4 Floors of Whores (FI) & Anders Carlsson (SE)
Enfant Terrible
PART OF THE GENDERHOUSE FESTIVAL
Enfant Terrible is a playful, filthy and fleshy investigation of the borderlands of spontaneity: regression, destruction and perversion. The Finnish theater collective 4 FLOORS OF WHORES, in collaboration with Anders Carlsson, splurges in the grotesque and fragile playground of seduction, abjection, orgasmic ecstasy and hubris.
Venue: Aabne Scene (Godsbanen)
Enfant Terrible is a playful, filthy and fleshy investigation of the borderlands of spontaneity: regression, destruction and perversion. The Finnish theater collective 4 FLOORS OF WHORES, in collaboration with Anders Carlsson, splurges in the grotesque and fragile playground of seduction, abjection, orgasmic ecstasy and hubris .The performance is a contemporary association from the play “Victor, or when the children take power” (1928) by the French surrealist playwright Roger Vitrac. On their ninth birthday, the child Victor decides to reveal all the family’s hidden secrets. Armed with a child’s honesty, naivety, innocence, monstrosity, zeal and parasitism, Victor attacks everything they cannot understand or accept: they are an Enfant Terrible!
The performance tests the hypothesis that spontaneity, our lusts and desires, is a kind of pharmakon – something that can be both a poison and an antidote depending on the circumstances. Articulating and playing with the spontaneous is a repeating of how the individual body has been affected by society’s diseases, but not articulating it means postponing the healing process to an indefinite future.
So, who is this Victor? Is they a child? They are very tall. Did they accomplish what they wanted to accomplish? And what do they want to accomplish? Does the child really take over? What does that mean? Is there really a child? Are you Victor? Or am I Victor? Did we accomplish what we wanted to accomplish? And what did we want to accomplish? Is it already done? The performance premiered at Teater Viirus in Helsinki during spring 2023.
PLEASE NOTE:
The performance contains blinking lights, theater smoke, loud noises and feathers.
Recommended for an adult audience.
Reviews
“The quartet performs a 90-minute playful exploration of bodies, physicality, desire and desire and disgust. The famous fourth wall wobbles – the audience gives the actors gifts, which they open like children on Christmas Eve. The packages both rattle and shine.”
– HBL, Enckell-Grimm, 14.5.2023
“It’s grotesque, but neither scary nor unpleasant. Instead, the mood is surprisingly funny and empathetic. The ensemble expresses the unbridled curiosity with which children with which children explore their surroundings and their bodies before learning shame and discomfort from their environment. They learn to feel shame and discomfort about genitals and dirt.”
– Swedish Yle, Garoff, May 16, 2023.
“If Jackass is extremely flaccid bodily entertainment that hides a little bit of higher artistic ambitions, Enfant Terrible might be said to be a kind of antithesis to that, a thought-provoking and a thoughtful work that doesn’t lack intellectual height for those who want it, but which also doesn’t forget the simple laughter and the simple funny malice.”
– Ny Tid, Ekman, May 15, 2023
About 4 Floors of Whores (FI) & Anders Carlsson (SE)
4 FLOORS OF WHORES is a Finnish theater collective, based in Helsinki. The collective consists of actors Emilia Jansson, Astrid Stenberg, Herman Nyby, and sound designer Riku-Pekka Kellokoski. The aesthetic of 4 FLOORS OF WHORES articulates a dialogue between physical theater, contemporary choreography, sound art and performance art – baked in with layers of sensuality, care and obscenity. The group’s artistic practice is molded around and founded in safety, compassion, queering, desire, lust, pleasure, perversion, sensuality and curiosity and this in turn also affects the aesthetics.
The work of 4 FLOORS OF WHORES promotes the expression of desires that can be considered odd, dirty, perverse or antisocial within the relatively “safe space” of performance. The theater is a place where forbidden desires may come to (un)ashamed expression, imagining and trying out lustful ways of being together while exposing ourselves and the audience to things, thoughts and images that in our society can be seen as traumatic. Iis very probable that such a process is both healing, informative and integrating.
The group’s previous works are amongst others niXXXavuori (Teater Viirus/ Gothenburg City Theater 2021 & Tampereen Teatterikesä 2022, Konträr 2023), Garden of Earthly Delights (Teater Institutet/ Post Bar 2022) and the performance series The Church of 4 FLOORS OF WHORES (Hangö Teaterträff/ ANTI festival 2022 & Teater Institutet/ Baltic Circle 2023).
Anders Carlsson is a Swedish actor and director. He is currently a doctoral student in artistic research at the Department of music and drama of University of Gothenburg. Anders was previously the artistic director of the Swedish performing arts collective Institutet between 2006-16 and was professor of acting at the Theater Academy in Helsinki 2016-20.
Credits
On Stage:
Anders Carlsson
Emilia Jansson
Astrid Stenberg
Sound Design:
Riku-Pekka Kellokoski
Scenography:
Oscar Dempsey
Light Design:
Katinka Ebbe
Artistic concept & Production:
4 FLOORS OF WHORES & Anders Carlsson
Texts used in the performance:
Baltic Circle festival Safer Space Guidelines
Nothing Happened from Karen Finley’s performance A Constant State of Desire
Why? On The obscenity of questioning by Aron Bodenheimer
No Future by Lee Edelman & Solar Anus by George Bataille
Music:
Fire Leap by Gazelle Twin & NYX, other music by Riku-Pekka Kellokoski