In recent years, artist Emmanuel Van der Auwera has investigated active-shooter drills in the United States. Law enforcement reconstructs full-scale sets, and companies sell training programmes designed to teach people how to survive mass casualty events. Every element flirts with the codes of theatre—the “reality-based” sets and scripts, the make-up of participants performing the wounded.

For years Van der Auwera conducted interviews with drill participants, trainers and conspiracy theorists, many of whom claim that mass shootings never happened but were staged as part of an attempt to increase gun control. Through a skilfully minimalist composition, Can you make a hurricane ? ventures into the construction of the conspiracist narrative, weaving real dialogues with live cinema and found footage.

While playing golf, a character smirks and remarks: “In a way, we were visionary, we saw the first ripple in the water a decade before the storm.” Van der Auwera recreates the microclimate of a world in which concepts such as reality and truth have ceased to matter. On the limit between fiction and reality, and anticipating a major exhibition at BPS22, Van der Auwera creates his second theatrical project: a surgical portrait of a dystopia closer than one might think, and a sharp reflection on the role of theatre in a post-truth era.

Concept and Direction: Emmanuel Van der Auwera
Assistant Dramaturg and Editing: Pedro Gossler
Production and administration: Entropie Production (Pierre-Laurent Boudet, Stephanie Bouteille and Lucille Belland)
Performance: Davis Freeman, Malak Atif
Make-up and Performance: Dominique Binder
Make-up studio: Bloody Marys (Florence Thonet & Anne Van Nyen)
Group of teenagers: to be announced
Light Designer: Gregory Rivoux
AV Operator: Morgan Souren

Coproductions: Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Les Halles de Schaerbeek, CIGO (Studio Van der Auwera)
Residencies: Bodeek Brussels, Les Halles de Schaerbeek
Acknowledgements: Harlan Levey Projects
courtesy Harlan Levey Projects and the Artist