Een en ’n ander (“One and Another”) originally was conceived as a dramatized lecture: an author presenting scraps and bits from his desk. In some of these pieces, the very fact of someone reading aloud the text in his hand is treated as an antagonism of the written word and the reader, who can only by his tone and gestures distance himself from the words coming out of his mouth. For the dialogues I had pre-recorded one of the parts to act with my replayed-self. I started this project in 1995 with a few try-outs. From the outset, it had been conceived as an ongoing project, which might be continued and transformed over years. However, other things came on the way. I might come back to it sometime. Text selection (in Dutch).

       

Who’s I? (Wessen Egg?): semantic chamber music for two voices (male and female), puppets and instruments 

A woman appears, acting as a museum GUIDE. Instead of introducing the exhibition, she mystifies us with obscure questions. She leads us from one door to another, not really getting anywhere, apparently lost herself. The listener might feel like the VISITOR character, who drops out of the tour to go his own way. Soon he finds himself  trapped in a room without doors,  and is confronted with the CUSTODIAN, who forbids him to touch anything, including the walls. The VISITOR starts to doubt the integrity of his own body – since he is a puppet, with good reason. Roughly treated by the CUSTODIAN, he not only looses confidence about his personal self, but also changes voice, and works himself through his crisis in song. A number of scenes from an earlier draft of the text have been converted into an 'Essay in Web Drama', a reading-only, partly animated version. The specific modus operandi of the internet (and the user’s possible frustrations) coincided very well with the basic structure of the play. It was made on a poor machine  rather early in the PC-era, and intended for poor machines.