Theater Artemis - 2007 Simmen

3.45 pm: They don�t respond when I click to tell them to do their homework.
I send Terre to the toilet, because her bladder indicator is completely in the red.
She doesn�t succeed because apparently, the toilet is clogged up.
The shower room is flooded. Mother Amalia calls out that she is tired.
I instruct her to mop up the toilet, which she does, reluctantly.
Only then do I discover she could call the plumber.
It will cost 50 Sims-dollars, but at then least Terre will be able
to empty her bladder because after all, she did it on the kitchen floor yesterday.
They are quite a handful, this family.

This is an excerpt from the diary director Ted Keijser kept for Simmen, shortly after accepting the challenge of creating a performance with Theater Artemis. Floor Huygen asked him to create a performance about gaming phenomenon The Sims that would fit in with their chosen subject The Passage of Time. She is intrigued by the way children can become endlessly absorbed in the computer and by the world they enter into. She gave Ted Keijser the assignment specifically because of his unique, intuitive way of creating drama. �Ted makes an unusual sort of drama; he has a style that comes from somewhere that we have somehow forgotten about in The Netherlands and Belgium. It�s a kind of primeval drama; I can really picture Ted, if he had lived in some earlier time, arriving at a square somewhere and start playing. Ted has made his own autonomous way through our theatre landscape,� says Floor Huygen.

What�s in a game?
The computer game The Sims is not based on gaming elements such as virtuosity, winning, or losing. It was developed as a �god game� in which gamers control the lives of virtual people. Adults have more of a tendency to view the game from a moral perspective, whereas children tend to focus on the playful elements. Ted Keijser chose not to base Simmen on this contrast. Ted Keijser: �To me, the main subject Simmen deals with is the portrayal of an era, a reflection of the times we live in. For many people The Sims is a game, a virtual doll�s house as the ultimate, beautifully constructed pastime that they enjoy immensely. Others discover something like a sense of responsibility within themselves. But children still see life as a game. To them the game just can�t be crazy enough. That�s good. That�s the good thing about it.�

Cyber soap about 'The Sims'
A virtual doll�s house, filled with things that are not actually there. Shower, washbasin, TV, front door; they exist solely in the shape of nameplates. And the dolls? The dolls are human, but stripped of all humanity.

For Simmen, Theater Artemis� latest production for children and young people, director Ted Keijser drew inspiration from the biggest selling computer game of all times, The Sims, in which gamers control the lives of virtual people. We find ourselves in a domestic cyber soap where three actors who keep switching roles (Vincent Verbeek, Marieke van Leeuwen and Heike Wisse) follow the course of their characters� day-to-day worries.
The actors move around mechanically, wearing plastic masks to help blow up their emotions. And what is more, with admirable persistence and without making the performance impenetrable, they speak a strange nonsensical language. From start to finish, the hysterical yells of TV-American English are mingled with the Japanese of martial arts.

At the same time, the comical lightness of Keijser�s game world sheds some light on the real world. We live increasingly separate lives, allowing them to be dictated by our personal computers, cell phones and iPods. In the end the same feeling creeps up on you as with the movie The Truman Show, in which a town, a life, is directed by TV-people. Simmen voices a disturbing note about the present times. NRC Handelsblad

Simmen and the Emptiness of Fake
My digital illiteracy betrays the era in which I was born: the computerless dinosaur decades of the last century. You see, before last weekend, I had never even heard of The Sims. It turns out to be the biggest selling computer game of all times. It does not contain games of winning or losing.
It is a game in which the gamer organises the day-to-day lives of a family. In a sense, the gamer decides the ups and downs of the family members and so commands the lives of these virtual people. When the gamer fails, it�s game over. Whereas my preconceptions about this kind of toy are influenced by an educational theory steeped in Roman Catholic values, for today�s young people this is just a children�s game. Their recognition flows across the rows of seats in excited waves of whispers, just like �in the row in front of me- the irritating rustle of a giant bag of candy...

Theater Artemis from Den Bosch have assigned director Ted Keijser to turn this Sims-craze into a theatre play for children of ages seven and up. Asking Ted Keijser to direct a play means you want it to be a visual spectacle, full of surprises and originality. And also that you know that right through his clownish approach he is often painfully precise in touching the sore spot. And indeed, Simmen proves to be a show with a lot of laughs, and food for thought. The laughs are fed continuously through the outer layer of the performance, while the thoughts, sparked by laughter, are processed inside my head. The three actors move across the performance space �an extraordinary achievement (!)� like real computer dolls. The artificiality of it makes you see that nothing is what it seems. Everything is out of the ordinary.

The way they walk, and talk, and move. Their everyday environment is also faked because, except for a few chairs, there is nothing there. At the start, places and things are all still denoted by signs. A recreated reality. But then, after a while, even the signs begin to disappear, leaving nothing but an empty space in which fictional characters mime their daily routines, supported by little tunes and jingles and controlled by.....? Then the performers collide with the characters in their own virtual soap in a completely empty setting. A wasteland that forces itself upon me as a spectre of the emptiness such a (virtual) world brings with it. So this is how bad things can get: a world without any human feeling or compassion left. Thank goodness the actors slip out of their virtual characters at the final applause, laughing like real people, relaxed and contented. It is a joy to see the fake disappear and make way for the real. Keeps your spirits up. Limburgs Dagblad

For more information and bookings please contact: Theater Artemis, Maurice Dujardin +31 (0)73 6123223 or maurice@artemis.nl