For his second opera production, Jan Decorte, the uncrowned king of Flemish theatre turns once again to the English baroque composer, Henry Purcell. The Indian Queen (1695) is a ‘semi-opera’. Decorte’s quest for basic simplicity is perfectly in keeping with the strength and freshness of this ‘not-yet-opera’.
A leading figure on the New York scene, Richard Maxwell has conquered the world with his inimitable style. Supported by surgically precise language, his intimist theatre exposes the American myths buried under modern life. He describes Neutral Hero as a ‘country opera’.
Mark Tompkins is a devotee of vaudeville and slapstick, stand-up comedy and rap. In Black','Blues he goes back to one of its predecessors, the minstrel show. The performers sing, dance and act in a minstrel show that is resolutely contemporary.
After 31 years the dancer Miguel Pereira returned to his native country, Mozambique. In DOO he confronts the European identity with that of the African ‘other’. An intense performance !
The Swiss artist and theatre-maker Massimo Furlan has reconstructed the 1973 Eurovision Song Contest as a performance. The television show is reproduced exactly on stage, with live commentary by several philosophers disguised as seventies musicians. A hit at the recent Avignon Festival!’
The actor Dirk Roofthooft and pianist and composer Kris Defoort take fifteen of Joseph Brodsky’s poems as a basis for this stirring performance. In search of the very essence of Brodsky’s poems.
In its first musical, the Nature Theater of Oklahoma from New York deals with the life story of one of its company members: Kristin Worrall told her life story over the telephone and thereby provided – literally – the libretto for the piece. Moving and hilarious!
