Peeping Tom (theatre company)

Peeping Tom (Dutch: Gluren Tom) (French: Voyeur) is a Belgian theatre company founded in the year 2000 by Argentinian choreographer Gabriela Carrizo and French choreographer Franck Chartier. The pair first encountered one another while working at various Belgian companies, including Les Ballets C de la B. In 1999, they co-created their inaugural location-based project, Caravana, set within a trailer home and featuring mezzo-soprano Eurudike De Beul. This project marked the beginning of their exploration into immersive, site-specific works and was succeeded by the 2000 film Une Vie Inutile.
Peeping Tom's artistic style is characterized by an innovative fusion of dance, theatre, opera, and performance art. Their works typically begin with a hyperrealist aesthetic, often constructed within highly detailed, tangible settings that serve as the backdrop for the unfolding narratives. These settings include environments such as a garden (Le Jardin, 2002), a living room (Le Salon, 2004), two trailer homes situated in a snow-covered landscape (32 Rue Vandenbranden, 2009), a retirement home (Vader, 2014), and a forest (Kind, 2019). Through these concrete, often domestic or everyday spaces, the artists subvert conventional notions of space and time, challenging the audience’s perception of reality and narrative structure.
The audience is exposed to elements that are typically left unsaid or unseen. The creators use isolation and fear to reveal the darker aspects of a character or community. The huis clos of family situations remains a major source of creativity for Peeping Tom.
Since its foundation, the company has created twelve shows, including Le Jardin (2002), Le Salon (2004), Le Sous-Sol (2007), 32 Rue Vandenbranden (2009), A Louer (2011), Vader (2014), Moeder (2016), Kind (2019), La Visita (2022), and S 62° 58’, W 60° 39’ (2023). In addition, the choreographers have collaborated with other companies across Europe. In 2013, Gabriela Carrizo created The Missing Door for Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT I), and in 2015, she directed The Land for the Residenztheater in Munich. Franck Chartier directed 33 Rue Vandenbranden in 2013 for the Göteborg Opera in Sweden. It was an adaptation of the original piece by Peeping Tom, 32 Rue Vandenbranden. In 2015, he directed The Lost Room for Nederlands Dans Theater, followed by The Hidden Floor in 2017. In 2018, Carrizo and Chartier co-directed 31 Rue Vandenbranden, an adaptation they made for the Opéra de Lyon, which opened the 2018 Biennale de la Danse in Lyon. In 2020, the three previously mentioned pieces created at NDT were re-imagined as Triptych: The Missing Door, The Lost Room, and The Hidden Floor. In 2021, Chartier created Dido & Aeneas, Peeping Tom's first opera, in collaboration with Emmanuelle Haïm’s Le Concert d’Astrée for the Grand Théâtre de Genève.
According to one of Peeping Tom's co-founders, Gabriela Carrizo, they chose the name 'Peeping Tom' as a reference to voyeurism. It came from their first performance, Caravana, during which the audience would look through the windows of the trailer home.
In a portrait for Contemporary Arts from Flanders, theatre scientist Lieve Dierckx described it as: "[...]the organic interweaving between the daily life of the performers and their artistic work, a zoom in on fears and fantasies in relational constellations that are as familiar as they are intimate in hyper-realistic stage sets." In addition, "Peeping Tom does not narrate specific stories that have a clear beginning, development, and end, in their works; they create fragmentary and irrational worlds as one can experience in dreams."
To create their work, Peeping Tom also uses cinematographic techniques, including sound, lights, and zoom from the camera. Moreover, according to Carrizo and Chartier, a big inspiration in their work comes from the work of the photographer Gregory Crewdson. For their show 32 Rue Vandenbranden, they collaborated with Belgian cinematographer Nico Leunen, who worked as a dramaturge on the piece.
From 2002 to 2007, Peeping Tom created three shows that formed their first trilogy: Le Jardin, Le Salon (their international breakthrough) and Le Sous Sol. According to Lieve Dierckx, "In thematic terms this trilogy forms a house in which the performers take on the battle with the baggage they bring with them.".
Le Jardin was Peeping Tom's first show for the theatre. It was created in 2002 by Gabriela Carrizo, Franck Chartier, and Dutch actor Simon Versnel. The performance was divided into two parts. The first part was a film that showed a group of diverse and unusual characters who immerse themselves in the nightlife. This symbolises a dream or a nightmare. The second part was the live performance, with the three characters - Carrizo, Chartier, and Versnel - in a beautifully tended garden. The show premiered on 13 June 2002 in Ghent (Belgium).
Le Salon was created by Carrizo, Chartier, and Versnel, with mezzo-soprano Eurudike De Beul and dancer Samuel Lefeuvre joining the cast. Le Salon marked Peeping Tom’s international debut. It explored themes of decline within a once-wealthy family. A unique part of the show was Carrizo and Chartier's young child, Uma Chartier. The three developed a kissing dance, which has been seen 218,000 times on YouTube. Le Salon premiered on 4 November 2004 at La Rose des Vents in Villeneuve d'Ascq (France).
The first trilogy concluded with Le Sous Sol, which included Carrizo, Chartier, Lefeuvre, De Beul, and Spanish Butoh-dancer Maria Otal. In this piece, the members of the family are now dead and buried. They continue their lives underground, where social codes no longer exist. Le Sous Sol premiered on 28 March 2007 in the Koninklijke Vlaamse Schouwburg in Brussels. It was selected for the Belgian-Dutch Theater Festival and was performed at the Kaaitheater in Brussels. The final show took place on 24 July 2009 in Kalamata (Greece).
In 2009, Gabriela Carrizo and Franck Chartier left the stage and focused on the artistic direction of Peeping Tom and on co-directing their new pieces. For the first time, the company held wide-scale auditions, resulting in a few dancers joining the company who would stay with them for several years: Belgian dancer Marie Gyselbrecht, British dancer Jos Baker, Korean dancers Hun-mok Jung and Seoljin Kim, and later Brazilian dancer Maria Carolina Vieira.
32 Rue Vandenbranden was the first show that Carrizo and Chartier co-directed after leaving the stage. It premiered on 28 November 2009 at the Koninklijke Vlaamse Schouwburg in Brussels. The production showcases two mobile homes in an inhospitable winter landscape, serving as a backdrop for exposing the tensions within romantic relationships, where isolation and loneliness emerge as the dark consequence of the primal urge for love. In an interview with the Luxemburg newspaper Le Quotidien, Chartier describes it as putting an address to the house of the previous trilogy, whereby the show thematises the way of life in a closed community, the outward behaviour of its inhabitants, and the disruption brought about by the arrival of two strangers. 32 Rue Vandenbranden has served as a new break-through for Peeping Tom. They performed in London for the first time in 2015 during the International London Mime Festival, and travelled to the United States in 2019, performing at the BAM Next Wave Festival.
A Louer was created in 2011, with the premiere taking place on 15 October 2011 at KVS in Brussels. The piece addresses the theme of transience: a fading but talented opera diva wanders around in an overwhelming interior and struggles with the expectations of a bourgeois environment. Nothing is certain or permanent (including the decor), except for her recurring fears. Fearsome sounds highlight the insignificance of the characters. For this creation, Carrizo and Chartier worked again with Simon Versnel (with whom they hadn't worked on a new creation since Le Salon in 2004), and invited Leo De Beul - the father of mezzo-soprano Eurudike De Beul - to join them on stage.
After the creation of A Louer, Carrizo and Chartier took on offers outside of the company: Carrizo went on to work on The missing door with Nederlands Dans Theater, while Chartier recreated Peeping Tom's 32 Rue Vandenbranden for the Göteborg Opera, titled 33 Rue Vandenbranden. Within the company, they began to work differently again, acting as assistants and dramaturges at each other's shows rather than co-directing . According to Gabriela Carrizo, they wanted to change the dynamics and see how each could operate on their own. This would become the starting point for their second trilogy: Vader (2014), Moeder (2016), and Kind (2019). Moreover, the company added two new dancers to their ensemble: the Taiwanese dancer Yi-chun Liu and the Belgian dancer Brandon Lagaert.
Franck Chartier directed Vader, with Gabriela Carrizo working alongside him as directorial assistant and dramaturge. The piece is set in the visiting area of a retirement home, whose towering walls accentuate the fact that the action takes place deep underground. At the centre of this netherworld, somewhere between the domain of the living and the dead, stands the figure of the father, who seems to be distancing himself gradually from the human community. His fading is drawn, not from the story of one individual, but from the mythology of the father, and in scenes that explode into action, and just as suddenly halt, this figure appears at once as God-like and ridiculous, as possessed of a rich mental life, and as disconnected, decaying, empty. His past may harbour a deep secret, or maybe he is simply mad or delusional. The other residents and the staff wonder at him, regarding him with amusement and hatred, affection and indifference. Vader premiered on 10 May 2014 in Ludwigshafen, Germany.
For the second part of their family trilogy, Carrizo and Chartier reversed their roles. Now Gabriela Carrizo was directing, with Franck Chartier acting as a directorial assistant and dramaturge. In an interview with Bachtrack, Gabriela Carrizo explained the idea behind Moeder: "Moeder is not about one mother, but about several mothers. We talk about motherhood, the absence, and the lack of it. The play searches the memory and the subconscious to reveal what the mother carries in the form of desires, fears, suffering, or violence. [...] Moeder opens on a funeral and then winds up the thread of memories. Due to the aseptic and museum-like handling of the staging and the distance between the characters, we also evoke the process of distancing in the memory, especially in intense moments of life. Moeder is not a catharsis, but I have certainly projected much of myself, also unconsciously. The idea of a museum is in particular a reference to my mother's funeral, where we had exhibited paintings.." Moeder had its world premiere on 29 September 2016 in Ludwigshafen, Germany.
For the final part of their family trilogy, Gabriela Carrizo and Franck Chartier decided to co-direct again. Kind premiered on 23 April 2019 at Les Théâtres de la Ville du Luxembourg, in Luxemburg. The basis for Kind is the perspective of the child and children's internal and external world. Every action is driven by how children see the world, by their fears and desires. The choreographers investigate how a child's perspective changes as it grows and develops on its way to adolescence and adulthood, with all the associated choices, pressures, fears, doubts, and physical changes, and how this translates into gestures and body language.
In 2019, the company announced a new round of international auditions for the first time since 2013. They stated that they were looking for an entirely new cast for a new creation. This creation would start in the course of 2020. In the end, the company chose eight new performers: French dancers Konan Dayot and Fanny Sage, Spanish dancer Alejandro Moya, Australian dancer Lauren Langlois, Taiwanese dancer Wan-Lun Yu, Italian dancer Eliana Stragapede, Belgian dancer Fons Dhossche, and Cypriot dancer Panos Malactos.
The company announced the title for their new re-creation in 2019: Triptych: The missing door, The lost room and The hidden floor. It is an adaptation of the three pieces that Gabriela Carrizo and Franck Chartier created between 2013 and 2017 with Nederlands Dans Theater. Peeping Tom produced the show themselves and toured it with the eight new cast members. The show premiered in 2020. It was also shown in a smaller format, called Diptych: The missing door and The lost room.
La Visita was a site-specific performance. The company described it as "a dialogue with every new location it visits" and a "manifestation of the possibilities of space.". Versions of La Visita were made in the Collezione Maramotti in Reggio Emilia (2021), Chapelle de la Salpêtrière in Paris (2022) and the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp (2022).
The title of Peeping Tom's 2023 creation refers to Deception Island in the South Shetland Islands. The performance was directed by Franck Chartier and premiered at the Biennale de la Danse in Lyon on 20 September 2023.
Since 2013, choreographers Gabriela Carrizo and Franck Chartier have opened up to collaborations with other companies, aside from their work with Peeping Tom.
In 2013, Gabriela Carrizo was invited to make a first short piece with the dancers of NDT I at Nederlands Dans Theater. This would become The missing door. In the piece, Gabriela Carrizo shows two parallel dimensions in the piece illustrating the last minutes of life, which take place in the twilight zone between life and death. The dying man anxiously tries to find a way through the intricate maze of his thoughts. While soundscapes of everyday sounds turn into lost rhythms, the man performs a lonely battle with time, space, and those who are absent.
In 2015, it was Chartier's turn to create a piece with NDT I. He made a sequel to The missing door, called The lost room. It is set on a ship at sea, where freedom and entrapment go hand in hand. In a labyrinth of rooms and corridors, several stories are told simultaneously. Characters seemingly exist in every time and every place. The lost room could be seen as a melancholic nostalgia for the future. In addition, memories are often not a literal reproduction of the past but instead rely on constructive processes that are sometimes prone to error and distortion.
Franck Chartier returned to Nederlands Dans Theater in 2017, to create the short piece The hidden floor. The piece addresses some of the themes that were already present in the previous two productions: the memory, and the disruption of time. The characters find themselves in a public space, maybe a restaurant, taken over by nature. They are experiencing their final moments as the water slowly starts to rise. Holding on to their last hope, they try to survive and find a way out, not only physically but also mentally.
In 2022, Gabriela Carrizo created another short piece for NDT I. La Ruta had its premiere in May of that year at Amare in The Hague.
In 2013, Franck Chartier went to the Göteborg Opera in Sweden to work on an adaptation of Peeping Tom's original piece, 32 Rue Vandenbranden. With the ballet company of the opera, he created 33 Rue Vandenbranden. In 2018, Carrizo and Chartier joined forces to create another adaptation of the piece. This time, they created 31 Rue Vandenbranden for the Opéra de Lyon. For this piece, they doubled the parts, going from six dancers in the original piece to about fifteen in the adaptation.
In 2015, Peeping Tom collaborated with Residenz Theater in Germany and made The Land, directed by Gabriela Carrizo. The Land plunges its audience into a world in which the loss of the self stands central. The "game" commences with a village community finding itself amid a miniature landscape. A story rich in paradoxes unravels, revolving around the notions of inconsistency and alienation, proximity and distance, whilst toying with the way we perceive the world around us.
Peeping Tom's first opera project was directed in 2021 by Franck Chartier for the Grand Théâtre de Genève, in collaboration with Le Concert d'Astrée.
Belgian documentary filmmakers Mieke Struyve and Lotte Stoops approached Peeping Tom to make a documentary about life behind the scenes. Third Act follows the company on tour around the world with the trilogy Vader, Moeder and Kind. The theme of this trilogy, ageing and family, touches everybody's lives, including those of the actors themselves. In the film sublimated theatrical stories are woven together with sensitive personal contributions. At each stop on the international tour, Peeping Tom works with local senior citizens as extras. These extras have been sought out beforehand and receive a crash course in acting before they step onto the stage, often for the first time in their lives. Their personal lives provide insight into ageing in their countries and create a dialogue with what Peeping Tom presents on stage.
Peeping Tom was invited to develop a project as Artist in Residence for the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp (KMSKA). During the museum's renovation, the performers will develop a project with the museum's collection. The project has been pushed back since the opening of the museum has also been delayed till the beginning of 2022.
The company has received different awards: