This rather peculiar proposal, to stay silent in a public space, together with people you have never met came about when I introduced a friend to meditation, something I have practiced for many years. There is always a moment of quiet coming back to normal after sometime with eyes closed, my friend then looked at me and said – how strange to be silent with someone but… how nice! It sparked an understanding in me, I just realised that we were having a very different way of communicating, both with ourselves and with the other, and that this way of communicating, simple as it may seem, is the result of a long tradition, a long tradition of people working on finding techniques to live well. Because of my background in the theater, it came naturally to me to want to stage this peculiar way of communicating. In the theater also there is a long tradition – the existential, tragic, comic, tragi-comic themes, the playfulness, the communion of the actors and the public (here we are both actors and public), a real pleasure. Both traditions involve some form of personal effort and discipline, « playing seriously » said a famous painter.

- Charles Szwarcnabel