1. How to start (again) and look forward?

Over the past spring, we have all learned what it feels like suddenly to have no plans, while an uncertain future demands insight, empathy and imagination. Artists offer us that – and so much more! So we at Kaaitheater join forces with them to explore (new) possibilities to breathe new life into their projects. This balancing act between risk, care and daring will enable us to reopen our doors at the end of the summer.

Nevertheless, this is not a normal season launch. Like a sequential drawing — a cadavre exquis* – the 2020–2021 Kaaitheater season will take shape gradually over the coming months. In this first phase, we are offering you a glimpse of the people and organizations that will call our theatre home: who are they? What are the questions that drive them? Ticket sales will open at the end of August, when the programme will also be more fully developed.

How eager are you to return to the theatre?

As new artistic and general coordinators, we, Agnes Quackels and Barbara Van Lindt, are eagerly looking forward. We are only at the beginning. Our motto is a question. How to be Many? A question that resounds in many places in society. Statistically, we live in a diverse society, and yet inclusion is far from a factual reality. One question that confronts us irritably and impatiently is why we have not progressed further in finding answers. This is a question that we want to tackle in our working practice over the coming years. Kaaitheater has become very successful as a venue and partner for artists who create their own unique artistic worlds. Experimentation and breaking new ground have led to innovative forms. Many of these artists now belong to the canon of the contemporary performing arts. Today, guided by this question, we also seek to scrutinize and open up the way our institution works, and foster new kinds of collaborations with more people and organizations. To work towards a theatre in which many voices are self-evident.

– AGNES QUACKELS & BARBARA VAN LINDT

*A cadavre exquis is a collaborative artistic project. The work is created gradually, with each contributor adding a new part (head-torso-legs).