In the run-up to the premiere of Kidnapped – Frames of a Contemporary Landscape, theatre maker Rodrigo Batista, together with performer and co-creator Mariana Senne, is working on the final technical, dramaturgical and scenic refinements at De Brakke Grond.
Kidnapped – Frames of a Contemporary Landscape is a poignant and surprising theatre production that takes a close look at our times. What if the world we live in is actually a shared political hallucination – shaped by neoliberal ideas, colonial legacies and a system that makes us believe that there is “no alternative”?
Using the metaphor of a kidnapping, Kidnapped shows how our choices – cultural, political and personal – are often driven by market interests and identity struggles, without the underlying power structures ever really being shaken.
The residency is the final phase of the artistic process. Rodrigo Batista works according to a self-developed methodology in three steps:
- Brainwashing: a collective immersion in philosophical, political and historical sources;
- Cannibal Lab: a creative “digestion” of this material through improvisation and deconstruction;
- Word Becomes Flesh: what remains – voice, gesture, presence – takes shape in the final performance.
During this week, the complexity of the performance is translated into a clear but deliberately overwhelming scenic language: refining camera registration, balancing live and recorded images, and sharpening rhythm and space.
In Kidnapped, excess is not a mistake, but an artistic choice. The chaos, contradiction and oversaturation on stage reflect a world that already feels incoherent and unbearable. This residency helps to make that world tangible – not to solve it, but to face it without a filter.
