Civility

Abstract

The script of the sound play "Civility" was developed in English the framework of the performance festival INDISCIPLINE, organized by WIELS at Grand Casino Knokke (BE) in March 2024. A French version was presented at the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles in December 2024.

Civility is an imageless play conceived as an inversion of theatrical syntax that dismantles the traditional dominance of sight within perception. Seated in velvet chairs, the audience becomes a body of sound voyeurs. What is usually concealed behind the curtain seeps through the audio field: overlapping voices as if the spectators were being wiretapped, a confrontation with an overzealous guard, the hum of an elevator, the pulse of club music. Interwoven with these voices, a narrator recounts a story into which the listener gradually enters. Adapted from La Découverte, a short story by Catherine Robbe-Grillet (from Cérémonie de Femmes), the narrative unfolds as if the scene were taking place before our eyes – or rather, through our ears, like a memory resurfacing in sound. By situating protagonists and spectators within the same perceptual field, Civility blurs the divide between stage and audience, or more precisely, between who performs and who perceives.