Deaf Republic

A gunshot. A deaf boy falls. He could never have heard the order to lie down. The next morning the whole town is silent. No one hears anything anymore.

A drone glides over the auditorium. Somewhere above the stage, bodies are pulled upward on wires, like puppets being plucked from the stage. Puppets move alongside people of flesh and blood, until you no longer know who's holding the string.

Dead Centre is performing at Noorderzon for a fourth time now, and this time they're opening the festival with a dark epic about collective resistance, manipulation, and being able to hear each other when it's hardest. Spoken English flows into sign language, surtitles appear and disappear, and sometimes there's only a silence you can almost touch.

"The deaf don't believe in silence. Silence is the invention of the hearing."

Based on the poetry cycle by Ilya Kaminsky and created in collaboration with sign language poet Zoë McWhinney, Deaf Republic is a haunting performance that falls silent precisely when words fall short.

Dead Centre was founded in Dublin in 2012 and today is led by Co-Artistic Directors Bush Moukarzel and Ben Kidd. They are known for playful, provocative work that plays with perception and reality. 

With productions such as Chekhov's First Play and Good Sex - both previously seen at Noorderzon - Moukarzel and Kidd weave together theatre, philosophy and history into accessible work. Their productions tour worldwide, from New York to Berlin. 

The Dublin-based company has by now become a fixture on the international theatre map and at Noorderzon alike. With Deaf Republic they return to Groningen with a production that carries heavy themes lightly - as only Dead Centre can.