wo 2 juni 2027
Theater – Courtney May Robertson
BANSHEE
In BANSHEE, Scottish performer and choreographer Courtney May Robertson examines a persistent cultural trope: the romanticization and eroticization of women’s corpses. Across painting, poetry, and film, the bodies of deceased women have repeatedly been portrayed as serene, alluring, and consumable. Meanwhile, the lived realities of grief and gendered violence remain obscured.
Core themes trace back to an intimate encounter with mortality. As an adolescent, Robertson witnessed her mother’s death, an image evoking both horror and fascination which has reverberated throughout her artistic practice since. Unable to reconcile this personal experience with the sanitized depictions of corpses uncovered during her research, BANSHEE stages an alternative narrative: mourning is guttural,
grotesque, and defiantly alive.
Previously known for solo works, Robertson shares the stage for the first time with fellow performers and close friends Inci Gül Civelekoğlu and Olympia Kotopoulos. The trio and custom kinetic sculptures form an inseparable choreography. Human-scale ‘discomfort devices’ - mutations of historical apparatus once used to discipline women’s bodies - cradle, elevate, and stimulate the performers. Within this haunted architecture, constructed by visual artist Jesus Canuto Iglesias, vulnerability is sustained rather than overcome.
By deconstructing Celtic folk dance traditions, collective physical endurance becomes a purgative necromantic ritual; part lament, part exorcism. Together the performers challenge archaic stereotypes and dream up their own mythologies for the future. Bagpipe artist Genevieve Murphy and noise musician Acidic Male band together to create a visceral sound score that blends the mournful cry of the pipes with abrasive digital textures. Within this sonic tension, a charged dialogue between persistence and rupture emerges.
In a post-apocalyptic landscape, unruly bodies refuse placidity. They convulse, throats erupt in roars, phantasmagoric images flicker past. A sterilized world fractures, and a portal to new imaginaries tears open with disruptive force. BANSHEE is not a solitary eulogy but a collective resurrection: a storm, a wild howl, a living testament.
- Concept, Direction & Choreography Courtney May Robertson
- Creative Associate & Second Cast Yoko Haveman
- Creation & Performance Inci Gül Civelekoğlu, Olympia Kotopoulos, Courtney May Robertson
- Dramaturgy Lara van Lookeren
- Sound Genevieve Murphy, Puck Schot (Acidic Male)
- Scenography Jesus Canuto Iglesias
- Light Paulina Prokop
- Production & Tour Management Anna Møller
- Technical Production Stefan Prokop
- Tour Technicians Stefan Prokop, Merijn Boers
- Distribution Amy Josh
- Produced by Studio Courtney May Robertson
- Co-produced by Grand Theater Groningen, Productiehuis Theater Rotterdam, BAU Amsterdam
- Supported by De Grote Post, Oostende
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