HARDKOOR
Naomi Velissariou, Nederlands Kamerkoor, Theater Utrecht
13 - 15 juni 2024
Het Sieraad
Crisis
“It’s a that crisis manifests itself on all levels, but first and foremost it is a physical crisis. Because your body just stops. Once you give in to your burnout, you simply can't get up. The first months I slept 14 hours a day and was still tired. I literally couldn't do anything. I felt great indignation that burnout is not recognized as a physical condition, just dismissed as some vague kind of mental issue. They send you home with a diagnosis - but no treatment. And then hearing people say, 'How good of you, good for you for taking that rest,' as if I had a choice?! I could not get up anymore.”
Layer by layer
“Once you give in to your fatigue, the healing begins. You need to scrape off everything that’s too much, layer by layer: you stop working, you scrap your social life, through your exhaustion you try to figure what the stressors in your life are: where do I live? How do I spend my time? What about my relationships? And then: why am I getting stressed about this? What underlying coping mechanisms make me anxious, and what childhood traumas are they based on? Eventually you end up back where you started: your body. How you dealt with it in the past and how you have to learn to deal with it to get it working again.”
In HARDKOOR, Naomi takes us in tow along all the conceptions and misconceptions, internal and external, that led to her crisis. She let’s the professional, societal, and personal expectations individuals place upon themselves – and the doubt and self-criticism they sow – take shape in lyrics like “I wanted to write a song called Maybe, but I wasn't really sure about it. (so instead I wrote a song called Happy Family),” during a song where her character measures herself as viciously as she does her surroundings.
“I found out how many demands I put on myself: I must be successful as an artist, a good mother, I must be thin, smart, committed, need to have an international career, spend a lot of time with my child. When everything froze because of the burnout, all the partitions between that which I had been listing and organising evaporated, between my artistry, my motherhood, my humanity - I just was. That was very liberating. Kind of a shame I had no energy.”
Rations
“I realised I had to let go of at least half of those demands if I wanted to restore my energy. Some demands are fuelled by my inner critic, this internalized judge who always seems to have a verdict ready whether or not I am fulfilling my promise in the scheme of life. But some demands are also real consequences of the systems we live in, for example the financial penalty you get from the tax agency if you have an alternative family constitution. Responding to those demands takes a lot from your mental strength. The crisis also created clarity, it's like having a wallet with five coins and you just need to make do with that that day. If an Instagram post or a workout costs you four coins, but you also have to take your child to school, provide food and pick them up from school again ... then you need to make keen decisions. Having my energy on rations taught me to pick my battles. That's not to say I'll never do those things again, but if I make an Instagram post now, I am ordering home delivery that night.”
Journey
“HARDKOOR is not a performance about burnout, it is a work of art made and performed during my burnout. I am inviting the audience to witness the process in which I scrape off all these layers and am confronted with blind spots, in myself and in society. I often show and say things in my work that I feel ashamed of, that I actually don't want anyone to know. Yet, magnifying these things and giving them space is empowering to me. And hopefully for my audience too. In the performance, I try to escape from that judgmental muttering. To look at myself and my fellow humans with love. And at the system, which I felt swallowed up and expelled by. Because if I keep struggling, I won't find release. By shaping my experience like this, I hope to suck the audience into the rollercoaster of my burnout for one evening, and crawl back out together.”
It's a journey of which Naomi can now leave a good many miles behind her. “When I listen to the demo, I can hear how tired and angry I was in the beginning. That has become part of my character on stage, but I have travelled further. By now, this material allows me to have fun with it. I am blessed with a home like Theater Utrecht, that gives me the space to work on my show in peace. And I am working with a stellar team; with sound designers and musicians like Joost Maaskant, Frank Wienk and Jens Bouttery, who turn my story into relentless music. The vocals of the Nederlands Chamber Choir are pure beauty. Boris Acket's installation is a work of art in and of itself, and in the outfits of Maison the Faux, everyone looks like a fashion icon. I don't think I can make my burnout more festive than this.”
This interview took place online on 4 March 2024 on the occasion of the performance HARDKOOR.
Nathalie Hartjes is a writer, curator and consultant, working mainly within the visual arts realm for a variety of clients such as Metropolis M, Willem de Kooning Academy, Roodkapje (Rotterdam) and Kunstpunt (Groningen).