A dose of hope in your emergency kit.
What happens if we don’t tidy up or hide “madness,” but instead try to understand it? During our festival, a brand-new performance will premiere, created in De Verwonderkamer – the annual residency of the Flemish-Dutch house for culture and debate, deBuren, and Explore the North, where Flemish and Northern Dutch makers get to know each other and create new work together.
This year, the participants used the book De laatste dagen van de dorpsgek by Anne Goaitske Breteler as a starting point. The village fool as outsider, mirror, barometer; someone operating at (or beyond) the edge of what is considered “normal.” Could there be something hopeful in the absurd? From September 15 to 19, 2025, new Flemish and Northern Dutch makers in Leeuwarden explored these questions. The fruits of this collaboration were, as usual, presented for the first time at our festival.
That this can lead to something extraordinary was proven last year by De herontdekking van Ella Wassenaar by Mona Thijs, Zindzi Tillot Owusu, Charlotte Westra, and Jaimy Hindriks – a performance that traveled from De Verwonderkamerto Antwerp and will be at Oerol this summer. The collective Drie Dagen Fris also emerged from a fruitful residency in Leeuwarden. And the rule still applies in 2025: De Verwonderkamer puts a dose of hope and fresh voices into your emergency kit!
