My aim is to stage and embody Auden's poetry, focussing on staging absence.

Stage the absence. Stage what isn't there.

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The poetic work of Auden that I have chosen  to stage is one of absence.

Of absence, yet at the same time desire.

Of absence in the quest for satisfaction.

Of absence in loss.

Of absence and the playful impatience  that it provokes.

Of absence and the heavy-hearted waiting  it entails.

Of absence and of disappearing.

Of absence and of the unsaid,  The Unspoken.

Unspoken love, love we hide,  Platonic love shared between the young 

poet and the composer.  Hidden behind the witty use of words and the swinging accents of jazzy music.

Representing this absence, its emotion  and its humanity is the key to the scenic  representation that we are proposing.

Representing the absence and the lack of  the other. A duet, staged without a partner.

Immersing the audience in this absence, this  loss, too. Letting them hear without seeing,  letting them guess - even hope - that these  two monologues will finally find each other.

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Giving the audience a chance to 'read' the  inner workings of this author's mind by  hearing his words. Making emotional the playful music of the Cabaret Songs.

Inviting them to shudder at the universal  threat of absence, loss and death, looming in  the background at every moment - like  'the sound of distant thunder at a picnic'.

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