Pleasant Island

Pleasant Island was the name British whalers gave to the island of Nauru in the Pacific Ocean. For a long time, the island was a little piece of heaven on earth. But now that it has been mined of all its riches, the soil is exhausted and poverty reigns. And what’s more, Australia has relocated a major refugee camp there. Now the refugees are the island’s main source of income. What kind of future is left for the place, after its ecological and eco-nomic downfall? Theatre makers Silke Huysmans and Hannes Dereere went to Nauru to see for themselves.

In their last piece, Mining Stories, the two young theatre makers studied the aftermath of a recent mining disaster in Brazil. With Pleasant Island they are continuing their research into the consequences of extreme mining using documentary material which they have gathered conducting interviews. How do we deal with the grey images of the future?