What are the boundaries when it comes to experimental theatre? Being removed from your comfort zone? Engaging in physical contact with the actors? Nudity? Well, Internal has it all. The Ontroerend Goed Company is pioneering a new branch of theatre which involves the audience, taking them from spectator to performer. This creates an unsettling but fascinating encounter which is guaranteed to change your views on how far active theatre can be taken and what role trust plays between the two parties.
 
Five actors, five spectators, are each taken into a date-like scenario. Nordic music plays overhead as the couples get to know one another in an intimate environment. Questions are asked and secrets revealed, drinks are shared and personalities examined. No one experience is the same in this dark and daring performance. It’s acting, but on another level, anything can happen in this unscripted situation, this element adds a rush of excitement and anticipation to the participants.

The second part to this otherworldly encounter is a reflective session between all ten people where each person reveals what they think about the others with surprising and often unbelievable consequences. The connection between actor and audience becomes more intense as emotions are explored and more than just opinions are revealed…

To truly understand this bizarre event it is necessary to witness it first hand, after which I guarantee you will leave feeling a better person, or different at the very least.

A deserving winner of a Fringe First award in 2009, Internal is an unbelievable experience and one of the best pieces of theatre I have had the good fortune to see, the Ontroerend Goed Company should be commended for their utterly believable acting and their ability to entirely transform an afternoon at the theatre!

Words: BMD