They have to watch their words now that they talk to the ‘mainstream media’, composer Jan-Peter de Graaff and director Kenza Koutchoukali joke. Conspiracy thinking and alternative facts, that’s what their new music theater performance is all about Parallax. The protagonist is convinced that the Earth is flat and wants to build a rocket to determine it with her own eyes.
The makers refrain from judging: “What we think of the Flat Earth Society does not matter,” says De Graaff. Koutchoukali: “Everyone has their own story, their own frame of reference, and there are always points of recognition. We are concerned with the complexity of human behaviour.” Soprano Katrien Baerts and Het Collectief will give the first performance of . on Friday in Maastricht Parallax.
The Flat Earth theory is a relatively recent phenomenon. The fact that the earth is round was already widely accepted in the Middle Ages, the ancient Greeks already knew it, says De Graaff. the modern Flat Earth Society has its roots in the nineteenth century, the founder was Samuel Rowbotham, who used the pseudonym Parallax. Parallax is the phenomenon that objects appear to move relative to each other as the observer moves. “Facial deception, so to speak,” says De Graaff.
Also read this report: Round Earth is ‘a product of mathematical fantasy’
“Conspiracy theorists are often dismissed as incapable of thinking, malicious lunatics. But that’s too easy,” says De Graaff. He prefers to describe them as people for whom “the belief in the model” is not amenable to empirical evidence: “And that touches on our work, the creative. Just like us, these people create a world of their own.”
“But we have the frameworks of the theatre,” says Koutchoukali. “Art is our license.”
American daredevil
De Graaff was captivated by the subject when he saw the documentary Rocketman (2019), about American daredevil ‘Mad’ Mike Hughes, who was killed in February 2020 when he crashed with his home-built rocket. Hughes wanted to prove that the Earth is flat. “His tragedy is that his rocket did not reach high enough, so that he was never able to see it with his own eyes,” says De Graaff. Incidentally, Hughes’ PR man claimed after his death that it was a stunt to generate money and attention and that Hughes didn’t really believe in a flat earth.
Parallax is fiction and does not tell Hughes’ story, emphasizes De Graaff. Koutchoukali describes their main character as “a loner”, but also “a powerful person”: “She is someone who wants to understand things, who wants to learn to think. She believes the earth is flat and now that she has found her truth she wants to convince other people. She tries to get her audience involved in all kinds of ways.”
“She is extremely independent, but she also likes to connect with the public, which is her opponent. She alternates between looking for confrontation and intimacy,” says De Graaff.
Koutchoukali chose an unlikely form for the performance: that of a TED Talk. “The idea was there right away: TED Talks are accessible, they have a clear structure, and you don’t have to understand everything. Moreover, there is humor in it, a personal note, often also some clumsiness. That’s what makes it human. So no rocket launch, but a chat.”
“Music and text constantly play with the expectation of the rocket,” says De Graaff. They laugh. Koutchoukali: „That is what you want: for the ceiling to slide open and for a rocket to appear. But why do you actually want that?” That’s how the rocket is in Parallax the flamboyant banner of an intimate and timeless story: someone who wants to convince someone she cares about of what she passionately believes.
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