Guy Weizman and Roni Haver about WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS
When Guy Weizman and Roni Haver read the libretto for Waiting for the Barbarians, they were both immediately sold: this is what we’re doing, this is incredibly relevant right now!
The 2005 opera, composed by Philip Glass, is based on a 1980 novel by the South African writer and Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee. It tells the story of a magistrate in the service of a great and powerful empire who watches, with fear and trembling, as unrest grows along the borders of the territory he governs.
In this version by Nederlandse Reisopera and Club Guy & Roni, the magistrate is transformed into a group of people holed up in a bunker. From there, they anxiously monitor the outside world through security cameras. Who are those people out there? How can they manage with so much less technology than we have? Are they the barbarians standing at our threshold?
You feel the threat
The collaboration with Nederlandse Reisopera had been on Weizman’s wish list for a long time. “They’re an incredibly adventurous and creative company – they always take productions a step further than just the music.”
Waiting for the Barbarians is an energetic, interdisciplinary opera with ‘big’ movement and lyrical music – very different from the minimalist work most people know Philip Glass for. “You feel the threat,” says Weizman. That sense of threat is translated into cyclical movement. “We want to portray the feeling of a community, how everyone emerges from a group.”
Film plays an important role in this boundary-pushing opera production. The footage from the ‘security cameras’ – filmed from the barbarians’ bunker looking out at the world – is also shown to the audience.
“Nederlandse Reisopera is an incredibly adventurous and creative company — they always take productions a step further than just the music.”
Not giving in to the madness
The piece is very much about the world today, say its makers. In the conflicts, large and small, gripping the world right now, no one sees themselves as the bad guy. That’s always the other side. I’m good, you’re bad. “It plays out that way on the world stage, but also when you’re fighting with your neighbors.”
He sees that mentality strongly reflected in the Dutch language. “Everyone thinks they’re right, and says so very clearly,” says Weizman. It’s always about ‘setting boundaries,’ ‘digging your heels in,’ and so on. “Everything is about winning — that fighting mentality is everywhere.”
Maybe, he suggests, we should show a bit more genuine interest in the other, instead of constantly making clear who we are, what we think, what we stand for, what we want to hold on to. A little more openness, an outstretched hand — the whole world could use that. “Let’s not give in to the madness of the modern age.”