Has Been

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Martin Zimmermann have been major influences on the contemporary circus, dance and theatre worlds for over 25 years. In their first joint creation, they explore transience, fading away and their own artistic mortality with great humour and full physical commitment. ‘Has Been’ combines Zimmermann’s Swiss Dadaism with Cherkaoui’s Belgian Surrealism: The movement patterns are bizarre, the emotions exaggerated and the laws of nature turned upside down!

Time knows no mercy. On stage, it takes its toll on the set and the bodies, makes facades crumble and shakes even the most sheltered self-image to its core. Desperately, the characters fight back. Seized by tragicomic frenzy, they polish surfaces and patch up cracks. Yet they cannot escape the inevitable any more than they can the questions that increasingly force themselves upon them: How to deal with ageing? How to remain relevant? And what happens when the final curtain falls?

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui embodies the ageing diva, the matriarch, the showgirl, the shaman. Martin Zimmermann, meanwhile, is the servant, the caretaker, perhaps her last fan, Death, her mirror image. Whilst the diva does her best to ignore their mutual decline, the servant lulls her into a false sense of an ideal world ..