Why do staff in care homes rush to their feet, while time seems to crawl by for residents? And why do we have such a hard time watching elderly care? This documentary theatre asks pressing questions, based on thorough research and many conversations.

The corridor is long, there is a smell of mashed potatoes and disinfectant, and televisions blare in multitudes. The slow movements of the residents contrast sharply with the haste of the staff. Is this the playground for second childhood, the landscape of everyone’s future?

Old age does not come alone. It comes with remembering and forgetting. With pride and fear. With peers and loneliness. Today also with waiting lists, indexing, shareholders, staff shortages and a lot of medication. And she comes with time: those who age enough do not escape it.

Rustoord is documentary theatre about elderly care today. Through interviews with the elderly, caregivers, gerontologists, politicians and investors, Martha Balthazar, Jana De Kockere, Barbara T’ Jonck and Mats Vandroogenbroeck examine the why of the long corridors in residential care centres, the bittersweet aftertaste of centrally organised care politics in a neoliberal framework and the tension between care, freedom and discipline.

Four actors from different generations embody this montage of perspectives. Rustoord attempts to offer not an answer but an insight into the complex knot that is elder care today. Above all, however, this performance is a coming of age; an imagination exercise about what it might mean to grow older if we were not so afraid of it.