# 027
Sunday, April one, 2018
SMS-pier, Waterkant #5, Paramaribo, Suriname.
55º09´173´´, North, 005º49´520´´ West
A JOLLY ENTRY
Arriving in Paramaribo feels like the coming home of a lost brother. The fools come back to the home country of sweet folly. It feels like sailing back to the Amsterdam of the seventies and find it back much more joyfull. You’re being received in your own language, even if the warm welcoming lady dancers sing in maroon. The press is fully present, with a battery of pictures and serious questions. They have the sense of sound anarchy and love the artistic craziness of the fool’s way of live. We’ve hit the target. A school of four-eyed fishes swim around the ship, prying with one pair above and with the other under the water. It seems they welcome a little stirring in a national mood that is getting weary of her lethargy facing corruption and rising prices. The fools offer their ship, seating and experience as a platform for a play that could become a satirical & grotesque musical for a public of all ages scattered over a range of islands and countries that neighbors and matters to Suriname. It seems some friends actors and directors take up the challenge.
Some misunderstandings accompanied the fools entry. First, the captain realized too late he mixed up the tide table. So instead of easily sliding inside the Suriname river, the ship had to plow against the strong downstream current. Arrival time glided from 11.11 AM to 12.12 PM. The waiting friends, singers and visitors kept their faith where board radio and mobile telephone failed. The National TV-news and some friends already slipped away. Hardly in time, by sounding the potent ship horns, we managed to point out the blue spot that approached in the huge river bend.
Then, I arranged with our friends to stage a practical stunt by waiting for us on the quay demanding we bring them back to Africa. After all, the country we brought them to is too much of a chaos. That proved too much for their patriotic feelings. In their perception the joke would be that the ship would arrive, this time, to bring them back forcibly to Africa. Finita La Commedia ! So they staged, among their welcome songs, a loud protest. Except, some of the singers, indignantly, really thought we came to bring them back and had to be comforted by explaining them that this is a theater ship.
And the National TV-news soon returned. They must have been jealous of their colleagues of the National TV-news for Kids that just made a nice reportage. That night, the Fool’s arrival was the first item on the news. Cheerfullness first. Quite a difference with the sourish Dutch National TV-news that covered the first night of our opera back in 1990 as a mixed message at the very end. Curiously enough, critical media too are explicit in their reporting. We promise a lot. Now, we’ve to beat with facts the indifference that always lurks.
The ship is moored in the very heart of the town, at a few minutes walk in between the presidential palace and the central market. She faces the central bank that I suspected quite empty. That presumption, according to the TV reporter, is quite erroneous. Anyhow, in this very heart of the nation, in the hull of the ship, we present the night cabaret that earlier bloomed and boomed in the Basque country, in downtown Barcelona and Amsterdam. For six months this stage is ready to welcome a Paramaribo public most eager for surprises. They crave for the crazy performer, the silly dress designer, the burlesque dancer and the comic actor who could bring a twisted kink to the local art scene. Schoolteachers and parents are happy to trust their children for an odd theatrical tour through the ship. We’ve a crowd funding campaign going on that smoothly brought the ship to America. Now we need you to help funding the return ticket of some of these performers. Or better, alert your artist friends and kick them off for the game.
People don’t forget to support this beautiful people on their amazing journey! https://leanfund.us/projects/14 so the journey can continue!
