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Meanwhile, the theatre course had thinned out quite a bit, a real slimming down. And as it went on now, it would become an AA – club. The debriefings at the café lasted longer than the rehearsal moments. There were only eight of us (out of 16) until things got out of hand.

The two young actors, Robin and Tom – companions of our theatre souls – took a samurai blade and cut our team’s heads off in pure disappointment. Screaming was out of the question. I barely managed to escape by pretending mine was already chopped off, as I have always been talented at those things. Like possessed, the two desperate men ran outside.

Quickly, I crawled up and called the police. I still tried to resuscitate the rest of the trainees, but I couldn’t remember which heads belonged together, so I probably made the wrong combinations and it was no use. I then fled, because in that too I’ve always been talented. The city was in turmoil, I heard gunshots, and the whoosh of slaying, everything slowed down before my eyes. I saw the shop windows decorated with lights, it was almost Christmas, it was coloured red, blood and dismembered body parts clinging like garlands to the window panes, the city had gone mad. Everyone was hitting everyone.

Pens, books, clothes pegs, condoms filled with sulphuric acid, they used everything to hurt each other. Despite this, they were friendly to each other, they didn’t shout mean things or anything, they just let each other torture, until the police came. They convinced them to go after the ones who started this. So, the whole mob went after our actors. By now they were sitting on a terrace drinking a glass of beer from where they watched the spectacle, until, the people approached them.

‘Let’s pretend we’re a fruit basket, then they won’t see us, ‘ Robin said. Tom nodded, but realised he was not a fruit lover and knew this was going to be difficult.

This cunning disguise just didn’t work, as one individual from the herd had noticed how a worm crawled out of the fruit dish and since the fruit is always fresh in this town, they knew it was fake fruit. Moments later, the rotten fruit dangled above the river.

Back to the scene. Tom and Robin shot now into laughter.

We came to the conclusion that we didn’t know what to do that night. Everything had gone haywire anyway. So many people had dropped out that we started to throw out the lyrics that would normally play the absentees. Maybe we should write something ourselves.

The play was now called ‘Suffering’ and involved some scenes around a wedding party. We scrounged together on the floor, along with a container of beer and two bottles of wine, which we had still found in the building’s basement. In the rehearsal room, or what had to pass for it, there was also a music system. We were trying out how much volume it could carry. We would make it our own party.

A few pints later, I was reciting poems, others were rattling off their lyrics. We intervened with our sentences, picking up the other’s role, playing off each other and improvising our way. This is how theatre was made.

An hour later, we were lying, crawling, jumping on the floor and letting ourselves be moved by the waves of music all around. For the first time, we saw each other naked, and all mutual tensions and prejudices slipped away. In the basement, we found some ketchup bottles and started spraying the red stuff on each other’s bodies. As if we were wounded bodies.

Eventually, the party stopped. By the few visitors to this theatrical spectacle, a police duo who watched this playful circus. But, the ketchup ritual had become too much for them, they switched off the music system and wished us a good night.