Zuidpool makes a new site-specific performance with the human voice as leitmotiv. Deniz Polatoglu and Jorgen Cassier recite and play a musical mosaic of snapshots. A polyphonic portrait of the fragile human being. Human Landscapes from my Country is a train journey through a turbulent country in the making. Just as diverse as the villages, cities and landscapes are the people inside the trains. Travellers in third and first class, workers and industrialists, farmers and soldiers, young and old, all are scrutinizsd in turn.

The great Turkish poet Nâzim Hikmet wrote Human Landscapes from my Country during
a long imprisonment. This makes his mild outlook even more remarkable. In exceptionally beautiful and poignant verses, he sketches every shade of a society in search of itself. Zuidpool turns these miniatures into a compelling epic, in the style of oral storytelling and singing tradition.

“The power of the voice of the ‘blind (because imprisoned) poet’ in Human Landscapes
from my Country lies in the all-seeing eye of his relentless compassion for the being called man; in his sharply analytical ability to grant one person only one line and another, an entire chapter, a history, a highly detailed story; and in this way, almost summarising, that voice constructs or reveals a world that is greater than the sum of all its parts.” - Jorgen Cassier

With: Deniz Polatoglu, Juicy Dune Ijsselmuiden

Composition and live music: Jorgen Cassier

Text: Nâzim Hikmet

Translation: Els Hansen, Ruud Keurentjes and Wim van den Munkhof

Adaptation: Jorgen Cassier

Concept and development: Jorgen Cassier and Koen van Kaam

Costume design: Jelle Spruyt  

Technical: Anne Straetmans, David Van Hove e.a.

Staging: Inès Maes

Production: Zuidpool