A bird sings in accordance with its beak. Maarten Seghers has a big beak and sings his song with the power of a thousand sparrows. Even though he has a plate in front of his face. How is he to get rid of it? By setting an example. This is the essence of the new Needcompany production, What do you mean what do you mean and other pleasantries (****).

Everyone runs around with a plate in front of their face. It’s the community with its vile urges that makes this necessary. No one escapes them. Everyone has to get rid of their plate using their intelligence, but equally with their instinct. Maarten Seghers demonstrates how he managed to do it. And at the same time gives tips so that everyone is capable of it. By playing a trick on the negative impulses. By exploiting them. Twisting them. It is every human’s right, even duty, to free themselves from this Sisyphean existence. Everything is possible, but you have to want it.

It’s not a matter of whether you are clever or stupid. Make sure your life is your own. A great deal of courage is needed. But it will work, for those who stubbornly persevere. He demonstrates this with very few means. He slowly but surely frees himself from that plate, but carries it with him, between his legs, until, after his mental liberation, he also achieves physical liberation. Finally he is able to move freely in society. Once he has reached this stage he can play on his habitat. That is to say: you are not given happiness, you have to seek it yourself.

Maarten Seghers does this by converting this transformation into sound. After all, the world is one great musical spectacular. Even silence is music. He uses six boxes as a floor, as soundboxes, to convert the concert into images. Cables slide out of a box when he starts dragging them. Like intestines falling out of a belly that has been cut open. He gathers them together and drops them on the upright box. Hey, it’s a thatch of wild hair! The performer gives it feelings by making it change from talking to singing. The way blacks do. Not starting from the musical stave, but from the belly.

The other boxes have to face up to it too. They come to life one by one, without losing their individuality. Are they capable of seeking a balance, building up an understanding, collecting together the building blocks that make up love? During this building process the performer addresses the audience. What these boxes, the symbol of fossilised humans, can do, you should manage too. And if you have managed it, my act is a confirmation that, as a spectator, you are doing well, are right, must persevere, carry on, again and again every day. Get rid of that idea that the rock that rolls down the mountain and has to be pushed back up to the top is not a burden, and see the job as a delight instead.

Maarten Seghers says it, sometimes softly and sometimes with a catch in his voice:

I feel you. I feel it. I feel feelings. Feel it with me. C’mon! Feel it! I want to make you feel something. Can you feel it?

It’s true that his ode is in English, but its abundance of monosyllables makes it universally comprehensible. Underpinned by his mimicry, his body language. His power and show. A totality of a blood-red heart in a sea-green soul.

Bit by bit a song from my youth came to mind. About a fool filled with sorrow because his foolishness is seen as insanity. Maarten Seghers dashingly succeeds in taking the salt out of the clown’s tears. ‘The Fool on the Hill’ no longer sees the sun going down ‘day after day’. ‘The man of a thousand voices’ has found the right tone. ‘Oh, round, round, round, round, round, / oh…’

This production premiered at the FIDENA festival in Bochum, but next season will start on a ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ that includes Belgium, one venue being the Kaaistudios in Brussels. Don’t miss this feast of feelings. A penetrating, heart-warming performance.