Director: Stef Aerts, Joé Agemans, Thomas Verstraeten & Marie Vinck (FC Bergman)
Belgian theatre collective FC Bergman, known for 300 el x 50 el x 30 el, The Land of Nod and The Sheep Song, makes its Edinburgh International Festival debut with Works and Days (Werken en dagen), a work of striking visual ambition inspired by Hesiod’s 700 BC poem on agriculture and the rhythms of rural life.
The performance opens with six dancers stepping onto the stage, carrying a giant wooden plough as if preparing for the year’s first work in the fields. Two musicians are already in place, their live score underscoring the ritual with a steady, earthy pulse that changes throughout. A live chicken was held in the air to lay an egg live on stage, drawing a wave of laughter. Moments later, a model chicken is placed in a sack for a pagan sacrifice, the symbolic start of the seasonal cycle. As time flies, a maypole is raised with the sacrificed bird, the harvest begins, and colourful wooden pieces are pulled from beneath the stage. A barn takes shape, ready to store and dry the gathered food. During the toil , moments of mischief slip in: a couple rolls together inside a sack, and after they finish, the man is handed a cigarette from behind the curtain, a flash of human absurdity amid the ritual. And in one of the production’s more visceral sequences, a cow or elephant-like creature is killed and skinned after giving birth. From its remains, an elderly man slowly rises like a spirit, circling the stage as the others follow on hands and knees, crawling in a communal gesture of thanks.
On the eve of the industrial revolution, the tone shifts. The performers, now dressed in bright paper costumes that suggest priests or spirits, gather around a girl whose body is draped with the internal organs of the sacrificed animal. It is the last moment of community before the old order collapses.
When the colossal steam engine arrives, it feels like an intrusion from another world. The artificial lighting above it dominates the stage as the performers greet it with reverence, treating it like a phallic idol. One even clambers onto it and rides. The old ways vanish. Only an elderly woman, once the custodian of their knowledge of the land, remains to work the soil, which is now polluted and unyielding. Seeds turn to ash in the rain as her former companions lie naked, still devoted to the machine.
The final image is surreal and unsettling. Pineapples shoot into the sky as if they are not grown on earth but a product of technologies, with hints of an AI-shaped future at its very end. While the work could explore more deeply the complexities of our modern estrangement from nature, FC Bergman delivers a haunting and visually rich reflection on how humanity has drifted from the soil that once sustained it.
Runs until 10 August 2025 | Image: Kurt Van der Elst
