LasLab: “Hansel &”

Work in progress / LasLab

The work of Kevin Augustine feels like an encounter with someone’s dream enclosed in a body of foam. It is a theatre in which matter breathes together with the performer — not in order to imitate life, but to bring out what usually remains hidden in the deeper layers of consciousness.

Augustine creates a world of soft, yielding sculptures which, in his hands, become extensions of thought, emotion and, at times, pain. His performances are quiet yet intense — a meditation on human fragility and on how deeply we are made of tissue: delicate, bending, sometimes breaking.

In his work, the boundary between the human body and the puppet body begins to dissolve, as if both forms were co-creating a single organism trying to understand its own existence. There is no attempt to hide the mechanism: the seams, gestures and effort remain visible. And it is precisely this honesty that creates the most magnetic moments.

“Hansel &” is Augustine’s newest work, currently in active development. Its first raw form will be presented as a work in progress during LasFest 2026, within the LasLab strand. In this new project, Augustine moves even further towards the presence of the audience, allowing them not only to observe, but also to participate.

Interaction is not an addition here, but one of the key elements of the structure. The spectator is drawn into the pulsating rhythm of actions and directly touched by the choreography of bodies — human and non-human. It is another step towards a theatre that happens more than it tells.