The performance, which was performed by a group of extras, was all about a so-called ‘tableau vivant’, a theatrical interpretation in which the figures in the painting temporarily ‘come to life’. This was done by creating a social context that referred to the time of the potato plague, the textile crisis and the school battle.
Lieven Vuylsteke, who wrote the theater text and directed it, emphasizes that the characters in the painting not only reflect the history of Waregem, but that the contemporary extras also form a cross-section of the current population. “Half of the characters in Claus’s work have now been identified. The painting offers us a look at the society of that time, and the people on stage represent the community of today.”