Barren lands and paradises
A black-tarred fisherman’s cottage with a little garden right next to a nuclear power plant on a desolate shingle beach. In that spot, filmmaker and artist Derek Jarman (1942-1994) retreated during the last years of his life. Amid stone and wind, he began working on that garden. Can you make something bloom in a place where nothing seems able to grow?
For her new performance, Sea Garden Jarman, playwright Elvis de Launay draws inspiration from Jarman’s life and diary Modern Nature, as well as from other great voices of the past – from T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land to John Milton’s Paradise Lost. On barren lands and paradises, death, life and everything in between, De Launay relates great themes through legendary predecessors and then puts his own contemporary spin on them. A promising talent that we are happy to welcome with new work that fits perfectly with our festival theme: hope!
About Elvis de Launay
Elvis de Launay is a playwright, actor and writer. In 2024 she graduated from Toneelschool Arnhem with her play Cowboy och Meisje and did internships at Maas Theater and Dance and Wunderbaum. She is part of Het Veerhuis’ talent program in 2024-2025. Her writing is personal, investigative, poetic and always informed by a wide variety of sources. Her austere staging puts all the focus on the narrative and language and creates space for the viewer’s imagination.
This performance is part of the trajectory OPROER. Oproer is a joining of forces by several production houses in the Netherlands, namely: Likeminds, Podium Bloos, Werkplaats Walhalla, Karavaan, VIA ZUID, Theater de Generator, De Nieuwe Oost, Grand Theatre, and Explore the North. Oproer is committed to creating more opportunities for starting makers. Oproer is made possible by the VriendenLoterij Fund, thanks to an extra donation from the VriendenLoterij.