a physical, wordless metamorphosis
ren_essens is a newly created stage work that explores inner and outer transformations that shape our identity.
The performance is based on the director Cecilia Paul's own experiences of the need to return to her inner core, her essence. It takes inspiration from metamorphoses in the animal and insect world.
Like the butterfly's life cycle, where each step involves destruction and reconstruction, the work depicts a woman's journey from childhood to adulthood. Her struggle to free herself from expectations, traditions and limitations in order to find her own voice, body and power.
Rebecca Solnit's words, “the process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay,” run like a continuous undercurrent in the performance, where change is not portrayed harmoniously, but as a cyclical and often violent movement. Every rebirth requires an end. The living cannot exist without also carrying death within them.
ren_essens is a visual and poetic experience that, through physical expression, opens up existential questions about identity, loss, freedom and survival.