A dose of hope in your emergency kit.
What happens when we don’t clean up or hide away ‘madness,’ but instead try to understand it?
This year, a brand-new performance will once again premiere at our festival, born out of De Verwonderkamer – the annual residency by 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, participants will use the book De laatste dagen van de dorpsgek (The Last Days of the Village Fool) by Anne Goaitske Breteler as a starting point. The village fool as outsider, mirror, barometer; someone who operates at – or beyond – the edges of what’s considered ‘normal.’ Is there something hopeful to be found in the irrational? From September 15 to 19, 2025, new makers from Flanders and the Northern Netherlands will explore these questions in Leeuwarden. The fruits of this collaboration will, as is tradition, be presented for the first time at our festival.
That this process leads to something special was proven last year by De herontdekking van Ella Wassenaer (The Rediscovery of Ella Wassenaar) by Mona Thijs, Zindzi Tillot Owusu, Charlotte Westra, and Jaimy Hindriks – a performance that traveled from De Verwonderkamer to Antwerp and will appear this summer at Oerol. The collective Drie Dagen Fris also emerged from a fruitful residency in Leeuwarden.
