In the mid-1970s the New York stock market was dealt a serious blow or at least badly shaken, when out of nowhere a new player took the market by storm. JR Vansandt is sharp, ruthless and... just eleven years old. Consumed by some moral sense and concealed behind a modest little army of straw men, lawyers and spin doctors, the whippersnapper lays his invisible claw on Wall Street, thus wreaking havoc with the competition, the stock market in general, the American and global political establishment, but also with people who have nothing whatsoever to do with any of this. He would have been Warren Buffet’s worst nightmare, had he really existed.
William Gaddis is considered one of the most influential writers in American postmodern literature. His experimental magnum opus JR is a complex and at times hilarious satire on capitalism. FC Bergman took this novel as its starting point for its eponymous production about people who are too fragile for the environment in which they find themselves. People who try in vain to shape their lives, failing to separate essentials from inessentials and overreach themselves in their race against eternity.
JR is a site-specific production with a minefield of lives, relationships and incidents as the set.
Credits
Adaptation
FC Bergman Bart Van den Eynde
Production
FC Bergman Toneelhuis
Coproduction
Olympique Dramatique NTGent KVS
Text
William Gaddis
Director
Stef Aerts Joé Agemans Thomas Verstraeten Marie Vinck
With
Marie Vinck Thomas Verstraeten Joé Agemans Bart Hollanders Biography Stijn Van Opstal Geert Van Rampelberg Oscar Van Rompay Frank Focketyn Michael De Cock Rashif El Kaoui Junior Mthombeni Ella-June Henrard Imke Mol Jan Bijvoet Anne-Laure Vandeputte
Sound design
Senjan Jansen
Costume design
Joëlle Meerbergen
Supported by
De Neef Milieu en Chemiegroep
Performances