My aim is to stage and embody Auden’s poetry, focussing on staging absence.

Stage the absence. Stage what isn’t there.

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The poetic work of Auden that I have chosen to stage is one of absence.

Of absence, yet at the same time desire.

Of absence in the quest for satisfaction.

Of absence in loss.

Of absence and the playful impatience that it provokes.

Of absence and the heavy-hearted waiting it entails.

Of absence and of disappearing.

Of absence and of the unsaid, The Unspoken.

Unspoken love, love we hide, Platonic love shared between the young 

poet and the composer. Hidden behind the witty use of words and the swinging accents of jazzy music.

Representing this absence, its emotion  and its humanity is the key to the scenic representation that we are proposing.

Representing the absence and the lack of  the other. A duet, staged without a partner.

Immersing the audience in this absence, this loss, too. Letting them hear without seeing, letting them guess – even hope – that these two monologues will finally find each other.

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Giving the audience a chance to ‘read’ the inner workings of this author’s mind by hearing his words. Making emotional the playful music of the Cabaret Songs.

Inviting them to shudder at the universal threat of absence, loss and death, looming in the background at every moment – like ‘the sound of distant thunder at a picnic’.

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