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Etienne Borgers

Netherlands

Cool Frogs

CENTRO CULTURAL DE BELÉM Jardim das Oliveiras

1 June at 12pm, 3pm and 5.30pm

Wednesday

EXTENSION

Fundação de Serralves Porto

28 May

Compositions and performer: Etienne Borgers Direction: Hans Spin Costumes: Bri Manuel Technique: Mixed For audiences over: M/4 Time: 25 min. Language: Without words

A magical world full of sweet violin sounds, frightened voices, soft farts, astonished eyes, red balloons and... lots of frogs!

Crazy situations to make you terribly lively, enormously anxious, pitiful angry, sweaty frightened and carefree sad.

A man with a suitcase appears on the scene. On his hand: a red balloon; on his back: a huge green frog!

The man and the frog are looking for a new home. But where do they come from? Maybe from another planet? Kasu makakka tzacka maluna! It sounds like this when the man speaks or sings. Suddenly there are many small frogs as well…because the huge frog is a frog-mummy. Exactly!

These frogs are pretty cool guys, but sometimes they are really cheeky. The man reads bedtime stories to them, explains how an orchestra works, why fiddles do not like to be alone, why flutes are so elegant and why the percussion is always so pert.

The musician and sound designer Etienne Borgers worked in various performances as singer, composer and actor, e.g. with Hermann van Veen, The Lunatics and other known artists.

“Etienne’s work borders on the insane but it is all the more attractive for it. He flirts with the surreal – a world children are well acquainted with – but manages to bring to it extremes of emotion, from mischief to frustration, loneliness to love. This he does with a constant, musical soundtrack that evokes the physical as well as emotional landscape alongside an unflinching capacity to emote on stage. Fascinating, different – performance art for kids!”.

Kate Cross, Director - the egg / Theatre Royal Bath

“Many, many thanks for a wonderful performance! I saw COOL FROGS at The Sandefjord Theatre Festival in june 2008, and I thought: YESSSS! This is THEATRE! To take children seriously means for me to give children the same quality as grown-ups expect. And COOL FROGS is quality! The audience (children and grown-ups) had a great experience. It is a warm and playful performance, made by an excellent actor”.

Terje Hartviksen, Teatersjef, Brageteatret Drammen, Norway

BIO

Etienne is a singer/composer, educated at the Rotterdam Conservatory in the Netherlands. He was part of the international operating a-capella group Intermezzo and won the Concourse de la Chanson in Amsterdam in 1995. Apart from his solo-performances he is an in-house composer with theatre groups ‘The Lunatics’ and ‘Prins-te-Paard’. Etienne designs languages from sounds. Humorous languages, sad languages, absurd languages and very well to understand languages. He composes music in which these languages are spoken. He sings these languages and with them he writes operas. In 2004 a large amount of beautiful, funny and sometimes absurd sounding compositions by Etienne were waiting to be picked up. Of pure folly he did not know what to do with them. Together with regisseur Hans Spin, with whom he had cooperated in Intermezzo, he decided to develop a performance for small children with this unique material. This very first solo performance, called ‘Spraakmakend’, was performed more than 200 times with huge success in Holland, Belgium, Germany and Austria. In 2005 ‘Cool Frogs’ followed. And in 2007: ‘Sheep’. The beautiful world created in these performances is one of great wonder and emotion. Poetic moments are interspersed with laughter. Tragedy is interspersed with slapstick. Emotion and impudence go hand in hand. His singing and his wayward are the foundation of his performances.

In 2010 Etienne Borgers premiered “Mister Molsk”, a co production with Nordland Visual Theatre and directed by Gienke Deuten.