There has been quite a bit going on about borders, lately. That is what authors Floor Leene and Greg Nottrot have made a performance about, together with Wil van der Meer, Tijs Huys and Pascal van Hulst. Directed by Daniël van Klaveren, the Nieuw Utrechts Toneel (NUT) ensemble performs the play on the oldest border we know, the Limes. This was a border road built by the Romans to guard the border between the good guys (them) and the bad guys (us). Or vice versa, because that's the nice thing about borders: they make it immediately clear where things are right and where they are wrong, where things are better, the grass greener, the people more human, the colours brighter.
That this applies to every border, and that people on both sides of such a border usually feel the same way about it, is an insight they make clear right from the first minutes of the performance, the players of NUT. On the border, which in Utrecht ran along the Leidsche Rijn, and is now being extended to Leiden, they have erected a tent. In that tent, a long table immediately creates an unbridgeable border between people who bought a ticket at the wrong or the right box office. Something that Leene, Nottrot and their fellow performers will make you feel until dessert, as the show ends with a dinner, which also tastes a lot better than the average food truck festival food. Although, of course, that may have tasted much better across the table. Or less so.
Gutmensch
As always in Nottrot's work, the premise is simple: in Greg and Floor's neat fully gutmensch-qualified household, two strangers suddenly enter. After initial humble gratitude, however, what every Baudettian and CDA-prominent fears these days happens: the guests undermine Greg and Floor's superior culture. This in turn leads to entanglements, which are enough to make the usually very tolerant theatre audience think about a few things.
NUT is known to kick very much against its own comfort zone, and in The Border too, NUT makes every effort to make us question embedded certainties. In this way, The Border also touches on current debates in the art world, where critics from renowned newspapers and websites are increasingly positioning themselves as moral judges.
Deugen
In this case, the NUT puts the ball in front of an open goal because, the actors ask the legitimate question: is this actor group actually virtuous? Do they fit within the new boundaries of ethical propriety that critics raise?
Just asking the question is enough, and Nottrot and his people leave things pleasantly open, just like the landscape around them. After all, boundaries are not always visible, but you can feel them.
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