Come Watch Me Die is a comical-poetic and absurd reflection on impermanence and the End, and how we shouldn’t take all of that too seriously.
Walter Bourdin, a 87-year-old Frenchman and Jew who sets foot on stage for the very first time, talks about aging and dying as an experience expert. With a good dose of self-relativation and humor, he distances himself from everything that binds him to life. Next to him on stage is the Grim Reaper. Grim plays music and organizes a flea market with Walters personal belongings.
BE/FR, 2015, 70'
EN, NL, Yiddish spoken
Concept: Geert Vaes
With and from: Walter Bourdin, Geert Vaes, Marc Iglesias & Tom Tiest
Set design/ technical direction: Clive Mitchell
Technic Colin Legras
Afer his theater studies (RITS Brussels), Geert Vaes worked as a performer and assistant with Troubleyn/Jan Fabre. After that, he worked as a freelancer for Kris Verdonck, Ivana Müller, Sanja Mitrovic, Piet Arfeuille, Diederik Peeters, among others. As a maker, he was involved in the non-profit association Théâtre de la Liberté, created No I Be Yonder by Malpertuis and made performances and video work and the feature film Campeon.
Born in Losse, France, in 1927, Walter Bourdin has been a carpenter, a wood worker and an amateur poet in his birth region all his life. Animator Georges Bourdin is his uncle. His mother was of Jewish-Russian descent. Bourdin has been living in Schaarbeek for two years now. His first encounter with Brussels dates back to the liberation (1944-1945). Come Watch Me Die is his first experience as a performer.