The Caretaker

performance
Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker is about the fear of the dangers that we see, or think we see, around us. Aston’s view of reality has become cloudy after a long stay in a mental hospital and the electroshocks that he was given there. Now he lives in his brother Mick’s run-down flat, which he is unsuccessfully trying to renovate. After meeting a drifter named Davies, Aston offers him a place to sleep. It is unclear exactly who this old man is, or what he intends to do. Slowly but surely, Davies starts playing the brothers against each other.

design
We see a wall made of plastic foil that overflows onto the floor. Occasionally a gust of wind blows through this plastic, as if there were a draft in the house. Water drips onto the floor, and a block of polystyrene foam functions as a bed. Invisible behind the wall are many (lighting) cords and cables. As strips of the plastic foil start to fall, this tangle of cables gradually comes to dominate the image. Eventually the cables are slowly and silently pulled upwards, flashing several times like synaptic connections in the brain. Finally, when all the cables have landed back on the ground, a desolate landscape remains, in which the players have to find their own way.