Het TheaterFestival

What if theatre could win over death? With ‘No Yogurt for the Dead’, world famous director Tiago Rodrigues attempts to imagine his father’s last words.

In No Yogurt for the Dead, Tiago Rodrigues, artistic director at Festival d’Avignon, takes inspiration from a true story about his father. Rogério Rodrigues, a respected Portuguese journalist started writing a newspaper article in his final days in the hospital. Every day, his father would write in his notebook to prepare this text about his experiences as a terminal patient. Both Tiago and his father knew this would be his final article.

Upon his father’s passing, Tiago Rodrigues opened the notebook of his father. It contained only a few lines and dots, a few scribbles, like the abstract drawings of a toddler. Now, Rodrigues aims to imagine the unwritten pages of his father's last work. Mixing memories, songs or fragments of his father’s writings, Rodrigues builds a performance that wishes to be a small victory over death.

After Miet Warlop, Angélica Liddell, Tim Etchells, Faustin Linyekula and Milo Rau, Tiago Rodrigues is yet another celebrated director that is invited by NTGent to take part in the prestigious Histoire(s) du Théâtre series.

In his installment, each scene is a playful variation on the theme of farewell. The stage forms a surreal landscape where hospital beds glide across an icy sea, as a metaphor for life's tumult. With music and poetry as the grammar of a theatre that finds reasons for joy even in the saddest of stories.

Het TheaterFestival opent feestelijk het seizoen met de States of the Future. Een avond waarop de podiumkunstensector samenkomt, ideeën deelt en vooruitblikt op mogelijkheden binnen het veld.

De avond start om 17u30 met een welkomstwoord van Nora Mahammed (directeur van hTF), gevolgd door een speech van minister Caroline Gennez. De jury gaat dan kort in gesprek over opvallende tendensen uit het veld en tot slot volgen de twee States of the Future: twee inspirerende toespraken van stemmen uit het podiumkunstenlandschap. In 2025 worden deze speeches gegeven door Yahmani Blackman, een veelzijdige theatermaker die persoonlijke verhalen verbindt met maatschappelijke en filosofische thema’s, en Jozef Wouters, een scenograaf en theatermaker die met zijn Decoratelier op het snijvlak van ruimte, verbeelding en performance baanbrekend werk maakt dat de grenzen van theater herdefinieert.

Achteraf kan je nog even blijven op de receptie voor een drankje en een gesprek over de toespraken, powered by Sabam.

Iedereen is welkom, maar reserveren is verplicht!

Bij je reservatie kan je ervoor kiezen om te doneren aan Ashtar Theatre, een toonaangevend Palestijns theater met een wereldwijde blik. Sinds 1991 inspireert ASHTAR jongeren met intensieve theatertrainingen die niet alleen acteertalent ontwikkelen, maar ook leiderschap, communicatie en zelfvertrouwen versterken.

Via mobiele voorstellingen bereikt ASHTAR ook afgelegen gemeenschappen, zodat niemand wordt buitengesloten. Met hun unieke Forum Theatre moedigen ze actief maatschappelijk debat en verandering aan, een krachtig instrument voor democratie en betrokkenheid.

My Body as a Commodity is a sultry musical trip that explores the boundaries of fiction. Under high-energy live percussion, theatre-maker Anne-Laure Vandeputte explores the narratives in which our bodies are inscribed - consciously or unconsciously.

She meets a director who wants to talk about strong women.
She meets a man who wonders if he is in the show.
She meets a sex worker in Berlin and bombs her as her own personal jesus.

Together with musician Andrew van Ostade, Vandeputte performs a monologue-on-beats that questions and challenges the narrative about physical trauma. 

Following a major invasion in 2002, a German artist travelled to the city to create an artwork  with the kids of Jenin. They built a horse, five-metres tall, out of metal and debris from the  invasion. The horse is an Arabic symbol of freedom, so the people of Jenin placed this statue  in the centre of the city where it stood for 20 years to represent their hope and resistance. In  October 2023, an Israeli army bulldozer entered the camp and the horse was ripped from its  place and driven away. 

In this solo show, Shehada wonders what happened to the Horse of Jenin and with a  powerful mix of imagination and comedy, he builds a new horse from the fragments of his  memories and his hopes for the future.

In Haribo Kimchi bevinden we ons in een pojangmacha, een van de typische snackbars die ’s nachts te vinden zijn in de straten van Zuid-Korea. Daar ontmoeten we drie personages - een slak, een gummibeertje en een paling - die ons meenemen op een culinaire reis en voeding verkennen als toevluchtsoord voor zij die vervreemd zijn van hun cultuur. In een reeks intieme en absurdistische anekdotes vertellen ze over de evolutie van de kimchicultuur, de zure pijn van onvervalst racisme, de schaamte van proberen op te gaan in de menigte, en de diepe umamismaak van thuis.

Na zijn Hamartia Trilogy (2021), waarin het verregaande imperialisme in Oost-Azië werd onderzocht, is de Zuid-Koreaanse theatermaker en componist Jaha Koo terug met zijn nieuwste creatie. In een hybride stijl die muziek, geavanceerde video en robotperformers combineert, reflecteert de kunstenaar op culturele assimilatie met al haar conflicten en paradoxen. In een bijzondere voorstelling die met alle zintuigen speelt, serveert hij persoonlijke verhalen, gemarineerd in zoetzure melancholie.

In the beginning was the word. And the end was lost. In this concert of sentences, Manu van Kersbergen takes language as his point of departure. Language as a collective archive. Language as a key. And also: language as a tool to bend reality to your will.

In The Rediscovery of Heaven, Manu not only reinvents himself as an artist, but also his craft. Words hold value in the becoming of our world. They connect us, but often also divide us.

This Rediscovery is an intense crossover between spoken word and composition. Developed by Manu and music collective .multibeat. An experimental quest for a new language.

With this work, Manu has been nominated for the Annie M.G. Schmidt Prize. The performance has been selected by the Theatre Jury (2025).

Rena is fourteen. She expects nothing from life, nothing from herself, nothing from school. And everyone is allowed to know that. She sets the mood in class, she is loud and sassy. Until in the middle of the school year a new pupil joins the class, who disappears just as suddenly after a few months: Fatilou. Since then, something has changed in the class. Most of all for Rena.

What if your whole universe is suddenly turned upside down and you are finally truly seen? Rena tries to grasp what happened to her and, together with her class, makes a film about Fatilou, the girl who appeared and disappeared.

In deze eerste solovoorstelling wist de choreograaf het systemisch geweld dat hij zelf heeft ervaren om te zetten in krachtig en uniek performatief materiaal, ontwikkeld met behulp van de De Caelo-techniek. Deze techniek, door de artiest zelf ontwikkeld, geeft een belangrijke plaats aan emotionele intelligentie, gesitueerde kennis en improvisatie. Daarnaast maakt ze gebruik van astrologische hulpmiddelen, zoals sterrenkaarten, om te onderzoeken hoe de stand van de sterren ons iets kan vertellen over ons lichaam.

Discover a place where time is no longer in charge.
Hang your haste on a hook
and cast your cares aside until tomorrow.
Open the gates of your ears,
step into a world
of long ago, but also of today,
and listen to the rhythm and melody of stories old and new.   

People have always told each other stories. So as to understand the world and not forget, and also to impart life lessons.

Aminata Demba follows in the footsteps of the West-African storytellers – the griots. She puts herself in the shoes of a child, whose head is bursting with big and little questions. Her search for answers turns into an adventure, during which she also discovers herself. Join her on a journey to the depths of time. A journey packed with miraculous encounters with a stressed-out hippopotamus and an elephant with an itch, hospitable aunts, a love-struck billy goat and an untrustworthy crow. A musical trip, with nothing in your pocket other than a fistful of courage and a real zest for life. 

Amadou is an ode to the art of telling stories through incantatory music.     

This tale was inspired by the work of the Malian author Amadou Hampâté Bâ, who collected and wrote down the mythical, oral stories from the memory of the Fula people.  

Day in, day out, Someone has to put the same balls in the same crate, and no one actually knows why. Instead of letting the walls collapse on Someone, Someone starts throwing the balls against the walls. By making the balls travel ever further through the space, Someone tries to escape the colourless monotony. And when that works, something happens that could be called pure magic.

For Ballroom, you take a seat in a converted lorry. Inside, juggler Stijn Grupping, thanks to a lot of practice and a little magic, engages you in an incredible dance of bouncing balls. A wordless journey for daydreamers.

Five puppies frolic and play. They sniff each other, run after each other, mark their territory, all looking for their place in the pack.

In the middle lies their owner, Poppy, who is taking up an awful lot of space. It is time for Poppy to make way and let the dogs take charge...

In the energetic PUPPY/POPPY, five actors manipulate a giant puppet. Full of push-and-pull antics, this performance is about playing, group dynamics, leading and following. About giving and taking (space). A mischievous play that will challenge the young and wink at the old.

In Revolutionary Road, we are introduced to April and Frank Wheeler, as well as several of their friends and colleagues. April and Frank are a beautiful couple. Life smiles on them: a house, a garden, children, jobs… and love, so much love. They have it all. They dare to dream big and are determined to live life to the fullest. To avoid sinking into a narrow, bourgeois existence in a society where conformity has become the highest good, they come up with a radical plan: to leave everything behind and move to Paris to start anew. But reality catches up with them, and their dream is crushed. Frustrated by their shattered dream, they turn against each other, and their love turns into a nightmare.

After our exploration of Ingmar Bergman’s work with Infidèles, the 2018 performance by STAN and De Roovers, we continue to delve into the realm of human failure with Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. The novel embodies the quest for freedom and selfless love, and the immense strength and courage required to radically change one’s life. In the stage adaptation, these underlying themes will become even more pronounced. More than in Infidèles, this story not only explores relational dynamics but also has a strong social and political dimension, making it a relentless critique of the suffocating and mind-numbing nature of societal expectations. It reveals how difficult it is to escape them.

Though set in 1950s America, the story builds a clear bridge to today’s Western society. Think of the standardization of thought, the neo-liberal revolution, the "just act normal" culture in a country like the Netherlands, or the persistent fear and aversion toward "the other" in our own country. Revolutionary Road is a story about the deceit of domestic bliss, about the seeming harmony behind which a world of despair hides, about love that turns into resentment out of helplessness, about what we think and what we say, about who we want to be and who we really are, about wanting to escape everything but being unable to escape ourselves, about wanting to spark a revolution but getting lost in your own head.

Two young actors, Ivana Noa (Master's student at the Antwerp Conservatory) and Flor Van Severen (Wolf Wolf, Camping Sunset), take on the roles of April and Frank Wheeler. Jolente De Keersmaeker and Robby Cleiren play all other roles. Two generations of actors with a great love for text aim to create a huis clos in which they confront each other with Richard Yates’ razor-sharp dialogue. Something between Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and a string quartet by Dmitri Shostakovich.

Step into a world inspired by the lives of eight extraordinary women mystics from the 8th to 16th centuries—women who defied societal norms, creating their own spiritual paths beyond the church and the world such as Hildegard von Bingen, Sun Bu’er, Mirabai en Rabia al-Basra.

Through hair suspension artistry and polyphonic chants, Mystica revives their stories, blending circus and musical theater in a breathtaking ritual. With new compositions by Timo Tembuyser and Jens Bouttery, this production by MOVEDBYMATTER & Muziektheater Transparant, directed by actor and artist Kasper Vandenberghe, seeks the lost mystical energy our modern world craves.

Imagine a sci-fi world shaped by the musical genre of reggaeton, the urban dance perreo, the linguistic experience of everyday life through a limited understanding of English, and the historical connection of Central America with the export of exotic fruits. 

This is the world that Flesh can’t can’  t  not’t ‘tis flesh h… invokes, a multisensory performance that mixes live music, projection of text, dance and sculpture. Two burning bodies guide us through the landscapes of a foreign world, to explore the bittersweet ventures of the Global South-Global North migration, and to trace part of the histories found in the Central American region.

In the performance Zero Feet Away, theatre makers Tibau Beirnaert & Laurens Aneca explore the impact of hookup apps. They delve into how these apps reveal both the possibilities and the constraints of modern technology. They question whether the apps can create a new landscape of desires and challenge traditional, heteronormative structures.

The story is told from the perspective of a shapeshifter who craves sex and intimacy. To fulfill these longings the creature turns to hookup apps. Does the shapeshifter, who merely mirrors what others demand of them, eventually find their own form(s)?

60 degrees of separation is an invitation to let yourself be transported by the pleasure of the  collective. Everything and everyone moves around you. The drummer is on a rolling podium. The acrobats are in  the air, hanging on one aerial strap only. The two acrobats are holding hands and will need yours ...  Guided by the driving sound of the drums and thanks to you, being present within reach of the  action, impressive tricks will come to life. Let's explore, together, the intimacy linked to circus  movements and the joy of the collective. 6 degrees of separation is the name of the theory that says you are at most 6 handshakes away from  every other person in the world. 60 degrees is about the angle needed to lift someone off the ground if the person has one hand in  the aerial strap and one hand pulled by someone else. 60 degrees of separation is the combination of both and the name of this circus performance. 

 After the break-up with her lover, Lulu discovers a black hole in her room. It is not that big, yet it sucks everything in and then spits it out. She gets caught up in a whirlpool of memories, dreams and confusing feelings.

Yet she still has to get up. Have breakfast with her sleepy alien father. Witness the daily horror show that is supposed to represent her 'school'. Everything goes on as usual, while Lulu seems stuck in time.

In ‘INFINITY FOREVER’, Mats Vandroogenbroeck, Jonas Baeke and Maria Magdalena de Cort musically explore the sudden feeling that everything has disappeared, even though the world just keeps spinning. But Lulu can only move in the opposite direction. She sees everything flash by again and again and again: the confused look in her ex's eyes, the creation of the universe and all the words she still wanted to say to him.

Mats and Jonas, creators of the acclaimed theatre production ‘Bambiraptor’, experiment again with language and images in this new performance together with Maria Magdalena. They try to get a grip on the moment when words fail to describe a feeling that is far too big: a broken heart.

In [meeuw], for the first time, a full-length repertory play is translated and performed entirely in Flemish Sign Language (VGT) by a mixed cast of deaf and hearing actors.

The starting point is The Seagull (1896) by Anton Chekhov, one of the greatest and most tender plays in theatre history – about a youth searching for new ideas, and an older generation that feels threatened by them. A story of clinging to the past and longing for a free life; told from the perspective of three different generations. Love and desire as a destructive driving force during a family reunion. A comedy in four acts, as the Russian writer himself described it.

[meeuw] is an encounter with actors from the Flemish deaf community, whose native language is VGT. The cast is a mix of three deaf and five hearing actors: Yousra Boukantar, Sofie Decleir, Tom Dewispelaere, Lobke Leirens, Lut Reysen, Willy Thomas, Serge Vlerick, and Yana Wuytens. Together they search for a shared language: gesture.

Eight years ago, a theatre collective created a legendary sitcom, ending in an equally legendary cliffhanger. Now, the group of friends comes together once more to record a sequel to their cult hit. DE SITCOM is a schizophrenic tragicomedy wherein actors perform their own tragic lives—but as a joke. It’s also the behind-the-scenes story of the sitcom, including loves, breakups, mistrust, cautious reconnections, betrayal, and always, the hope for a happy ending after all.

Bruxelles, I Will Make You Mine is a solo theatre piece that paints a portrait of African migrants who are “legal,” yet find themselves entangled in the complexities of the Belgian bureaucracy. The play is set in the town hall (Commune) and offers an intimate glimpse into the invisible burdens these residents carry: their frustrations, their hopes, and their daily struggles.

In the Commune, administrative procedures serve as a glass wall. Offering only a fleeting glimpse of these immigrants' identities, without ever truly understanding them.

This performance delves into the stories behind the paperwork: questions of identity, the path toward Belgian citizenship, and above all, the reason why we love Brussels – this city of migrants.