HELLO ATMOSPHERE
A sung conversation about global warming between a brave little children’s choir and the entire audience
Tell me just how thick you are
And how long you will live
And about the holes in you
How old are you
How did you originate
And when you’re gone will we be gone, too
Or will Nasa build a new you
A brave little children’s choir is singing for us. The children are worried. They are angry. They want to ask us some questions. But we are not so sure about things ourselves. “Hello atmosphere, tell me just how thick you are, and how long you will live.” Whoever knows the answer, please speak up. All you grownups: are you brave enough to answer in a song?
In 2016, a video of a little boy expressing his anger and fear about global warming went viral. With his naive look he puts adults all over the world to shame. This inspired Liesbet Swings to open a conversation with Dutch children. Are they worried as well? What are their questions? The children wrote letters to people, animals and things: Hello dear grandma, Hello Penguin, Hello Damp Circle. This gathering of interviews and letters were transformed into a requiem. Keimpe de Jong composed the music and songs.
Liesbet Swings studied scenography in Barcelona. She has designed costumes and sets for numerous theater projects in the Netherlands and Belgium and has also developed joint musical performances – alone and together with many others. She combines her artistry with the open and adventurous context of Artemis. In addition to the performances by Jetse Batelaan she develops innovative, stand-alone art projects that arise in the encounter between artists and children or young people.
Keimpe de Jong
Lex Bohlmeijer
2018
Theater Commons Tokyo (seminars & workshops)
Terschelling, 10 juni 2017
“In a grassland (...) a touching miracle occurred during Hello Atmosphere. A structure (...) so refined and pure that there is not a dry eye in the audience.”
“This is where contact is established, real contact, and a feeling of being addressed to be felt trough-out the whole performance.”
“An incredibly bold, touching, razor-sharp and desperately needed performance. Mandatory spectacle.”