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© José Miguel Jimenéz

Dead Centre

Illness as Metaphor - adapted from the book by Susan Sontag
Women and Children First
  • Thu 06.03
    20:00 - 21:30
    De Vooruit, Gent
    THEATERZAAL
    Tickets
  • Fri 07.03
    20:00 - 21:30
    De Vooruit, Gent
    THEATERZAAL
    Tickets

“I have always liked to pretend my body isn’t there.” - Susan Sontag

In her 1978 book Illness as Metaphor, Susan Sontag sets out to diagnose the problem with the way we think about illness. Her discovery was not to focus on sickness itself, but the language surrounding disease - language that can, in her view, quite literally kill. 

Working with six participants living with long-term illness, Dead Centre adapt this groundbreaking text for the theatre, which is itself a metaphoric space. So, if all the world’s a stage, how can theatre deal with reality?

Perhaps, through inviting in some real people, theatre can be re-invented as a place where we might live, and die, without metaphor.

After all, the one thing you can’t do on stage is pretend your body isn’t there.

Part of
© José Miguel Jimenéz
© José Miguel Jimenéz
© José Miguel Jimenéz

“A clever, moving and genuinely new piece of theatre… The production has everything audiences have come to expect from Dead Centre - it explores deeply serious ideas with considerable wit… But its real achievement is in the way it presents the lived experience of long-term illness of the six remarkable performers. It’s theatre at its best.”

★★★★★ Irish Times

Cast: Cabrini Cahill, Eamonn Doyle, James Ireland, Conor Lenehan, Una Mullally, Megan Robinson
Stage Design: Ellen Kirk - Video Design: Kilian Waters - Lighting Design: Stephen Dodd - Sound Design and Composition: Kevin Gleeson - Costume Design: Mae Leahy - Production Manager: Gavin Kennedy - Stage Manager: Sibeal Ní Mhaoileoin - Assistant Podiummanager: Anika Kidd - Sound Engineer: Eóin Murphy - Video Technician: Sebastian Pizarro Oliveira - Camera Operator: Eoin Gleeson - Set Technician: Damien Woods - Text by: Dead Centre and the Cast - Producer: Tilly Taylor - Directors: Bush Moukarzel & Ben Kidd

Illness as Metaphor is adapted from the book by Susan Sontag, copyright  Susan Sontag, 1977, 1978 (all rights reserved.) Touring supported by Culture Ireland.