Smells like no spirit. De Uitnodiging of Laura van Dolron

'I got starstruck, I thought I was making a friend, but it was just a play', Ugnė Jurelevičiūtė writes on Laura van Dolrons De Uitnodiging. That play, about her 'true, no filter love story', fails to transcend the often unbalanced relationship between a man and a woman.

The day I saw the play, my bike got stolen. This was the very first bike I got myself, my first bike in Belgium, a step towards making a permanent decision to stay here. It was a foldable bike that allowed me to travel more freely, to be in my flow, not to own a car. I form relationships with my things, and so after this bike got stolen I felt guilty for recently having been annoyed with it. But that day I was so happy about meeting a kindred spirit on the stage that I only cried of laughter.

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Grunge was blasting through the door while we were entering the hall. It was Soundgarden, or maybe Stone temple pilots or Deftones. I know them all, I was born when they all died, their spirit reincarnating in me. The woman (Laura van Dolron) was wearing a Nirvana t-shirt and jeans, radiating cool mom vibes, the man (Mark Kulsdom), twice her size, the strong silent type. They were both barefoot, establishing good ground control before taking a flight into their epic love story. The stage was minimalistically decorated with a tiny sculpture of a Buddha, a burning candle, bright Indian mat. Mark sat on a platform with his legs crossed, very hippie-core. Mark and Laura brought a bit of their home and spirit to the stage. I dropped my guard.

They have pined for each other for over a decade. During that time Mark had been married and divorced twice. Laura repeated that six times, Mark took the bashing with serenity. Laura was telling their true, no filter love story, they sang two hippie songs and sweetly swayed with an enamel cup in hands. Laura told how she started singing with Mark and he started singing with her, they opened each other’s voices. Some stories, the ones that held the narrative of the play together, were translated on the screen above Laura, others were improvised. Scripted or not, most of them told about what Mark did to Laura, that all this time he was the one: a sensitive vegan animal activist who playfully calls Laura his little animal. Both Mark and Laura have their own travel pets, he a skateboard, she a scooter. It almost seems like we could be friends.

Upon reflecting I understood why some of the stories made my stomach turn the next day after the show.

In the two-hour runtime I recognized myself in van Dolron. During the parts about accepting yourself and re-framing one’s sagging body not to be a loss of value on the beauty market but rather a natural process of coming back to the roots, I nodded enthusiastically. She came to this realisation because Mark said she was the most beautiful woman. Laura panicked, because wearing a Miss World’s sash is a big responsibility. Mark added ‘You’re the most beautiful for me’. That solved it. A similar thing happened when Laura was telling about woman’s period blood being just another bodily liquid. I became ecstatic. I remembered pictures of Madame Gandhi running the London Marathon in 2015, free-bleeding to combat menstrual stigma. But once again, Laura seemed to have accepted herself because Mark wrote PUNK on her leg with her menstrual blood. This made me wonder: did Laura came to all of these self-accepting conclusions because she was accepted by Mark? Or by herself?

Later, an hour after the play, while going through all the paperwork involved with reporting a stolen bike, it slowly dawned on me that Laura was going through a checklist of what should and shouldn’t be said on the stage. She was holding a bunch of papers, browsing through the stories, cherry-picking the ones to tell. Every time she said what a good audience we were and thanked us for listening, her words were translated to English. I can’t possibly be surprised about the play being scripted, it’s theatre, after all. However, I felt betrayed. She made personal comments to the audience to connect with them, (one directed to me as well!) which shows that Laura is a master of improvisation. She’s hyper aware of her audience and sprinkles jokes about Flemish and Dutch dichotomies where it’s appropriate. But it was all thought of, prepared, scripted. I got starstruck, I thought I was making a friend, but it was just a play.

However, it wasn’t just me being childishly let down that my friend Laura is an imaginary one. Upon reflecting I understood why some of the stories made my stomach turn the next day after the show. Laura told how she had a breakdown after Mark didn’t respond to a message that said ‘Your Laura’. She told the exact time she had to wait for his reply. And when she finally got the reply it was open to interpretation; Mark sent an emoji of an eye. The audience laughed but this made me think. The fact that Laura doesn’t know what his silence means and jumps to hasty conclusions that he might leave her, which in turn destabilises her, worries me. Laura greatly depends on Mark’s acceptance of her, her ageing body, her menstrual blood. This story suddenly doesn’t feel like a love story anymore. It sounds like a story about women being dependent on male confirmation.

Watching De Uitnodiging was like watching an episode of Friends.

How come it is funny that women don’t feel safe to be vulnerable with someone they love? Instead on reflecting on this, Laura makes fun of her wish for clearer communication and her mental instability with regards to Mark. She calls herself hysterical and resorts to ‘men are from Mars, women are from Venus’ explanations. She tries to be a cool girl and says: ‘Men want sex before intimacy and women want intimacy before sex’. It could be argued that being this cool woman, occupying the spotlight while Mark is silently sits on his pedestal and supports her, is empowering Laura. But the stories that she tells are rather confirming the stereotypes about male and female behaviour in heteronormative relationships.

Another example of this is Marks’ pun on the subject of marriage: ‘He doesn’t want to marry (trouwen) but he wants to trust (vertrouwen)’. Laura agrees with it, but does she have a choice or is she forcing herself to become someone that Mark will continue loving? Someone that doesn’t become hysterical when he doesn’t reply and is chill about the whole marriage situation? By the end Laura addresses the audience, saying that we might hate her now because seeing happy people is hurtful, and she proudly glows in her assumed ability to still arouse jealousy. Her happy ever after, her Hollywood romcom ending is reached because she was accepted by Mark. But what are we supposed to be envious of exactly?

Watching De Uitnodiging was like watching an episode of Friends. Highly entertaining, so much so that the laugh track, carefully planned by van Dolron, masks the outdated feminism of the play. She’s on the high of discovering her new self with this man she has pined for, but because of Mark’s silence we don’t know his side of the story. And so Laura’s play doesn’t transcend the often unbalanced relationship between a man and a woman to become a story about love and understanding between human beings.

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I would’ve put my bike on that pedestal. I would’ve told how this object has allowed me to be who I want to be. I bled on the seat. I sweated and cursed, I had the best talks with myself on it. I don’t have to mould myself into anything, but I change. The next day I cried for my stolen love.