sounds are amplified rock hard, to the point of being terrifying.

Kester Freriks, NRC Handelsblad, 02.08.2010

THE FUTILITY OF A HUMAN LIFE

... But life sometimes takes a happy turn after all. Twenty minutes later, HAVEN 010 premiered, a co-production by 't Arsenaal and Walpurgis in collaboration with Union Suspecte. Again, Michael De Cock, this time together with Judith Vindevogel, signed on for the direction and wrote the text after conversations with refugees, a theme that has occupied him for years. Lots of extras here too: three screens providing moving scenery and five women making nice and right music.

For the occasion, Ruud Gielens is a truck driver who has lost his job and self-esteem, and Mourade Zeguendi plays an Algerian refugee who wants to go to England. The men meet in a parking lot in Jabbeke, and that's the beginning of a friendship. Their dialogues are interspersed with recordings of testimonies from the real Algerian who is at the heart of Mourade Zeguendi's character. Some of his stories are shocking. Belgian policemen unleash a dog on a refugee. The dog bites out his eye.

It remains a tricky exercise, I think, making art out of harrowing realities. Because reality is soon more punishing than imagination. Because good intentions are no guarantee of artistic quality. Because it is a difficult balance between clarity of message and predictable messaging.

Just when, after about an hour and twenty minutes of HAVEN 010, I start to wonder whether I wouldn't rather have seen a documentary about the encounters Michael De Cock had with all kinds of refugees, they grab me by the scruff of the neck again. The actors have left through the opened gates of the shed where the show is playing, Judith Vindevogel has started the Bach cantata 'Ach wie flüchtig, ach wie nichtig', and all of a sudden about 20 refugees walk onto the floor and join in. They sing, say and mean it: Ach wie flüchtig, ach wie nichtig ist der Menschen Leben/wie ein Nebel bald entstehet/und auch wieder bald vergehet/so ist unser Leben sehet! And then there is no stopping it. It's no longer able to escape and get goose bumps and be overwhelmed. There are people, some with children, who are not welcome here because of no papers. People who are put like dogs in an asylum in closed institutions where they perish from boredom and insecurity. People who are hounded by police and abused by rogue figures who are only out for profit. People who often live, work and make a living here for years, but who are just as likely to be deported from the country. There they are. Not an abstraction in a theatre play, but real. They demand attention, they have something to say. In our faces.

By those five minutes alone, HAVEN 010 proves that it can be done: making politically correct theatre that works, that does what art does in the ideal of worlds: touch and confuse and keep up with and provoke thought. And so Michael De Cock makes this opening night a happy entry after all. Thank you for that.

Griet Op de Beeck, DE MORGEN, 31.07.2010

Review HAVEN 010

The trucker who carries heavy loads as an ant, the Algerian illegal who flees as a frightened mouse. In an Antwerp hangar, these lost souls become friends.

The mouse and ant are just imagery. Haven 010 is a performance about refugees. Artistic director of 't Arsenaal Michaël De Cock wrote a text based on testimonies of undocumented migrants arriving in Ostend and pursuing an English dream.

Mourad is one of them. In a parking lot in Jabbeke, he gets a lift from Eric: a truck driver who at first sight lives in a different world, but with whom they have a lot in common. Both are always on the road, feeling the hot breath of control on their necks. Mourad feels like the mouse fleeing from police dogs, Eric sees himself as an ant, slowly shuffling along the roads, with a chip in his steering wheel that records every stop.

The two actors move in front of large screens that project images that move with the story. An abandoned port, the sea, a letter of wisdom. A women's quintet led by Judith Vindevogel of Walpurgis travels musically with Mourad and Eric, providing a particularly strong and confrontational ending. As many as 20 singers of all possible nationalities stand in front of the audience as a choir and sing a Bach cantata: about how void and fleeting life is. It gets glacially quiet in the stands...

Eefje Rampart, GVA, 12.08.2010

PREMIERE PORT 010: SOPRANO JUDITH VINDEVOGEL KEEPS EYES WIDE OPEN

'We need to keep looking at people'

With the collaboration for HAVEN 010, WALPURGIS and 't ARSENAAL (in collaboration with Union Suspecte) are crossing borders in terms of content and art. Michael De Cock wrote the story of the encounter between a Maghrebi refugee and a Belgian truck driver. Judith Vindevogel, singer and artistic director of WALPURGIS, gathered musicians from all corners of Europe. HAVEN 010 is an international dialogue, on and off stage.

What do HAVEN 010 and Bertolt Brecht have to do with each other?
Judith Vindevogel: 'With ICTUS, I performed a programme of songs by Tom Waits and Kurt Weill for several years. One of the songs was 'Zeerover Jenny' from Bertolt Brecht's Threepenny Opera. That song is about a poor girl, a nobody at the bottom of the social ladder. She has to work very hard but does not get the human attention everyone deserves: she is ignored and humiliated, no one bothers to really get to know her. Sailor Jenny begins to dream aloud of the moment when everything will change, when the balance of power will tilt. I realised at one point that that song, if you translate it to today, could be about all those people from outside Europe who are trying to come here and who we would rather not see here than see. The bourgeois who are targeted in Weill's song are we Westerners, who both literally and in our consciousness make very little room for people seeking a different life. I knew that Michael De Cock was very much into that migration theme and so I went to speak to him - which is how the idea for HAVEN 010 was born.'

It sounds like a warning: will we be punished for our selfishness?
'Surely the song of Seafarer Jenny points to imminent danger. The girl dreams that a ship will dock at the quay, the men on that ship will conquer the city and bring everyone to her. When the captain of the ship asks who should be killed, she says 'all of them'. Logical: people who are treated like dogs will react like dogs. To me, that song means that we have to be mindful of each other, that we have to care for each other, and so we cannot sweep this migration issue under the carpet. We have to keep looking at people - if we don't, we dehumanise them. Power relations can tilt quickly. Both our prosperity, and our humanity are very fragile.'

Another musical focal point in HAVEN 010 is the Bach cantata Ach wie flüchtig, ach wie nichtig.
''Ah how fleeting and futile is life...'' I chose this cantata because it has a light and a dark side at the same time. You can also interpret it in two ways. From the migrants' point of view, there is the idea that life is short, - 'it arises like a cloud but is also gone just as quickly' - for these people there is the hope and the urge to want to make something beautiful of their lives, for them it is now or never. From the point of view of Western man, you can read this cantata as: don't be so arrogant with all that acquired wealth and power, because happiness can disappear overnight.'

This double perspective is striking: in HAVEN 010, it is not only the migrant but also the native-born who have their say.
In his performances, Michael often starts from the refugee's story, but I thought it was important to show 'our' side as well. Those people who come here from there, that also does something to us. Even as a 'broad-minded' person, you feel that there is an area of tension: where do you let these people come to, where does your tolerance end? I am talking about myself in the first place. Because of this double-sidedness, there is also a second, Belgian character next to the character of the Maghrebi who wants to flee to London. It's about a lorry driver who loses his job because of the opening of European borders and the influx of Polish and Slovak drivers. As a result, in HAVEN 010 you get a nuanced story in which the complexity of reality - and thus our tolerance as well as intolerance - is given a place.

Dialogue is a core content concept in HAVEN 010, but has it also acquired meaning in artistic collaboration? Around you are musicians from Norway, Albania, Croatia, Spain,...
'Dialogue is central to every project WALPURGIS tackles. Musical theatre is pre-eminently a discipline that brings together different cultures, styles and motivations. Michael and I wanted to make it a distinctly European collaboration from the start. A real artistic collaboration, not just focused on venues abroad. And that means: engaging in conversation, with people coming from elsewhere. It doesn't always result in an easy course, it's true. Really engaging with each other is sometimes easier said than done. (laughs) But it is what we have been striving for with HAVEN 010.'

TAZ gazette, Evelyne Coussens, July 2010

Haven 010, theatre performance on contemporary migration

Theatre-maker Michael De Cock, 't Arsenaal, Union Suspecte and Walpurgis joined forces to create a performance focusing on contemporary migration. In other words, a performance that takes place at the shady underside of society. After successful series in Ostend (Theater aan Zee) and Antwerp (Zomer van Antwerpen), Haven 010 is ready to tour the rest of the country.

Let me first make it clear that I am an outsider, an uninitiated viewer, an anything-but-professional theatre critic. I am also familiar with the theme of asylum and migration from the past rather than the most current developments.

In that past, I was co-initiator and later chairman of a non-profit organisation that wanted to defend the interests of asylum seekers and refugees in and around Antwerp to local and supra-local authorities. HAVEN was the name of that non-profit organisation, Hulp Aan VluchtelingEN (Help to Refugees). For this reason, among others, I was extra excited to see the performance Haven 010.

The other and real reason was that I was very curious to see how Michael De Cock transforms his admirable and sustained engagement with the real lives of all those migrants into contemporary theatre. What added value does theatre offer compared to written journalism when we want to show the many layers and facets of migration in the twenty-first century to an audience that is largely shielded from the people who migrate?

The show is announced as a play "about people who come here from all sorts of different motives to find a new home in Europe, and about our own relationship to it". The strength and originality of the whole thing lies in that short side sentence.

Haven 010 does not so much have migration and the difficulties associated with it as its subject, the piece is much more about society as a whole and as a system, within which there is no place or attention for people on the fringes -even if they are by the billions. There is the well-oiled machine of the European middle-class world and there is the underclass of people who desperately want to belong to it but are excluded from it in all sorts of -brutal, invisible, legal and even well-meaning- ways.

In that dark shadow world, the encounter takes place between Mourad and Eric, between the mouse and the ant, between the fugitive and fleeing migrant and the puny trucker, between the resident who drives along European roads and through borders without hindrance but also without dreams or ambitions, and the migrant who dreams of an eldorado on the other side but is stuck in the place he is not heading for.

Haven 010 does not focus unilaterally on the misery of asylum seekers while avoiding the social worker as a native counterpoint. It invites the spectator to keep looking at the hidden vulnerability of puny and fleeting human lives. This premise gives the performance a unique and valuable perspective.

The form De Cock has chosen for Haven 010 is hybrid. Text theatre with two characters, live music as the third character, three giant video screens on which reality -on which the theatre reflects- is projected, and all that in the context of a dark shed on the harbour. With this, an arsenal of instruments is already in place to appeal not only to the visitor's reason, but also to the senses and thus to emotions.

Haven 010 aims not so much to inform as to confront and reflect. The engagement with the lives of Mourad and his fellow fates and draftees never becomes sentimental, but constantly balances on the edge of rejection. The inevitability of migration and globalisation is never portrayed in the exotic colours of a wonderfully enriching diversity, it turns out to be a matter of people encountering each other in the outer orbit of social existence and there both clashing and recognising each other's pain.

So the set-up, construction and perspective of Haven 010 all sit very well. And yet the performance doesn't really work. This is due to a few shortcomings that cumulatively lead to a big deficit.

While the meeting between Mourad and Eric is the central event of the show, it simultaneously never takes place. That in itself is interesting, because the fact that both characters are so consumed by their own exclusion and nullity makes it quasi-impossible to cross the border with the other in a way that transcends coincidence. Mourad makes contact with Eric because he hopes the latter can help him cross the Channel, Eric in turn is looking for a helping hand to burn the bridges that keep him tied to a past of patronisation. The play suggests that the bonds between the two men grow deeper and stronger, but since there is no growth or development of the individual characters, you are not sure. Or don't quite believe it. And when a central pillar wobbles, the whole structure is in danger of tilting.

Gradually, moreover, the weight of the performance shifts from Mourad to Erik, from the utopia of migration to the petty revenge of the native marginalised. The real interview with the real Mourad, excerpts of which are shown on video, tells of a successful crossing, but on stage that perspective disappears under the crushing weight of Eric's mother-son traumas.

The fact that for the finale -against the backdrop of Eric's apocalyptic emancipation gesture- a whole group of real asylum seekers, undocumented migrants and migrants enter the stage to sing the Bach cantata Ach wie flüchtig, ach wie nichtig ist der Menschen Leben, therefore has something double. It is a gripping scene that immediately dispels the illusion that it is "only theatre": Haven 010 is about real people, with real faces and voices of their own, with real dreams and hopes, but also with all too real hurts and disillusionments -even if all that is made invisible by the constant repression and dominant discourse. But at the same time, this finale balances on the edge of exploitation, in which the real migrants have yet to come and make up for the performance's deficits in credibility and emotional engagement at the eleventh hour.

The lack of emotional involvement is a striking flaw in a show made from many and long conversations with asylum seekers and migrants. Michaël De Cock is no cool frog and so he must often have been shocked when listening to the stories of the people crossing Europe without papers and thus quasi without rights.

In an interview with De Standaard, actor Mourad Zeguendi, for example, tells of a group of people crossing the Mediterranean Sea at night in a sloop. To avoid being spotted by the patrolling Spanish coastguard, everyone had to be as quiet as a mouse. One mother then had to drown her crying baby to avoid endangering the others' crossing.

The few sentences Zeguendi recounts about this, tighten my throat. They reveal not only the desperation and steely conviction of the migrants, but also the traumas that even successful "crossers" will carry with them for life. In Haven 010, the confrontation with that kind of reality and questioning remains absent. Eric's struggle with his patronising mother is delivered with more emotionality (or at least with more screams and amplified decibels) than Mourad's physical or psychological wounds.

The most emotional moment in the performance I saw was a stunning rendition of Heroes by Hadewig Kras, accompanied only by her electric bass. 'Oh we can beat them / Forever and ever / Then we could be heroes just for one day.' This Bowie meets the Velvet Underground is -together with the finale- one of the few moments when the musical input enhances, deepens and advances the performance.

Moreover, the polarity between the hero's dream and the confrontation with the nullity of existence at the bottom of society forms the narrative tension arc within which Haven 010 moves. At most other moments, the music breaks the structure and narrative, without giving these caesurae any other, constructive function in the performance.

The eclectic choice of music does not create its own storyline, it does not function as a Greek choir engaging in dialogue with the characters. 'Really engaging with each other is sometimes easier said than done,' says musical director Judith Vindevogel in the TAZ Gazette. The performance, unfortunately, is an illustration of this, although I'm sure it wasn't intended that way. Because of this lack of communication between text and music, the feeling grows throughout the performance that this piece is a work-in-progress, which needs to be fleshed out further to find its final direction and arrive at its destination.

The story of the first meeting between Mourad and Eric still strikes me as the best metaphor for the whole performance. Mourad had clandestinely climbed onto a lorry hoping to arrive in Britain, but on the contrary was taken inland to Jabbeke. Good try, but wrong guess.

Haven 010 is based on undoubtedly good and solid research -De Cock rightly says that he can invest more time and resources than a journalist working on the topic, and that he was given more access to documents and official acts than that same journalist-, on a strong premise -the encounter between the mouse and the ant-, and on a narrative structure that fragments text, music and images so that the viewer is forced to puzzle out for himself -as is the case in real life- and only when the whole picture is pieced together does he see what ugly face our society shows in the story of contemporary migration.

But if all that does not fit together, if it does not lead to an impressive and convincing performance, then the truck with all that material will be in the parking lot of Jabbeke instead of on the quay of Dover.

Gie Goris, MO Magazine, 18 August 2010

I HAVE NO PITY, ONLY UNDERSTANDING

MOURADE ZEGUENDI, ACTOR FROM THE FILM 'LES BARONS',
OPTS FOR THE ILLEGAL CROSSING

During a heatwave, we would forget that Ostend is also a port city. Just not the biggest in Belgium, but one where the festival Theater Aan Zee has had a foothold for years. The play HAVEN 010 typifies the central theme of this edition: illegals, or Ostend's visitors who only show up in the dark.

De Standaard, Sara Vankersschaever, 24.07.2010

FORGET IT, FORTRESS EUROPE DOES NOT EXIST

"They are certainly not weak. Those who get into a boat towards Europe are people who set things in motion and create friction. they are avant-garde."
Theatre-maker and journalist Michael De Cock travelled to the coasts of Senegal and Malta, to Slovakia, London and Ostend with photographer Stephan Vanfleteren. For the book ALLER/RETOUR. The Frontiers of Fortress Europe, he spoke to young men, all possessed by the same dream: a new start in Europe. At the same time, he made HAVEN 010, a performance on the theme that premiered at the arts festival Theater aan Zee in Ostend, and will be screened at the Zomer van Antwerpen in August.

Gazet Van Antwerpen, Karin Vanheusden, 19.06.2010

Public

A gripping performance with a stunning final moment - This show is a must-see for everyone. This is where theatre and raw reality come together. It is confrontational but also relatable. The music bridges cultures. And at the end: goosebumps! - Greetje Senhorst

Incredibly impressive story, the chemistry between the players, music, acting, design. Everything was right. - Mark

Beautiful, just very beautiful. Go see! And keep breathing. - Ginie and Loes

Judith, thank you so much for the beautiful performance you realised with our residents! I thought it was brilliant and how proud our residents were of their preformance. It was worth the effort it took. - Movita Scherf, AZC Oisterwijk (NL)

Very very strong performance. Thank you on behalf of all the people I meet weekly in CIM. This picture should be brought to the general public in this way more often. Chapeau! - Stefanie

I'm devastated! What a confrontation! And how! A bold mirror and thought-through amongst all the light-heartedness at ZVA. Congratulations to the actors, the band and the whole crew.- Rik

A gripping performance with a stunning final moment - Hannah

WOW. BOENK in our faces. Momentary food for thought. - anonymous

This show is a must-see for everyone. This is where theatre and raw reality come together. It is confrontational but also relatable. The music bridges cultures. And at the end: goosebumps! - Greetje Senhorst