Bartlebabe

What is the impact of increasing digitalization on our lives? How does this omnipresence of a new digital sphere change our very ways of thinking, feeling, speaking or loving?  Meet Bartlebabe, a creature by Anna Franziska Jäger and Nathan Ooms, a figure between human and algorithm.

The twenty-first century appears obsessed with a distinctly new ideal of efficiency: constantly seeking out the next strategy to control and, if possible, market the unknown and unpredictable. Our use of language also reflects this trend: writing and speaking are becoming streamlined and standardised through all kinds of 'templates', emojis and gifs. How do these evolutions change the way we express ourselves and understand ourselves? Is there any escape? Bartlebabe unleashes a mass of online content on the analogue reality of the theatre, until it becomes so distorted that it takes on a monstrous face.

• Anna Franziska Jäger and Nathan Ooms both got their masters in Drama from the KASK Ghent. Bartlebabe was Jäger's graduation project. She has appeared in numerous films and has also been on stage in performances by Michiel Vandevelde. Ooms did an internship with Ula Sickle, and attended the STUDIOS program at PARTS. We are delighted to welcome these young makers to Kaaitheater for the first time!

[...] swirling, ironclad, cheeky, funny and sometimes naughty with pretension, Jäger's play. — KNACK FOCUS

A strong new voice in the theatre landscape. — HET NIEUWSBLAD