The Deer House

By:

Jan Lauwers & Needcompany

At BAM

Brooklyn Academy of Music

Harvey Theatre

October 5, 7-9 2010

Last night I went to see "The Deer House" at BAM and the performance ends with a song, that goes something like this:

"Hey, no, don´t go away, no need to say

oh we are small people

we are smart

we love each other

we have a big heart"

A bit of an optimistic message? after 2 hours of betrayal, destruction, murder and rape.

The central story is about a girl missing her brother, a war photographer. She decides to go and look for him, finds his diary that says he has killed a woman. To find out if this story is true, and how come he could be capable of doing this, she follows where his diary says he would go, to the "Deer House".

The sad part here is that this performance actually originated in a true story. The girl Tijen Lawton, playing this part actually did loose her brother in Kosovo in 2001. 

There are some beautifully inspired dance sequences and the staging is exciting and inspiring. 

We all agreed the women have gorgeous bodies which they gladly walked around naked to show. Supposedly, a proof of how pornographic the war pictures can tend to be. 

Jan Lauwers says : ‘Art is about man and human nature. And all good art is a self-portrait of the observer. “One sees what one has learned.” ....

"Art always get caught between the pages of history: it is futile and has no influence on any events at all, which is where the mysterious necessity for it lies". 

I found among others these sentences from the play intriguing:

" Faking a photo of yourself is the craziest you can do. When you are a war Photographer"

" One doesn´t know what one is thinking before one does"

" A war does not belong to anyone"

I think the last sentence is what I am lingering on. Why do we end up in wars? Why do people sign up for death and destruction? Why rape? why mass murders? What makes people feel they are entitled to this much hate? What is at stake if the war does not even belong to you?