Works and Days gives us an epic taste of what we might have to gain as our bond to the earth strengthens. It might not be what we imagined, but it is definitely what we want.
There are very few times when I watch something that encourages me to believe that – simply because the imagination is capable of making art like this – there might still be some hope for humanity. Works and Days is one of those pieces.
Belgian theatre collective FC Bergman’s latest project is a wordless, entirely physical response to the question: What do we lose when our bond to the earth fades? And while it produces, in true FC Bergman fashion, a Brechtian sense of alienation that chills you to the bone, it is also one of the most effective uses of theatre out there to reimagine a sustainable human relationship to the natural world.
The theme of this year’s Edinburgh International Festival is “The Truth We Seek,” something Works and Days confidently straps on its back and takes for a wild ride. When I left that evening, I felt spiritually full, having feasted on some of the truest, richest images I’ve been lucky enough to witness in a theatre.
For an hour, I watched the company simply work the stage as if it were a plot of arable land. They dragged a plow through the floor, loudly splintering wood while two musicians played an abstracted arrangement of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. They built a house together, then celebrated their hard work, then returned to their work. A live chicken joined in, then was slaughtered (it was not harmed) and used in a very foreign marriage ceremony. Domesticated animals were forced to reproduce and then butchered, their innards used to decorate the house. Trees started to dance and were communed with, given a sort of godlike prominence above all the human action. Limited to the materials of the stage, this ensemble built and destroyed, weeded and multiplied, cherished and released a kaleidoscope of human experiences that came and went with the cycles of the seasons.
It was odd to observe these newly created human rituals, unquestioningly and strenuously carried out by this community. It felt like I was being offered up a radical vision for a new way of life, in alignment with the natural world. I didn’t recognize the purpose of their “work”, but I also desperately longed for the way that that work was actively creating a new truth and sense of purpose in them, a binding force that kept them vital and spiritually content. As alien as these rituals seemed, they felt familiar and comforting too – an ancient hominid call to action, to work hard in exchange for what the land has left to give, and a reminder that we will all simply and quietly return to the earth as if we were never here at all.
Founding member of FC Bergman Stef Aerts explains that Works and Days is about a lost connection with the natural world, “a longing for something that isn’t there anymore and probably will never come back.” It is also, though, “a playful attempt to look for a new language” that we might use to resume a meaningful dialogue with the earth. At a time when we’re all mostly aware that our home is crumbling and when we’re all desperate for instructions for how to save it, let alone adapt to it, Works and Days gives us an epic taste of what we might have to gain as our bond to the earth strengthens. It might not be what we imagined, but it is definitely what we want.
Works and Days was a part of the 2025 Edinburgh International Festival. Check out the Festival’s upcoming performances here: http://www.eif.co.uk