Zinc

Zinc tells the story of Joseph Rixen, born in 1903 in Neutral Moresnet – a territory without a nation, born of an unfortunate accident of history, whose plentiful zinc reserves had long stoked the ambitions of the great European powers. Like the mineral, Joseph is malleable, exploited, displaced. Without ever leaving the region of his birth, he was successively Neutral, German, Belgian, and ultimately a subject of the Third Reich. He never crossed borders – the borders crossed him, reshaping his identity time and again. For are our identities not, in the end, founded on nothing more than the accidents of history and the whims of those in power? Drawing on the book by David Van Reybrouck, Dead Centre explores the human body as a political space. On stage, the theatre becomes a neutral territory, a place where identity is called into question. The audience, united by the zinc that runs through its veins, is invited to wonder: who are we, when history shapes us without ever taking into account who we are? That way, the production makes a new attempt at realising the dream of ‘what Neutral Moresnet could have become’. On stage, the company creates a truly neutral space – without governance, without loyalty … and without history?