Using the objects, they make sounds, amplified by small microphones attached to their wrists. And everything you hear, you immediately see. A bird flying overhead while it rains, a rowing boat splashing past, the chopping down and falling of a gigantic tree. But also more intense events: a bird ending up in an aeroplane propeller, a car accident and even a wartime bombing. It is fantastic to experience how the trio conjures up scenes in our imagination. The things they use for the sounds contribute to this. The flying bird is a piece of red aluminium, which makes the bird red in your imagination.

The three men work together brilliantly. The puddle of a motorist who has gotten out of a car results from the sum of the first making footsteps, the second unzipping the fly, and the third following the puddle with a lit cigar. For each new sound tableau, the performers first lay everything out. What is funny is that they try to be very precise, but meanwhile they keep tripping and falling. They are reminiscent of slapstick comedians from the era of silent film. When films were still silent, and it was still a craft to create the sound live in the cinema.

Silly Symphonies is the first professional performance by Marius Lefever, Jef Van der Burght and Senne Vanderschelden, who got to know each other during their studies in Autonomous Design and Drama in Ghent. A critic calls them ‘sound magicians, who conjure up enigmatic worlds with visible and invisible objects.’