DODO

Archive

Location	Kortrijk - Antigone

In DODO, Giovanni Baudonck and Jonas Van den Bossche set our GPS to Mauritius. The island in the Indian Ocean was for centuries overrun wave after wave by European colonial powers. They filled the land with non-native crops and released exotic animals that devoured the original ecosystem. The colonizers uprooted peoples from other lands and cultures, importing them as enslaved laborers to force them into inhuman work. Even today, the people of independent Mauritius still have no decisive voice over their own territory—because only those who control the resources hold the power.

DODO tells, in Dutch, French, English, and Creole, the untold story of a people carrying the weight of these violent transformations. Through spoken word, slam poetry, rap, and song, Giovanni Baudonck gives voice to these dark pages of Mauritian history. In a raw, dialogical interplay with musician Jonas Van den Bossche, the stage becomes a transport zone where historical baggage is dusted off and assessed. The lids of buried secrets are lifted, only to be covered up again with a resounding “let’s sweep it under the rug!”

In this striking and visual music-theatre production, the creators search for the cultural coordinates that define the complex identity of this island. They bring the extinct bird—the dodo—back to life to rewrite Mauritian history and explore how this reshapes Giovanni’s search for his own identity.

We are the men, the women, and the children who have fallen off the boat The anonymous names, the numbers, the umpteenth newspaper article The stranger, the newcomer, the refugee, the migrant. The nomads of this world, the seekers of fortune yet to come.