"Daydream House slowly and elegantly tricks the audience into the all too human desire for reality."

Daydream House (2011)

Performance-installation in a glass house

Daydream House is the result of an encounter between theatermaker/performer Sanja Mitrović and architect Laurent Liefooghe. Their work utilises the glass house from Liefooghe’s audio-spatial installation entitled Woonmachine. Developed as an architecture rather then a decor, this construction was conceived at the same time as a “functional” house and a theater-box. This allowed it to serve as the starting point for a new theatre performance based on the docu-tale format which Mitrović has explored in her previous work (Will You Ever Be Happy Again?, 2008 and A Short History of Crying, 2010)

In order to understand ourselves and the society we live in, it is important to find a common ground we share in our personal and collective lives. A basic thing we all share is – our every day routines. Daydream

House uses documentary material from 20th and 21st century (found footage about mortgage crisis and personal stories) as well as extracts of Chekov’s Cherry Orchard to talk about living through stories about leaving. Maybe it is only in the moment of moving out that a home reveals its true value.

Daydream House explores the tension between real and fictional space. The position of the public constantly shifts: from watching to being watched, from taking distance to being involved, from visitor in a gallery space to an audience member in a theatre surrounding. While zooming in on ordinary, every day, domestic actions and by playing with real time and the power of story-telling, the audience is caught into a paradoxical game in which it gradually moves and takes over the stage.

Because of it precise combination of plot and space, of movement and story, Daydream House slowly and elegantly tricks the audience into the all too human desire for reality. – Christophe Van Gerrewey, 200

Cast And Credits

Concept and direction: Sanja Mitrovic & Laurent Liefooghe. Text and performer: Sanja Mitrovic. Architecture: Laurent Liefooghe. Text and dramaturgical advice: Maya van den Heuvel-Arad

Producer: Huis aan de Werf/Utrecht. Co-producers: Stand Up Tall Productions/Amsterdam, Mokum v.z.w./Brussels. Production coordinator: Helga Baert. Light design: Sanja Mitrovic & Laurent Liefooghe. Sound design: Evelien van den Broek. Intership dramaturgy: Alexander Chu. Photos: Laurent Liefooghe, Anna van Kooij, 2011. Special thanks: Renée Copraij, Christophe Van Gerrewey

Press

  • […] En hoe kil, klein en doorzichtig het (huis) ook is, na een tijdje lijkt het echt alsof ze hier al jaren bivakkeert. Zo gemakkelijk manoeuvreert ze door de overvolle ruimte.

    Vincent Kouters, De Volkskrant (in dutch), 29.08.2011

  • Performances like DayDream House make use of the physical presence of both the performers and the spectators in the theatrical space to create a complex web of points of view. Such performances make us aware that theatre is a very powerful medium with the ultimate potential to illuminate our human existence. Maybe more than any other art.

    extract from the text Come on Board, Shifting Points of View in Theatre - Maya van den Heuvel-Arad (in english), 29.05.2011