Sometimes you just get that sinking feeling. What do you do when that happens? Do you jump ashore or do you go under, into the depths? In the site-specific show DREEF, chances are you will feel the ground beneath you give way. Nobody knows where you will end up. Surrendering to the unknown seems your only option.

In 2006 Schweigman& made DREEF and brought the site-specific experience to Theaterfestival Boulevard that summer. To celebrate the 15th anniversary of Schweigman& in 2018, the old favourite returns one last time. A show that undeniably belongs to the Dutch performing arts canon.

concept | regie: Boukje Schweigman
with: Toon Kuijpers, Hali Neto, Luuk Weers, Ivar Schutte and Moene Roovers
design: Menno Vinke
coproduction: BonteHond

Schweigman& is present on the 3th of August at Talk of the Town.

Attention!
DREEF plays on location in a nature reserve with water and unpaved paths. Unfortunately, it is not suitable for disabled people or people with claustrophobia. It is forbidden to photograph or film. There is no bus going to DREEF but there is the option for a 'bike to borrow'. You can get a bike at the Info stand at the Festivalsquare. For the 13.00h performances on Saturday the 11th and Sunday the 12th of August, the 'bike to borrow' can be picked up at the Backstage stand. This stand is located at the left side of Theater aan de Parade.

DREEF is located at the Zuiderplas in a very warm space that we cannot cool down. We advice you to dress appropriately. Airy clothes and perhaps a spare blouse or shirt to change into after the performance. Don't forget to bring water with you.

Having worked together for years – as part of Afslag Eindhoven and Volksoperahuis – Rogier Schippers and Martijn Crins have sharpened their knives to share some cold cuts. They are performing De Slacht Sessies [The slaughter sessions], a vaudeville-style, punky show created in collaboration with catering company De Lekkere Man [Dishy blokes] – no, honestly, it’s not a joke.

These young entrepreneurs have taken pity on the cockerel, billy-goat and bull and are saving them from a much sadder fate. Their mothers and sisters are valued for their meat, eggs and milk. But the males are born in vain. Schippers & Crins are happy to bone and skin this maltreatment of the male.

A theatre show about shame and charcuterie, man-eaters and jealousy.

This performance plays at different moments starting from 15.00u. The playing times are communicated at the entrance of the tent, where tickets can also be purchased for the performances of the same day.

concept and performance: Rogier Schippers and Martijn Crins
in collaboration with De Lekkere Man: Lizette van Dijk, Anne Reijnders, Jorn Verhoof

For his large-scale project 71BODIES 1DANCE, dancer and choreographer Daniel Mariblanca interviewed 71 transgenders across Europe. It resulted in enough fascinating material to create a three-part work: a dance performance; an exhibition featuring brief texts written by the people he interviewed; and the installation Black Little Boxes. Inside five little black boxes, he is playing a series of short films that also depart from these interviews.

For his large-scale project 71BODIES 1DANCE, dancer and choreographer Daniel Mariblanca interviewed 71 transgenders across Europe. It resulted in enough fascinating material to create a three-part work: a dance performance; an exhibition featuring brief texts written by the people he interviewed; and the installation Black Little Boxes. Inside five little black boxes, he is playing a series of short films that also depart from these interviews.

The festival square is the place where desires are met. A hunger for theatre and music. A craving for food and drink. A longing to meet someone. An urge to see. Or to be seen. The bustling square is a feast for all the senses. Especially in 2018.

Commissioned by Boulevard, the celebrated scenographer Theun Mosk [1980] has designed three ample installations/objects. Their name: Block Box. With these striking objects – which will also feature in 2019 and 2020 – Boulevard emphasises the weight art carries in the square: this is a place for the imagination. And for each of the spaces, a renowned theatre maker is creating a brief performance. Buy a single ticket from the central Block Box box office, or get yourself a passe-partout. 

from 13.00u till 14.00u free entrance

The Block Box is made possible thanks to a contribution from Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds.

Block Box - Pink Cube 

Waldeinsamkeit | Benjamin Verdonck, Lucas van Haesbroeck

From a room to a black hole to an overripe piece of fruit. The Flemish theatre maker Benjamin Verdonck [1972] takes the strange leap inside his Wunderkammer, a baroque miniature in pale colours, with hatches that open and close, with light and darkness and lots and lots of cords to pull.

What about the title? Waldeinsamkeit is usually translated as ‘a deep sense of connection that one feels when alone in the woods.’ But it also refers to feeling unsafe inside a dark and unpredictable space. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

concept | uitvoering: Benjamin Verdonck en Lucas van Haesbroeck
productie: Toneelhuis, Theaterfestival Boulevard

Block Box - Yellow Prism 

Solaris | Alexandra Broeder, Willemijn Zevenhuijzen

Atlantis, Shangri-La, Arcadia. But also Utopia, The Garden of Eden, Land of Plenty: there are many dream worlds besides everyday reality. Solaris is one such parallel universe. To get there, you have to step through a doorway. That’s right, that one, there. Away from the hustle and bustle in the square. Those who enter the space will connect their subconscious with the mysterious parallel reality that answers to the name Solaris. An intimate installation by theatre makers Alexandra Broeder and Willemijn Zevenhuijzen, both repeat offenders when it comes to creating confusion.

Block Box - Black Hempishere

IN CASE | United Cowboys

Dancers, bodies. Inside a closed space. Nothing scary or bad about that. Nothing to dismiss beforehand. It is a world that makes up its own rules in order to survive. A biosphere teeming with precise and close manoeuvres.

For twenty-five years United Cowboys has been an international company of pioneers. IN CASE sees its dancers/performers feeling out the space and each other. In silences, breaths, body heat and sweat. Condensation starts to form on the walls, blurring the view. Hands wipe, fingers draw. IN CASE is a moving performance, in which primary, animal actions go hand in hand with a search for classic beauty.

Suddenly they are here, among the audience. They catch, fall and stumble, roll, skid and bounce across the space. In the Midst of Everything is a game of acrobatics for two dancers. The100Hands like to play with physical boundaries.

Take a look here for the other performance, their intriguing 25Feet.

Pulsstudie features a pianist who improvises to the cardiac rhythms of the Flemish performers Mardulier & Deprez. If necessary, a home-trainer ensures the beats per minute can rise. The creators intend to bring a moment of peace to the bustling Boulevard. A brave plan.

piano: Guus van Marwijk (2nd and 3th of August), Ruben Den Brok (4th and 5th of August)

In 2017 they caught Boulevard audiences’ attention with their prairie wagon tent, carnival mirrors and philosophical/musical fairytale Stick in a field. This summer, singer/guitarist Jeroen Mesker of rootsband Maison du Malheur and actress Shanti Straub [1982] will be embracing symphonic drama.

DAAR DOOR is a brief and refreshing music theatre show about wandering without taking shortcuts. Joining them on their romp and ramble is performance artist Djuna Couvee [1990].

This performance plays at different moments starting from 14.00u. The playing times are communicated at the entrance of the tent, where tickets can also be purchased for the performances of the same day.

performance | music: Shanti Straub, Jeroen Mesker, Djuna Couvee

Wholesale panic broke out on the eve of Halloween 1938, when millions of Americans listening to their radios heard that Martians had declared war on us. As it turned out, it was only a radio play, The War of the Worlds. To this day, mass confusion is rife – from gluten scare to angry mums against vaccinations. Buik [Gut] is a comedy about gut feelings. A live radio show, whose host and guests will suck you into the emotional typhoon they create. 

This performance plays at different moments starting from 14.00u. The playing times are communicated at the entrance of the tent, where tickets can also be purchased for the performances of the same day.

regie: Ilse Schaminée
performance: Wouter van Elderen and Anne Fé de Boer
text: Daan Windhorst

For her audio performance BLOOS, theatre maker Marte Boneschansker [1989] has interviewed women and girls about intimacy and sensuality. Lying on a single bed you listen to one of them. Every bed tells a different story. About melting an ice cube on your breast. About that sensation you get when you stick your hand into a bag of rice. About picking someone up and being picked up. About longing for something. BLOOS [Blush] is visceral, sensual, open and unashamed.

This performance plays at different moments starting from 14.00u. The playing times are communicated at the entrance of the tent, where tickets can also be purchased for the performances of the same day.

concept: Marte Boneschansker
scenography: Geartsje van der Zee
performance: Marte Boneschansker, Geartsje van der Zee, Hannegijs Jonker, Nina-Elisa Euson
music: Matthìas Sigurðsson
sound design: Dennis Slot
mixage: Arno Peeters
artistic advice: Katharina Smets, Willem de Wolf
coupeuse: Syl van Duyn
promotion images: Martin Sweers
producer: Marte Boneschansker and Het Huis Utrecht
Partly made possible by Fonds Podiumkunsten, BNG Cultuurfonds, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds.

TeaTime Company is an international trio consisting of a juggler, a Chinese Pole-artist and a dancer. In Stick-Stok, each works with a stick of their own. But they differ in length, and background, and gender and body type. Is any of that an advantage? A disadvantage? Using their sticks they create a fascinating universe where challenges morph into encounters.

While Jip may love carrots one day, the next day they could be the grossest thing ever. Yesterday he declared a ban on potatoes. Tomorrow it may be rice that’s a no-go. And – eeeeeew – what are those green bits in the sauce? Yelling, screaming, plates full of gravy-soaked goo flying through the air.

At night, Jip dreams of the tastiest things. Rapping roti, a peppery pumpkin, prancing pancakes and singing strawberries. And of his mum and dad who, if they don’t start acting normal very soon, will end up in the meat mincer.

Eet je bord leeg [Finish your plate] is a bittersweet comedy with peas cooked to a pulp, limp lettuce and spit-inducing spaghetti.

concept | regie: Paul Knieriem
performance: Denise Aznam, Ian Bok, Anil Jagdewsing

According to The Royal Society’s website, 3.3 seconds is the ideal amount of time to look a person in the eyes. Anything less would come across as disinterest or evasiveness. Anything more can make the other person uncomfortable. But what do you see?

facing faces is a fascinating installation that places two visitors across from each other. When they are seated, Rita Hoofwijk presents them with a revolving series of portraits. Each of the faces has been given a title that reveals how this person is to be seen. And even though the description remains incomplete, it is enough to colour our perception. The work of Rita Hoofwijk [1994] often explores ‘the encounter’: the temporary relationship between audience and performer or between different audience members.

This performance plays continuously from 14.30u till 15.30u and from 17.30u till 21.30u. The playing times are also communicated at the entrance of the tent, where tickets can be purchased for the performances of the same day.
   

concept & implementation: Rita Hoofwijk
design: Milan Meeuse
technique: Atelier Provinciaal Domein Dommelhof
graphic design: Studio Noto
photography: Vivian Keulards
production: Stichting SoAP
coproduction: VIA ZUID and Festival Cement
created with the support of Stichting Brand Cultuurfonds Limburg  

Following on from his intimate show Een hertje, beschadigd Florian Myjer [1992] now presents a solo: Oliver. It is a personal portrait of a father and son who are both trying to find fulfilment in life. What is the best way to raise a child? When is a life a success? And is there any room for refinement left in this world?

In 2017 Florian graduated from the Maastricht Institute of Performative Arts with the much-praised piece Bloomsbury. He has also performed with Oostpool, Theater Artemis and De Warme Winkel. His show Regina Rex – made with Yela de Koning – has been nominated for the 2018 BNG Bank Prize for new theatre makers.

This performance plays at different moments starting from 15.00u. The playing times are communicated at the entrance of the tent, where tickets can also be purchased for the performances of the same day.

text | concept | performance: Florian Myjer
accompaniment: Ward Weemhoff
coproduction: De Warme Winkel and Frascati Producties

Blindfold Geert Hautekiet [1968] with a damp dishcloth around his Flemish face and tell him to walk from Antwerp to Boulevard. He’ll find his way, hands down! The famous natural storyteller and singer has been at home at the festival since 2004. His own favourite narrative is Palm!: a hilarious story about a Sunday breakfast at home with farmer Mathias and his large family. Pull up a chair to their sumptuous feast and enjoy the richness of the Antwerp language. A unique way of reliving the day that would go down in history as Palm Sunday.

Hautekiet and Compagnie KAiET! brought their crazy chaos to earlier editions of our festival, with shows like Gotf!, Tour de Force and De Vieze Veroltjes.

This performance plays at different moments starting from 15.00u. The playing times are communicated at the entrance of the tent, where tickets can also be purchased for the performances of the same day.

text and performance: Geert Hautekiet

Hiphop-choreographer Alida Dors [1977] has taken up the gauntlet to give her own interpretation of the legendary dance show Bronsttijd [1996]. Danstheater AYA made a name for itself with this choreography by Wies Bloemen.

Bronsttijd deals with sexual development and falling in love and the jumble of extreme emotions they bring. These are an inevitable part of growing from adolescence to adulthood. On the one hand: butterflies in your stomach and pleasure. On the other: confusion and the struggle with insecurity.

Alida Dors has made a scintillating duet that sees dancers Rosanne Bakker and Jason Winter duel their own conflicting emotions. Intensity to the max in this hard-hitting dance show.

This performance plays at different moments starting from 15.00u. The playing times are communicated at the entrance of the tent, where tickets can also be purchased for the performances of the same day.

made from the idea of Wies Bloemen
choreography: Alida Dors
dance: Rosanne Bakker and Jason Winter

Stand-up comedian and singer Nina de la Parra [1987] is the daughter of a Surinamese father [Pim] and a Dutch mother [Djoeke]. She has the look of a bakra, a white person, but her adventures in Suriname are fiercer than a Madame Jeanette pepper.

For Boulevard she has distilled two programmes from her comedy-concert Thou shalt love thy self. Gods wegen [God moves] is about the Christian classes she attended in Paramaribo, the worst jokes about Jews, the authoritative correctness of Germans and her experiences at one hour-hotels in Suriname. Vaginabrain is a largely English-language string of obscenities about the double sexual standards in Western Europe and life on an organic zen-farm. Nina alternates her nefarious narratives with songs in English. And she brings a German hipster house band!

This performance plays at different moments starting from 15.00u. The playing times are communicated at the entrance of the tent, where tickets can also be purchased for the performances of the same day.

text | composition | keys | vocals: Nina de la Parra
contrabas | background | vocals: Moritz Götzen
guitar | synthesizer | background vocals: Tim Bücher
coach: Titus Muizelaar

He is sitting in a crummy dressing room, his own decrepit state reflecting that of his surroundings. Finding comfort in the bottle – and discomfort in the dressing room mirror: with every sip he becomes more of a stranger to himself. He is a vaudeville artist. Creating illusions has always been second nature. But time has been creeping up on him. His insecurity is mounting. And what’s worse, his memory is fading. Slowly, slowly he begins to lose his grip on reality.

The wordless AF deals with the fear of entering the stage, and of exiting it. A hilarious, ingenious theatre show that aptly illustrates the old saying that there are two sides to every story.

This performance plays at different moments starting from 15.00u. The playing times are communicated at the entrance of the tent, where tickets can also be purchased for the performances of the same day.

regie | concept: Vincent de Rooij, Daan Mathot
performance: Daan Mathot, Vincent de Rooij, Roel Goudsmit

Saying goodbye. Turning your back on home, family and friends. Things are not safe, so you have to flee. Will the generations to come regard your story as their history? Three young Dutch women whose ancestors came here from different corners of the world, are getting their hands on Tom Waits’ goodbye-music, interweaving the songs with their family histories. Hold On is a piece of music theatre that deals with women, saying goodbye, and loss – here and beyond the horizon.

This performance plays at different moments starting from 15.00u. The playing times are communicated at the entrance of the tent, where tickets can also be purchased for the performances of the same day.

music | vocals | performance: Esther Lindenbergh, Ruth Sahertian and Aarti Prins
regie: Sytske van der Ster
text: Jade Olieberg

Shake Shake Shake: first edition by the Utrechtbased dance company De Dansers is a real treat for those who like to [let their thoughts] run wild. An exciting live concert slowlyturns into a highly physical dance show. Extravagant? That would be too much of a euphemism: the dancers present acrobatic partner work, they fly across instruments and refuse to budge for walls. It turns Shake Shake Shake: first edition into a sublime and sublimated form of jungle gym: instinctive and energetic, and certainly not for sissies.

This performance plays at different moments starting from 15.00u. The playing times are communicated at the entrance of the tent, where tickets can also be purchased for the performances of the same day.

concept: Guy Corneille and Josephine van Rheenen
choreography: Josephine van Rheenen
dance | music: Ruben van Asselt, Guy Corneille, Yoko Ono Haveman, Marie Khatib-Shahidi, Wannes De Porre, Hans Vermunt

Papa Was A Rolling Stone is a theatre concert around The Temptations’ eponymous classic. In this musical road trip text and music alternate and people play leapfrog with their memories. A daughter’s search for a father who never really did become a rolling stone. Dorien van Gent graduated from the Amsterdam Academy of Drama and Contemporary Music Theatre in 2015. At the graduation festival ITs that year, she won both the Parade Parel prize and the Public’s Choice prize for her show Brieven aan Wolf.

This performance plays at different moments starting from 15.00u. The playing times are communicated at the entrance of the tent, where tickets can also be purchased for the performances of the same day.

text | concept | performance: Dorien van Gent
music: Milan Breukers, Frank van Kasteren, Ivo Schot, Dorien van Gent

Is Big Bear a Zodiac sign, an oversized honey-crazed mammal or a tattered cuddly toy, loved to bits? Miet Warlop [1978] has been vexed by the concrete nature of such questions for as long as she can remember. Cast-iron certainties are another pet peeve. In their stead, the Flemish theatre maker and visual artist would much rather shake our observations. She is internationally renowned for her original visuals, eccentric dramaturgy and absurdist sense of humour.

Big Bears Cry Too features floating objects, a breathtaking landing and colourful explosions. A feast for the eyes, thanks to Miet’s mountainous imagination. Boulevard’s programmers have had a soft spot for Miet’s work for years. Finally you can see it here.

Dutch premiere

Children under six years old are not allowed | heavy light- and soundeffects.

concept | regie: Miet Warlop
performer: Christian Bakalov
coproductie: Vooruit Gent, Gessnerallee, TJHP Centre Dramatique National Strasbourg, AUAWIRLEBEN Theaterfestival Bern

This performance can be booked in combination with NTGent | Milo Rau – Compassie. De geschiedenis van het machinegeweer for Friday 3 August. Select one of these two performances and the combiticket option is offered.

In Spain a cantina is a place near the train station where you can have a quick drink or snack, comment on the news and curse your boss. In Italy it is a chilly cellar where you keep your wine and other things to titillate your taste buds. In the Netherlands a ‘kantine’ is an often bleakly furnished room with long tables and lukewarm fried snacks. In Mexico? A place with plastic chairs, colourful walls and sun-bleached parasols where you get drunk, engage in hot debates, and if need be, end up fighting each other.

Cantina by the Antwerp theatre company Laika is all these things balled into one. A place where actors and singers will transport you. Where they serve simmering desires, hot peppered secrets and plain truths. But most of all a place that serves surprisingly delicious dishes. Hungry? Laika satisfies with sensory, elegant and imaginative theatre. Share the canned dreams & good food!

Dutch premiere

from and with: Abigail Abraham, Peter De Bie, Marjan De Schutter, Marlies Jacques, Leentje Kerremans, Alain Rinckhout, Jo Roets, Pieter Smet, Michiel Soete, Rik Van Gysegem, Anton Van Haver, Michiel Van Opstal, Mieke Versyp and seven Bosschenaren
coproduction: Valletta 2018, Culturele Hoofdstad van Europa

Performance related to 'Den Bosch Celebrates Food'
Made possible by 'Algemene Afvaardiging van de Vlaamse Regering in Nederland'

This performance can be booked in combination with Julie Cafmeyer - Is this porn? No, this is love. for Thursday 2 August. Select one of these two performances and the combiticket option is offered.

In 2015 inland shipping ceased on the Zuid-Willemsvaart in ’s-Hertogenbosch. But the three bridge master’s cabins on the canal became residences for artists. Every day during Boulevard, Stan Gonera and Floor Snels will be going live on Radio Brugwachter. Talking to theatre makers, waterway specialists and audience members. Added humidity is available at the Brugwachtersborrel, daily drinks start at 5 PM. Join us at Sluis 0!

You can listen daily to the radio program as a podcast! Did you miss a bit or a full broadcast? Listen back here.

radio makers: Stan Gonera en Floor Snels
culture department: Maartje Vos-Swinkels
production: Imke van Dillen
daily new podcast at www.radiobrugwachter.nl

Society is built upon facts, selfies and statistics. But also on alternative facts, posttruth and gaslighting. Which observations can be trusted? It’s tricky. But don’t fret, Anna is here to comfort you. Playwright Anna van der Kruis welcomes you to her open-air living room, every day of the festival between 6.00 and 10.00 PM. She will listen. To what you saw, heard and felt when you saw show X or attended concert Y. Were your first impressions right? Or did it take a closer look? A talk with Anna is sure to bring some unexpected insights.

talk: Anna van der Kruis
produced by and developed in coproduction with Theaterfestival Boulevard

At first glance, it would seem that PARKA, based on the play Kale Bomen Ruisen Niet by Magne van den Berg, is about nothing at all. There’s no resolve, no build-up of tension. And yet, there are references here and there, indications that make you suspect the conversation in this tragicomedy is a matter of life and death. One thing that’s for sure: some serious stuff has gone down in the past of these two chatterboxes. Rie [Lotte de Krom] for instance, was left by a guy called Danny. “Good thing that he left,” Jos [Rebecca Schoolmeesters] says, “because if he hadn’t, he’d have smashed her skull.” An observation Rie subscribes to. Like-mindedness abounds, but listen carefully, there’s a rustle of confrontation.

Images of drowned people, washed ashore on Mediterranean beaches. Of victims of civil war. Of disease in Central Africa. They are an unremitting presence on our Facebook timelines, on TV, and in the press. We place a crying smiley beneath a picture of one catastrophe, while we flick past another. A third stays etched into our minds and a fourth sets a relief convoy in motion.

Theatre maker Milo Rau [Bern, 1977] refuses to turn a blind eye. Travelling to hotbeds in the Middle East and Congo he has talked to relief workers, priests and war victims. It led to his incisive play Compassie. De geschiedenis van het machinegeweer. Actresses Els Dottermans [B] and Olga Mouak [F] take their audience to the limits. Of the country. Of compassion. Of discomfort.

Milo Rau, the brand new artistic director of NTGent, is no stranger to disconcerting an audience. He did it in Five Easy Pieces, which showed seven children and one grownup reconstruct the life of Marc Dutroux. In the highly relevant double monologue Compassie. De geschiedenis van het machinegeweer Rau once again proves his work has the force of a hammer. He wields it with care. Dealing blows so lovingly they hurt.

Dutch premiere | new adaption of the production that Milo Rau made for Schaubühne Berlin in 2016.

Played in Dutch and French, with Dutch surtitles.

Article Knack 25-07 (Dutch)

regie: Milo Rau
performance: Els Dottermans and Olga Mouak

This performance can be booked in combination with hetpaleis | Miet Warlop – Big Bears Cry Too for Friday 3 August. Select one of these two performances and the combiticket option is offered.

For forty years Kamagurka – aka Luc Zeebroek [1956] – has been commenting on human failings in his absurdist cartoons, drawings and stories. Not only is he the author of the unflappable Bert Vanderslagmulders and his little dog Bobje, he is also the screenwriter for Cowboy Henk, the absolutely bonkers cartoon drawn by his West-Flemish soulmate Herr Seele.

In Voorbij de grenzen van de ernst Kamagurka reads and performs from his work, new and existing. Three things all the excerpts have in common: absurdism, razorsharp humour and slapstick. Kama’s first order of the evening is some real interaction with his audience: improvisation! Is Kamagurka still alive and kicking? You bet he is. Even though he sobbed “It is spleen, plain and clean, that is making me unseen”, three decades ago, he is still kicking asses, three pallets of Kleenex down the road.

The show ties in with the Kamagurka retrospective at the Noordbrabants Museum that runs from 28 July – 28 October 2018.

concept and performance: Kamagurka

For forty years Kamagurka – aka Luc Zeebroek [1956] – has been commenting on human failings in his absurdist cartoons, drawings and stories. Not only is he the author of the unflappable Bert Vanderslagmulders and his little dog Bobje, he is also the screenwriter for Cowboy Henk, the absolutely bonkers cartoon drawn by his West-Flemish soulmate Herr Seele.

In Voorbij de grenzen van de ernst Kamagurka reads and performs from his work, new and existing. Three things all the excerpts have in common: absurdism, razorsharp humour and slapstick. Kama’s first order of the evening is some real interaction with his audience: improvisation! Is Kamagurka still alive and kicking? You bet he is. Even though he sobbed “It is spleen, plain and clean, that is making me unseen”, three decades ago, he is still kicking asses, three pallets of Kleenex down the road.

The show ties in with the Kamagurka retrospective at the Noordbrabants Museum that runs from 28 July – 28 October 2018.

concept and performance: Kamagurka

If you use the sign language interpreter, please announce your arrival via: toegankelijkheid@festivalboulevard.nl
Then we reserve a place for you.

Until recently, the world’s deepest abyss was in Croatia: 506 meters straight down. But the abyss in this play is even more dizzying. And on the precipice are two lovers. She is on one side, he is on the other. Not a bridge in sight.

After De Therapie and Bombastische Liefdesverklaring, theatre maker Julie Cafmeyer [1987] is once again probing the fathomless deep that is love. In Is this porn? No, this is love she lies down on the sofa night after night. Every night there’s a different male lead alongside her, with whom she discusses how their once tempestuous affair has run aground. A show full of wry laughter, sinister light-heartedness and amusing tragedy.

concept | performance: Julie Cafmeyer
dance: Timo Sterkcx, Chloé Geers, Valentine Galeyn, Jade Derudder
coproduction: CAMPO, De Brakke Grond & Toneelschuur Producties

This performance can be booked in combination with Laika – Cantina for Thursday 2 August. Select one of these two performances and the combiticket option is offered.

In addition to the graduation performances, there are short presentations every day at 8.30 pm of the courses (classical) music theater, dance, music education, theater and Master of Music in the attic of Muzerije.

Liesanne van Dongen | 2 aug 20.30u
Annabel van Casteren | 3 aug 20.30u
Santiago Basante Arias | 4 aug 20.30u
Jop Schellekens en Reggy van Bakel | 5 aug 20.30u
Emily La Haye | 6 aug 20.30u
Svenja Gabler | 7 aug 20.30u
Marlies Bloemen | 8 aug 20.30u | 9 aug 20.30u
Robin en Dylan | 10 aug 20.30u
Santiago Basante Arias | 11 aug 20.30u

Exhibition

Also be welcome at the continuous exhibition of the Academy for Visual Arts and ArtCoDe programs.
Rob Smulders, Janneke Verhoeven, Jolijn van den Heuvel, Matthias Gigengack, Marinus Dekkers | Thursday 2 till Saturday 11 aug | Muzerije

In the dance solo Siberia – a choreography by Maria Sartzetaki – Suzan Stouthart explores the frozen no man’s land where her body is trapped. Inner dream worlds lurk to one side, the keen sharpness of the here and now to the other. They pin her down inside her own Siberia. Lonely, or a state to be shared? The latter, she hopes. A call to togetherness by Sartzetaki and Stouthart, using physical extremes, sounds from far away and a flashlight. An autonomous project that can land on different planets.

Unannounced, a young country singer-with-guitar stepped onto a crate during Boulevard 2015. Stunning vocals, swooning audiences. It was Pete Buijs, here on holiday from Chicago. Long live traditions: every night at 10 PM, a different singer-songwriter will be giving a [free] show beneath the chestnut tress outside LOF restaurant.

After you, madam, sir: at the Josephkwartier we close every day with a homemade starlit concert. Theatre makers, musicians, technicians and staff working at Boulevard 2018 are making a noise. From 11.00 PM these heroes and heroines will be singing, playing and generally amazing you in the courtyard. Admission free.

Komodo from Utrecht writes catchy and very danceable songs. Psychedelic rock-’n-roll with a shot of desert blues, some surf rock, sixties pop, hiphop, rumba and Indian raga. And Komodo is also famed for its non-western rhythms. Chase that Komodo dragon.

From Friday 3 till Sunday 12 August, two Dutch actors with the most pleasant reading voices - Marlies Heuer [1952] and Roeland Fernhout [1972] - will be reading prose and poetry to you. The texts have been selected because they have all served as inspiration to the artists at Boulevard 2018.

During every session, from 1.30-2.00 PM, you can listen to the literary preferences of a different director or choreographer. Swiss theatre maker Milo Rau’s favourite book. The poem his Flemish colleague Benjamin Verdonck can recite by heart. Or Boukje Schweigman’s most beloved novella. Admission is free! Order some lunch, if you like, have a seat at the table and listen.

in collaboration with bookstore Adr. Heinen

Six acrobats play with whatever is available around them. The amazing Bal Trap show demonstrates how individuals with widely different personalities can be an unbreakable team.

Location: Festivalplein | vlonder

In 2009, choreographer and visual artist Dario Tortorelli [1977] created the mysterious Romeo Heart. He found his inspiration in the ambient music of Polmo Polpo, a pseudonym of the Canadian musician Sandro Perri. Nine years later, the question on everybody’s lips is: how has Romeo Heart been doing, the dark character who used to dance light duets?

In TRANSMOTION, subtitled Post studies for Romeo Heart, Dario Tortorelli is challenging his creation to come back and explain himself. Hypnotic, repetitive and poetic. The music is composed by Thierry Castel, keyboard player of Conny Janssen Danst.

concept | dance: Dario Tortorelli
music: Thierry Castel

Make your own self-cut stamp. And get started with various colors of ink. Make the most beautiful prints of your impressions. Het Ink Atelier guides you and has clever tips and tricks. You take the stamp home, as well as your work. Moreover, you can leave a trail of stamps on the big paper in the Josephkwartier. Suitable for everyone, but from 6 years old you can make your own stamp.

Circus artist Clara Cortes and dancer Martina Gunkel are moving inside a metal structure. In the slightly absurdist It is there. Around the corner, the audience performs a starring role, alongside an electric kettle and a radio.

We should think about death – not dread it. A position, expressed by Lotte van den Berg, [1975] that exudes courage. In Dying Together she studies questions around intimacy and dying together. And she isn’t doing it all by herself, but invites her audience to join in. Take a look around and you will find plenty of research material. Suicide missions on the streets, outbreaks of bird flu, the attack on flight MH17 and elderly couples calmly facing the end together.

Departing from real-life situations like these, Lotte van den Berg invites you to join in a physically executed mental exercise. The people involved, the dying, the next of kin, bystanders and spectators: in different constellations she brings them face to face.

Dying Together premieres in Rotterdam in October. Rehearsals will be held this summer in ’s-Hertogenbosch, and visitors to the festival can attend a preview. During the past three editions of Boulevard, Lotte had people talking in Building Conversation, a research into conversational techniques.

English spoken, no seating available.

regie | performance | concept: Lotte van den Berg
regie-assistant: Salome Mooij
performance: Gerindo Kamid Kartadinata, Justyna Wielgus, Matteo Bifulco, Lukas von der Lühe
composition: Polly Lapkovskaya
lightdesign: Vinny Jones
scenography: Breg Horemans
dramaturgy: Tobias Staab
performance | concept: Floor van Leeuwen
production: Third Space
coproduction: Theater Rotterdam, Schauspielhaus Bochum, Festival BLVRD, Vooruit, BUDA, SoAP, BIT Teatergarasjen, Nanterre-Amandiers 
Partly made possible by Fonds Podiumkunsten, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, VSBFonds, Ammodo Fonds and Fonds21. 

The play Niet Meer Zonder Jou (No longer without you), performed at Holland Festival 2015, saw Nazmiye Oral [1969] literally fighting her mother. She, the actress and sharp-tongued columnist, in high heels. Her mother, the religious woman from the East of the country, in headscarf. Arguing about sexuality, family and shame. Nazmiye proved that art, society and current affairs are inextricably tied up. And that is exactly what it’s about in the Gesprek van de dag (Talk of the Town). Every day Nazmiye Oral will have a lively conversation at the Josephkwartier that underlines the undeniable connection between the festival and society. She will be receiving artists, experts and visitors to the festival. With her warm line of questioning Nazmiye is an icebreaker. More importantly, she will not be satisfied with easy answers and invites her audience to share their thoughts. 

interviews | conversation: Nazmiye Oral

Dancer and choreographer Daniel Mariblanca made big waves at Boulevard 2017 with his uncompromising solo WOMAN, in which he showed us how his male and female sides bleed into each other. For some years now Daniel, who is a transman, has been searching for bodies whose relationship with sex and gender is less than obvious. To phrase the difference succinctly: sex is about biology, gender about how you feel and express yourself.

In Norway, Sweden, Spain, Denmark and Italy, Daniel found 71 transgenders. 71BODIES 1DANCE is a multifaceted project – dance, film, photography – inspired by their personal stories and experiences. Poetic, probing and of great social and political significance. In October the project premieres in Bergen, at OktoberDans Festival; you can see a preview at Boulevard.

concept | choreography | performance: Daniel Mariblanca
video: Ursula Kaufmann
photography: Mar C Llop
music: Miriam Casal
artistic assistance: Amanda Billberg
producer and tourmanager: Camilla Svingen
coproduction: NorrlandsOperan Sweden, Carte Blanche Norway, Bit-Teatergarasjen Norway and BORA BORA Danmark
financial support: Art Council Norway, Norwegian Arts Abroad (NAA), Fund for Sound and Picture
There is an after-talk following the performance on Friday the 3rd till Sunday the 5th of August at 5.15 pm and 8.00pm with Daniel Mariblanca. 

Prepare to have your senses set ablaze. The Way You Sound Tonight is a hallucinatory dance performance that sets everything circling, flying and echoing. The five performers whirl around like all the sounds and all their myriad vibrations, while the audience discovers the many angles of the echo.

Uniquely original choreographer Arno Schuitemaker has turned to Metamorphoses III for inspiration, the book in which Ovid took down the adventures of Echo, chattiest among the nymphs. The Way You Sound Tonight appears to take place inside an acoustic ballroom, which serves to strengthen the magic of the changes. Distance turns to closeness in an instant. Sound and dimension play a game of tag with your eyes and ears. Irregularity rules, resulting in tangible contrasts. Arno Schuitemaker is stretching the experience of being inside an auditorium.

Schuitemaker came to Theaterfestival Boulevard before. With this high-energy show he is venturing onto the main stage.

The show will premiere during Holland Festival 2018.

choreografy: Arno Schuitemaker
music composition: Aart Strootman
coproduction: SHARP | ArnoSchuitemaker, Holland Festival, Théâtre National de Chaillot, DansBrabant and Le Pacifique Centrede Développement Chorégraphique National Grenoble

Arno Schuitemaker is present on the 5th of August at Talk of the Town.

This performance can be booked in combination with Siamese Cie | Koen Augustijnen & Rosalba Torres Guerrero – (B) for Sunday 5 August. Select one of these two performances and the combiticket option is offered.

They crack their knuckles and put on their boxing gloves. They can smell their opponent’s weakness. There’s the sound of the bell. The audience is roaring: they are ready for a beastly fight. But there is softness too, inside the boxing ring. Erotic duets, towels waving in the wings, a living Pietà. In the high-energy piece [B], the culture clash between three boxers and seven contemporary dancers merges into a single, fascinating movement idiom: that of the survivor. Koen Augustijnen [1967], formerly the choreographer for Les Ballets C de la B, and Rosalba Torres Guerrero [1974] dole out a set of mindboggling uppercuts: dance to the death, slapstick scenes, video projections and powerful music – from classical and live human beatboxing to Eye Of The Tiger. Do we want more [B]? Do we? There you go, it’s a knock-out.

Dutch premiere

concept | choreografy: Koen Augustijnen Rosalba Torres Guerrero
dancers | boxers: Arturo Franc Vargas, Giulia Piana, Tayeb Benamara, Sophia Rodriguez, Karim Kalonji, Mohammed Smahneh, Yipoon Chiem, Alka Matewa, Samuel Koussedoh en Sinan Durmaz
coproduction: Charleroi Danse, Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Théâtre La Vilette Paris, La Comédie de Clermont-Ferrand, La Rose des Vents Villeneuve d’Ascq, Le Manège Maubeuge, Victoria Deluxe Gent, Torino Danza, Kunstencentrum Vooruit, De Grote Post Oostende, A.M. Qattan Foundation, Action Zoo Humain

Siamese Cie / Koen Augustijnen / Rosalba Torres Guero are present on the 4th of August at Talk of the Town.

This performance can be booked in combination with Arno Schuitemaker – The Way You Sound Tonight for Sunday 5 August. Select one of these two performances and the combiticket option is offered.

Saturday night family bliss. Kids in pyjamas, pleased as Punch with a bowl of salty snacks, colourful glitter explosions on the telly. Welcome to the Seventies, when cosy talkshows were THE topic of conversation at the office or in school on Monday morning.

With TALK SHOW, theatre maker Suze Milius [1986], who is fascinated with melancholy, has forged a marriage between emotional interviews and weird dances and between absolutely crazy scenography and showtunes created live.

Suze, once an anthropology student, likes to study human behaviour. TALK SHOW reveals how we – in our ongoing struggle with time – have a tendency to attach value to everything. And TALK SHOW is also an ode to the lives you could have led. Absurd humour and stylised aesthetics, made with Het Zuidelijk Toneel.

concept | regie: Suze Milius
text contribution: Magne van den Berg
performance: Janneke Remmers, Nora Ramakers, Stefan Jakiela, Lisa Verbelen, Kasper Vandenberghe
music: Hendrik Lasure

She’s got a flair for flirting, lighting your cigarette and making sure your drink never runs out. “Welcome to the Kyabakura bar,” she says. She’ll have an intelligent conversation with you and all the stresses of the working day will simply dissipate. Placing a hand on your arm she calms your ego and confirms your masculinity. You’re poised to fall in love with her. But what this kyabajõ is hiding behind her façade, you just don’t know. Not yet.

The Japanese-Korean performer Jija Sohn [Kyoto, 1982] seduces her audience in a game of oppression, power and liberation. From 2005 to 2008 Sohn herself was a kyabajo in a Tokyo bar.

concept | performance: Jija Sohn
production: Dansmakers Amsterdam
coproduction: Podium Bloos, Theaterfestival Boulevard and DansBrabant through PLAN Talentontwikkeling Brabant
There is an after-talk following the performance on 4th of August at 9.30 pm with Jija Sohn.

This performance can be booked in combination with Johan Simons | Elsie de Brauw | Erwin Mortier – Verboden gebied: Vrouw in Niemandsland for Saturday 4 August. Select one of these two performances and the combiticket option is offered.

Unannounced, a young country singer-with-guitar stepped onto a crate during Boulevard 2015. Stunning vocals, swooning audiences. It was Pete Buijs, here on holiday from Chicago. Long live traditions: every night at 10 PM, a different singer-songwriter will be giving a [free] show beneath the chestnut tress outside LOF restaurant.

Seeing NOS-reporter Martijn van der Zande from close up? Boulevard makes it possible. In four late nights the amiable Bosschenaar is celebrating the fifth anniversary of his TLKSHW, with actors, musicians and other high-profiles as his guests. The one thing that connects them all is Boulevard. There will be wellknown sidekicks to help Martijn’s friendly cross examinations, and added spice is provided by columnists Mijke Pol and Lucas de Waard. Flunknarf will be concluding TLKSHW each night with a topical rap.

presentation: Martijn van der Zande
with contributions from Flunknarf, Lucas de Waard and Mijke Pol

A French rockabilly trio that justifies taking out extra building insurance: they will be bringing the house down with hits by Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent and Buddy Holly, as well as neo rockabilly-bands like The Stray Cats.

The circus tent used to be filled to the rafters, every night. The death-defying artists received standing ovations. But the clown was the star. Now the circus is only in the blood of the performers. They try to honour the family tradition.

His parents are divorced. It makes him furious. He clenches his fists, counts to ten, to no avail, he turns red in the face. Then: the explosion. A landslide, or worse. The divorce is splitting the dance floor in two. One half is yellow, the other blue. Even the furniture is taking sides. Mother is entrenched behind all the yellow pieces, father behind the blue. IKEA-happiness as a barricade.

What about him? Hidden beneath the rage is a deeper desire: for everything to be the way it was. With his high-energy, virtuoso and acrobatic dancing he should be able to bring it about. He hopes.

Woest [Furious] is a highly original dance show about dramas and hotheads.

choreography: Stefan Ernst
dance: Patrizio Buci, Amy Greene, Lea Giamattei, Luis R. Pedraza Cédron, Pedro Ricardo Henry

In the wonderful duet VEN by La Macana from Galicia two bodies challenge each other, driven on by the intense music created by Einstürzende Neubauten. VEN is a live video clip. Rewind! Play it again!

25 Feet is equivalent to a little over 7.5 metres. At this distance, or further apart, communication between people takes the shape of a spectator-artist dichotomy. Clearly, safely coded. But behaviours change instantly when people share a space measuring 25 square feet with two dancers, male and female. Inside the small square, everyone is bound to enter each other’s social space – voluntarily or by force. And from there the journey gains in excitement: personal space and intimate space are the areas where the most intimate and violating physical interactions take place.

The interactive 25Feet is a stripped down, hard-hitting dance performance about physical closeness and the dynamics between violence and intimacy. The performers in The100Hands are Dutch/Slovenian.

concept and implementation: Jasper Džuki Jelen, Mojra Vogelnik-Škerlj
performance: Jade van den Hout, Jasper Džuki Jelen
artistic advice: Moos van den Broek
coproduction: DansBrabant
performance in relation to PLAN Talentontwikkeling Brabant

“Perhaps you are so good at being bored that you never even bore yourself with it…You can own as many clocks or calendars as you want to measure time, it doesn’t really signify anything. An hour can seem like forever. Or fly by in an instant. It all depends on what you experience during that hour.”

De grijze heren is an imaginative piece of narrative theatre about a girl who catches some old men at eternal theft. They are embezzling time. Will she manage to turn back the clock on them in just one hour?

“What is to become of us when the killing stops, if it ever stops, and peace comes, if it ever comes? What will they expect from us, the people that sent us off?”

A woman applies to volunteer during the Great War and ends up directly behind the battle fields. Day after day she helps transport wounded soldiers from the trenches to the hospitals in the hinterland. Experiencing hands-on how the war is causing the dissolution of all humanity, she feels it seeping into her bones, her language. Little by little, she realises that it’s not just the battle field that has become a no man’s land: her entire existence is a warzone.

In the arresting monologue Verboden Gebied. Vrouw in Niemandsland, Elsie de Brauw [Hollandia, Toneelgroep Amsterdam, NTGent], directed by Johan Simons, gives a voice to the forgotten women of the Great War, which ended 100 years ago this year. Drawing on the wartime writings of some of the many anonymous wartime volunteers, Erwin Mortier has written a polyphonous monologue that explores the  desperation of war, of parents sacrificing their children to the war effort in exchange for some social status, of men and women who set off as heroes and come back as living corpses.

Premiere

Article Volkskrant 22 march (Dutch)

text: Erwin Mortier
regie: Johan Simons
performance: Elsie de Brauw
child in video: Alexandra Greidanus
dramaturgy: Koen Tachelet
video & photography: Lennart Laberenz
light/sound: Marc Swaenen
production: Theaterfestival Boulevard & Gone West Weergaloos
Partly made possible by Provincie West-Vlaanderen.
There is an after-talk following the performance on 5th of August at 8.30 pm with Erwin Mortier/Johan Simons/Elsie de Brauw.

The makers from Verboden Gebied. Vrouw in Niemandsland are present on the 6th of August at Talk of the Town.

This performance can be booked in combination with Jija Sohn – Kyabajo for Saturday 4 August. Select one of these two performances and the combiticket option is offered.

As part of the commemorations surrounding the centenary of the end of World War I, this show will be going on a brief tour across Flanders and the Netherlands in the autumn of 2018.

Everything is energy, says hiphop dancer and choreographer Shailesh Bahoran [1983]. In the choreography Ignite he is revisiting his fascination with ignition – from matches to the electric impulses triggering each of our 640 muscles. Last year it was a celebrated performance, presented in one of the Boulevard tents, now it has been developed into a theatre show with four dancers.

Shailesh has worked with companies as wide-ranging as The Dutch National Ballet and Don’t Hit Mama. These days he is working with the Amsterdam dance collective ISH. His great originality guarantees a strong burst of energy. Ignite is a spark inside a warehouse packed with gunpowder.

regie | choreography: Shailesh Bahoran
dance: Wesley Rommy, Remses Rafaela, Eddy Vidal, Roché Apinsa

Until recently, the world’s deepest abyss was in Croatia: 506 meters straight down. But the abyss in this play is even more dizzying. And on the precipice are two lovers. She is on one side, he is on the other. Not a bridge in sight.

After De Therapie and Bombastische Liefdesverklaring, theatre maker Julie Cafmeyer [1987] is once again probing the fathomless deep that is love. In Is this porn? No, this is love she lies down on the sofa night after night. Every night there’s a different male lead alongside her, with whom she discusses how their once tempestuous affair has run aground. A show full of wry laughter, sinister light-heartedness and amusing tragedy.

concept | performance: Julie Cafmeyer
dance: Timo Sterkcx, Chloé Geers, Valentine Galeyn, Jade Derudder
coproduction: CAMPO, De Brakke Grond & Toneelschuur Producties

This performance can be booked in combination with Laika – Cantina for Thursday 2 August. Select one of these two performances and the combiticket option is offered.

If you use the sign language interpreter, please announce your arrival via: toegankelijkheid@festivalboulevard.nl 
Then we reserve a place for you.

Unannounced, a young country singer-with-guitar stepped onto a crate during Boulevard 2015. Stunning vocals, swooning audiences. It was Pete Buijs, here on holiday from Chicago. Long live traditions: every night at 10 PM, a different singer-songwriter will be giving a [free] show beneath the chestnut tress outside LOF restaurant.

He grew up in Suriname. Brought up on the music of James, Otis and Marvin. Here he grew into a singing soul. With the theatrical STAX-ode I’m a soul man and on DWDD, until he became a deep soul star at Boulevard 2018.

For her latest show My erotic performance, theatre maker Julie Cafmeyer [1987] was inspired by an intriguing sentence uttered by artist Miranda July [USA]: “Every person, no matter how plain, has one great erotic performance in her—the one in which she doesn’t know what she’s doing and is desperately trying to save her life.” In this open studio/rehearsal, Julie will show visitors how she plans to challenge the patriarchy.

Location: Josephkwartier | Pand 18 Studio

concept | performance: Julie Cafmeyer

His wallet contains loyalty cards from all the big DIY-stores in Belgium, the Netherlands and France. The Flemish DIY fan Louis Vanhaverbeke [1988] makes good use of them. In his clever theatre performance Mikado Remix he explores the boundaries – especially of what is normal. Knowledge that comes in handy if you’re afraid of being shut out.

Louis Vanhaverbeke builds and drills, stacks and organises, using pieces of fencing, cardboard storage boxes and a meter cupboard. Creating DIY-constructions that offer some surprising insights into our fascination for walls. The question written on every wall: who decides what belongs inside the walls and what should stay out? Louis Vanhaverbeke: Handyman of the mind.

Dutch premiere

English spoken, Dutch and English surtitles

concept | performance: Louis Vanhaverbeke
production: Campo
coproduction: Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Beursschouwburg & le phénix, scène nationale Valenciennes, european creative hub

This performance can be booked in combination with Guilherme Miotto | Corpo Máquina – .Ball for Monday 6 August. Select one of these two performances and the combiticket option is offered.

Unannounced, a young country singer-with-guitar stepped onto a crate during Boulevard 2015. Stunning vocals, swooning audiences. It was Pete Buijs, here on holiday from Chicago. Long live traditions: every night at 10 PM, a different singer-songwriter will be giving a [free] show beneath the chestnut tress outside LOF restaurant.

An Amsterdam-based string trio – guitar, banjo and upright bass – playing a mixed grill of American traditionals, blues, bluegrass, folk en gospel. Folky? Yeah, but fuelled by rock and roll. A declaration of love to hopeless outsiders.

How fast do you grow? As slowly as a tree? How fast can you change who you are? As fast as the clouds fly past in the sky? I can see you better if you keep still. Just for a while, inside our studio on the festival square. What would you like to take a closer look at today? Your cuddly toy, your feet? The pebble you keep inside your pocket or the tall man on the other side of the square? Is it a man, or…? For five days we will be building, creating a true work of art. So that people will be able to see who we are, inside and out and from top to bottom, for centuries to come.

concept and accompaniment: Marieke Schellekens, Renske de Veld
in association with Theaterfestival Boulevard

The Dromoscopes are three large fascinating geometric shapes on high legs. You stick your head from underneath into the shapes. The scene, your head that disappears in the large form, invites you to take a seat and to take a look.

Inside you are detached from everyday life, you end up in an unexpected world. In three detailed viewing boxes you get a view of the brain through images, smell and sound. Swim among the fish in a coral reef and peek through small windows in a dreamy city at night.

creator: Charlotte van Otterloo
image: Fleur Beerthuis

The winners of the Kunstbende contest Noord-Brabant are travelling from festival to festival this summer. They are out to get you. With their words, music and theatre. For those who haven’t heard: Kunstbende is the breeding ground for artists aged 13 – 19. Theaterfestival Boulevard, 34 years old, is welcoming the young ones with open arms.

It all starts with a letter. From the Hedgehog to the Mole. He writes about how he wants to be with her. And talk about things together. Drink tea by the window together. Gaze across the field and count sheep together. And sleep in a four-poster bed together. But he is prickly. She is blind and has no voice. Disappointment and clumsy awkwardness threaten to destroy their idyll. But in the end, their longing to be together conquers.

4Hoog’s subdued play Stekeblind [Blind as a bat] is a love story, a Romeo and Juliet for toddlers. Something this Ghent-based company can be entrusted with, as they make pioneering, accessible plays for very young audiences. Code words: imagination, recognition, poetry, humour.

regie: Frans van der Aa
performance: Femke Platteau and Freek De Craecker
authors: Raf Walschaerts and Frans van der Aa

Having made Yuri [2017], the work-outopera that was appropriately rewarded with five Olympic rings, five performers of the Rotterdam-based company Club Gewalt are setting off for Lesbos. On this Greek island a forgotten woman is giving birth to a new identity. It is a feisty type: her hands are fused to a bow and arrow. Primal forces are driving her and other amazons on. To battle!

In this ecstatic theatrical concert, Herr Hamschterfleisch und Band present an ode to the sound of Nina Hagen. With irresistibly seditious guitars and deceitful Sirens.\

This performance plays at different moments starting from 15.00u. The playing times are communicated at the entrance of the tent, where tickets can also be purchased for the performances of the same day.

concept | performance: Club Gewalt

“If nobody’s watching, what does it matter what I do? I might as well not be here.” A depressed soul, confiding their misery to the bathroom mirror? Not if it’s BonteHond speaking. Their IK [ME] is a hard-boiled comedy. Its theme: finding purpose and overestimating yourself.

The BonteHond family is starting therapy, albeit with a slightly irregular therapist. But they need it: father is knee-deep in a midlife crisis; mother suffers from extreme peanut allergy; they never see their adolescent daughter in real life, only in her vlogs, and auntie is a nasty narcissist. Cheerfully, they all go in search of their true selves. And an audience.

concept | regie: René Geerlings
text: Eva Gouda
performance: Ayla Satijn, Dionisio Matias, Eva Zwart, Felix Schellekens, Lottie de Bruijn, Reinier van Harten
video-design: Karl Klomp
music: Reindier
costumes: Judith de Zwart
dramaturgy: Judith Faas
regie assistance: Millie Lijbers
technique: Klim Nelissen, Ramon Verhoeven, Jordi Wolswijk
production: Sanne Priem, Floyd Koster

This performance can be booked in combination with Lost Dog – Juliet and Romeo for Tuesday 7 August. Select one of these two performances and the combiticket option is offered.

We design ourselves. We summarise ourselves in models. Until there are no more questions left. But can we really clip away at our humanity until we are nothing but a collection of data or an authoritative algorithm?

The work of choreographer Katja Heitmann [1987] intercuts dance with visual art, performance art and installation art. The Anti-Algorithm is a choreographic TED-talk featuring dancers, music and philosophical texts. The performance is part of Katja’s three-year project RealReality® in which she is going in search of the algorithm of human movement.

In 2016 Katja won the de Prize of the Dutch Dance Festival. Her work is characterised by a sharp contrast between a pointed aesthetics and human fallibility. Her images are radically minimalist and hyper-designed.

concept | choreography: Katja Heitmann
concept | music: Sander van der Schaaf
coproduction: DansBrabant
picture: Hanneke Wetzer
Katja Heitmann/This is not a show is supported by Gemeente Tilburg and Fonds Podiumkunsten

Beware!
On Wednesday the 8th of August at 16:00, an international party will go to the performance. Because of this, the performance will be in English.

Four works of art in museum De Pont in Tilburg have inspired Hannah Zwaans to create her playful piece Ehm. She has developed this educational dance show in collaboration with Kunstpodium Dongen and Nele Vandeneede. Two dancers establish contact with the audience in different ways, driven by themes such as the self-portrait, identity, and optical illusion. A show that connects people, touches them and encourages them to find their own interpretations. 

Esperanto is one of the 6,932 officially recognised languages in the world. The Polish eye doctor Zamenhof was the creator of this idealistic artificial language that now has around two million speakers worldwide. Stuffy and dead, you say? Not in the least. Online dating and smartphone: enreta citas and inteligenta telefono.

Het beste idee voor iedereen [The best idea for all] celebrates the road to Fina Venko, the moment when finally, we will all be able to understand each other. It brings together four Esperanto-speaking actors from the Netherlands, Iceland, Belgium and Uruguay. Previous plays by Sanne Nouws [1986] include Goed Kwaad for Theater Artemis and various shows with Festival Cement, Vis à Vis and Orkater.

regie: Sanne Nouws
performance: Nina Fokker, Gunnar Gunnsteinsson, Bram van der Kelen, Camila Romero Lema
production: Festival Cement
performance in relation to PLAN Talentontwikkeling Brabant

De Waard wrote De meisjes van Schoevers about a renowned secretarial college, the must-have travel guide for families Uganda, and a book of erotic poetry Als ik niet aan je denk of raak. Well, actually… Peter, Paul and Elly de Waard, respectively, wrote these. Lucas de Waard – no relation – prefers to treat Boulevard to his celebrated literary revue De Waard en zijn Gasten XL.

It was a hit at previous editions of the festival. In quick succession, the best Dutch writers and musicians offer their audience readings and recitals, brief interviews and live music. Literature is alive and kicking! And not to worry: Lucas de Waard is an author in his own right. His many wonderful works include the novels De Kamers and Kraaien tellen.

concept: Lucas de Waard
with: Hanneke Hendrix, Alma Mathijsen, Oscar Kocken, Elke Vierveijzer
 

Tilburg-Noord is no Utopia. But Nasser El Jackson [1996] has survived the dreariness thanks to a ball. They work long hours, him and the ball. Sometimes even eight in a row. To great success: Nasser is the current groundmoves world champion. In 2016 choreographer Guilherme Miotto met the idol. He immediately fell for Nasser’s charisma and artful movements. The result of his give-and-go with the Tilburg-based master: a solo that will have you bounce for joy. Or a duet for a man and a football? No: it’s a full-length trio for a man, a ball and a space. After .Even Worse at Boulevard 2017, Miotto is back to celebrate the life urge, the disarming strength and stubborn tenderness of a body poised for survival.

Premiere

choreografy: Guilherme Miotto
performer: Nasser El Jackson
soundscape: Joel Ryan
stage design: Erik van de Wijdeven
dramaturge: Moos van den Broek
production: Corpo Máquina
coproduction: DansBrabant, Ballet National de Marseille, Theaterfestival Boulevard
There is an after-talk following the performance on 7th of August at 9.00 pm with Guilherme Miotto.

Guilherme Miotto / Corpo Máquina is present on the 4th of August at Talk of the Town.

This performance can be booked in combination with Louis Vanhaverbeke | CAMPO – Mikado Remix for Monday 6 August. Select one of these two performances and the combiticket option is offered.

The music theatre show Dag is based on Samuel Beckett’s intriguing play Happy Days. The stripped down scenography: Winnie is trapped to the waist inside a hill. Is it a burial mound forming? Fact is that her husband Willie is right behind the hill but they can hardly reach each other. The desperate need to communicate is key to Willie. Through talking, day after day, life goes by. Even though they can no longer reach each other, thy are still connected.

An image of two people who literally have become far apart but still belong together.

Dag lets us hear how Winnie desperately entrenches herself in the imperfection that is language. She’d rather talk than realise in silence how her loneliness and mortal fear are growing.

Unannounced, a young country singer-with-guitar stepped onto a crate during Boulevard 2015. Stunning vocals, swooning audiences. It was Pete Buijs, here on holiday from Chicago. Long live traditions: every night at 10 PM, a different singer-songwriter will be giving a [free] show beneath the chestnut tress outside LOF restaurant.

EUT are the creators of nineties-postpop and irresistible beats. Playlist: mind expanding melodies and uncompromising killer songs. Singer Megan fronts a band whose main inspirations are Beck, Blur and Eels.

In the stage solo En toen schiep God Mounir [And then God created Mounir], Mounir Samuel [1989] explores the boundaries of faith, gender and geography. Plenty of material at his disposal: he is a political scientist, writer and performer of Dutch-Egyptian descent. Mounir had a double coming out between 2011 and 2015. Once as a prominent bicultural and religious lesbienne, and once as a gender-queer man. Until then, he had been known as Monique Samuel. Through the use of story-telling, music, dance, audiovisual material and electronic hookahs [!], Mounir savours the question what true freedom is.

concept | dance | performance: Mounir Samuel
dramaturgy: Floris van Delft

The stage monologue Cloyne sees Kaatje Kooij [28] mercilessly demolishing the words. A bit like Kurt Cobain or Greenday treated their guitars: out of tune and raw, and when she’s done, the whole kit comes crashing down. But that doesn’t mean she can’t be clever, as Kaatje proves. Taking an open approach and positioning herself like a stand-up comedian she sets out to explore some serious issues. Such as? Holding back for fear of falling on your face. Going on extreme nightly walks to outrun your cascading thoughts.

It makes Cloyne vulnerable, tough and touching. The creators form an exciting blend directed by Mirjam Koen, co-founder of Onafhankelijk Toneel.

This performance plays at different moments starting from 15.00u. The playing times are communicated at the entrance of the tent, where tickets can also be purchased for the performances of the same day.

idea | concept | performance: Kaatje Kooij
text: Tommy Ventevogel
final regie: Mirjam Koen

The music theatre show Nobel depicts a hardworking family of entrepreneurs behind a golden façade. Their motto: as long as it looks good. But what is lurking beneath those Persian rugs if you lift them? What happens if you leave the house with the wrong hairdo?

Kirsten van Teijn shows us how we live our lives clinging to patterns and run aground trying to do the right thing. Seen from her point of view it is only logical that one day, brunch gets completely and wildly out of hand.

This performance plays at different moments starting from 15.00u. The playing times are communicated at the entrance of the tent, where tickets can also be purchased for the performances of the same day.

regie: Jessica Borst
concept | performance: Kirsten van Teijn
guitar: Leon Sibum

Call me baby – if you’re brave enough. Don’t be shy! Love is all around you. Approach that 8. Or that 5, if you feel you could use some practice first. Take the plunge, go on: love is a game and both can win. Don’t be a loser. In her theatrical performance 06-82087445 Luit Bakker is going in search of love and gender. She has previously organised a polyamorous date night and a darkroom party at Frascati. Luit is a member of the performing arts collective La Isla Bonita.

This performance plays at different moments starting from 15.00u. The playing times are communicated at the entrance of the tent, where tickets can also be purchased for the performances of the same day.

concept and performance: Luit Bakker
coproduction: Likeminds and Over het IJ Festival

Adventure takes a shape. And it is square, not round. You will discover this inside the snowwhite cube made by Schippers&VanGucht. They will show you time from every angle. Old age, childhood, forgotten corners of your memory. Lose the way on a ramble across your own life. But don’t be afraid. Fifty-nine partners in misery will be accompanying you. Take your time, please. Warnet is a zig-zag journey to your 100th birthday. Along the way, a single performer will play more than forty roles. A 360-degree video world will swallow you whole. Set your hearing aid to maximum volume for the live radio play and music!

A fantastically designed family show, which sees Schippers&VanGucht once again professing their love of playing with time. At Boulevard 2017 over 3,000 people visited their video-installation Buiten Dienst.
The video installation is an experience for adolescents, adults, the elderly, even for the elderly with a walking stick! Everyone can bring children from the age of seven.

Premiere

concept: Schippers&VanGucht
regie: Jellie Schippers
costume | design: Myriam Van Gucht
performance: Toon Kuijpers
coproductie: Het Zuidelijk Toneel

The glory and decadence of Europe form the focal point of Francesca Lazzeri’s Dear friend, wolves have always eaten sheep. Western cities grow more and more vertically, reaching towards the sky. But their barriers are also heightened. It forces unwelcome people into a desperate stagnation.

As spectator of this physical and visual performance, you are confronted with a post-colonial landscape. No tear-jerking encounter with the excluded and his misery awaits you here. It rather proposes a minimalistic still life that foregrounds the act of exclusion itself. In this landscape power relations crave their perpetual reconfirmation. And not in vain. We? We are left to watch.

WILD VLEES is a Dutch based performance collective. They translate political, philosophical and societal aspects of being human into minimalistic performances. Boulevard audiences were left speechless by their earlier works When everything is human… and An Incomplete Life.

idea | regie: Francesca Lazzeri
performers: Hidde Aans-Verkade, Evelien Cammaert, Maja Grzeczka, Niels Kuiters, Charles Pas
coproduction: Theaterfestival Boulevard and Over het IJ Festival
performance in relation to PLAN Talentontwikkeling Brabant

This performance can be booked in combination with Liz Aggiss – Slap and Tickle for Saturday 11 August. Select one of these two performances and the combiticket option is offered.

Very few have managed to tip the balance between violence, art and sex with such force as the Italian composer Carlo Gesualdo [1566-1613]. An intellectual who wrote extraordinarily beautiful music. But who also had a forest felled because the rustling of the leaves disturbed him, drank menses to subside his bouts of depression, and tortured animals. On 16 October 1590, Gesualdo caught his wife cheating on him. And now look at them lying there, the two lovebirds, brutally murdered: Maria and her lover, Duke Fabrizio. Gesualdo went on to be accused of further homicides and abuse.

For theatre company De Warme Winkel and the Nederlands Kamerkoor prince Gesualdo – he was a member of the Neapolitan aristocracy – is a sinister treasure trove. His killing his darlings attracts and repels. A confusion for the ages, as this unique music theatre show proves, while leering at the Marquis de Sade, O.J. Simpson, IS, North-Korea and Trump. Gesualdo is a fascinating encounter between a cruel biography and the poetic beauty of the worldly madrigal.
 

concept | performance:  Florian Myjer, Vincent Rietveld, Mara van Vlijmen, Ward Weemhoff, Marieke de Zwaan
vocals | performance: Nederlands Kamerkoor
idea: Tido Visser, De Warme Winkel
coproduction: Holland Festival, deSingel Antwerpen

For full credits visit the website from De Warme Winkel

De Warme Winkel / Nederlands Kamerkoor is present on the 8th of August at Talk of the Town.

This performance can be booked in combination with Espen Hjort | Theater Utrecht – Goat Song for Thursday 9 August. Select one of these two performances and the combiticket option is offered.

Ground Control to Major Sven, take your protein pills again. Check ignition and lift off: we’ll be with you! Yes, it was Bowie himself who in 2015 gave Sven Ratzke permission to use his brilliant body of work – from Space Oddity and Rebel Rebel to Heroes and Blackstar – for a concert.

Ratzke, the wizkid of the theatre, developed Starman, a chameleonic alter ego that does Bowie justice from Aladdin to Ziggy. His Bowie interpretations form a convincing ode to the man who fell to earth to toy with identities and write pop cultural history. Unique, theatrical, cinematic, dressed in glamorous outfits and doing outrageous improvisations.

After New York and Berlin the Starman plus his band are now coming to Boulevard – where Ratzke’s Homme Fatale sold out every night last year.

Daily Mail: “Bravo! This is a must see show! Ratzke is a five star guy.” *****

text and vocals: Sven Ratzke
piano: Christian Pabst
drums: Haye Jellema
bass: Florian Friedrich

A double suicide? What nonsense. A tragic love affair, sure: neither Juliet nor Romeo would deny it was that. But an end-of-life clinic on speed dial? Come on. Where Shakespeare ended their tragedy with a flourish, the two of them stayed the course, pining away for each other. It even led to a marriage. Now Romeo and his Juliet are in their disillusioned forties, attending couple’s therapy. We get to witness their bittersweet fights, alongside the first time they met, danced and had sex. Then the children were born. The rest is howling history.

Juliet and Romeo is intelligent, accessible dance theatre. Its theme: the lies we tell ourselves about love. In 2016 Ben Duke stole Boulevard hearts and minds with Paradise Lost. Now he is on his knees, begging to Solène, who sits ruminating. Popcorn, the past. A touching, wry, and loving piece.

The Guardian: “Smart, subversive and sexy” *****
The Stage: “A goddamn masterpiece.” *****
Bachtrack: The blend of spoken word and choreography is darkly funny. The grit in the humour elicits pearls of warmth and empathy from the audience.

Dutch premiere

English spoken, Dutch surtitles

concept: Ben Duke
performance | dance: Ben Duke en Solène Weinachter

Lost Dog / Ben Duke is present on the 7th of August at Talk of the Town.

This performance can be booked in combination with Bonte Hond – IK for Tuesday 7 August. Select one of these two performances and the combiticket option is offered.

The future. Sleep is no longer a basic human right. It’s only for those who can afford it. And what’s more, sleeping can only be done in the land of the night. Anyone who is found sleeping outside this nocturnal realm had better prepare for a hazardous trial.

At dusk, the line that divides day from night, waking from sleeping, a somnambulant set of people gathers. Sleep deprivation is clouding their perception. Distorting their world view. Driving them to the edge of sanity. Sleep is the only thing that can save them. They know it, but they will have to be creative to secure a place to crash.

Valavond [Dusk] is a richly imagined, musical theatre show, set on the edge of a forest where people hang sound asleep or loll around languorously. A drowsy site-specific work from Groningen, directed by the wide awake Fleming Gregory Caers who amazed audiences with his earlier piece, Rennen, for Kopergietery Ghent.

concept | regie: Gregory Caers
performance | music: Martin Franke
performance: Lard Adrian, Inez de Bruijn/Laura Mentink, Valentina Tóth, Just van Bommel, Koen ter Braak, Tijmen Dietvorst, Tobias Loeff, Teuntje Post, Nina Wilson, Annemarije Zoer

Het Houten Huis / De Noorderlingen is present on the 10th of August at Talk of the Town.

This performance can be booked in combination with Igor & Moreno – Andante for Wednesday 8 August. Select one of these two performances and the combiticket option is offered.

Unannounced, a young country singer-with-guitar stepped onto a crate during Boulevard 2015. Stunning vocals, swooning audiences. It was Pete Buijs, here on holiday from Chicago. Long live traditions: every night at 10 PM, a different singer-songwriter will be giving a [free] show beneath the chestnut tress outside LOF restaurant.

What image do you project? Does your outside match your inside? How would transgenders answer this question? Or gothics? Queries like these are festive meat and drink to Firma Draak.

In the richly imagined performance Japanse Meisjes [Japanese girls], Nick Bos [1989] and Mathieu Wijdeven [1991] are undergoing a transformation. They are shedding their bodies, Western culture, traditions and gender. It is time, they say, they put themselves in the position of two Japanese girls.

“East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,” the poet Kipling wrote, posing a physical challenge that Nick and Mathieu will gladly accept. During their research for this show they were advised by Jija Sohn.

This performance plays at different moments starting from 14.00. The playing times are communicated at the entrance of the tent, where tickets can also be purchased for the performances of the same day.

concept | performance: Nick Bos, Mathieu Wijdeven
advice: Jija Sohn
production: Feikes Huis

Blanche and Forza live next door to each other, but they never see or talk to each other. Here’s why. Blanche is in the kitchen from the early morning until late at night. As the chairperson of the Cauldron Circle Club she wants to save as many people as she can with her cakes. And Forza is Forza: not very good with words, but all the better with music. She sits in silence, composing and fantasising about the best song ever.

This cacophony around Blanche and Forza (a cacophony) is a musical-culinary show about friendship and loneliness. Katrien Pierlet has performed with companies such as Studio Orka, Laika and Bronks; Sofie Palmers with hetpaleis, Cie. de KOE and Het Gevolg.

concept | performance | text: Sofie Palmers and Katrien Pierlet
music: Michiel van Cleuvenbergen, Sofie Palmers

Blanche and Forza live next door to each other, but they never see or talk to each other. Here’s why. Blanche is in the kitchen from the early morning until late at night. As the chairperson of the Cauldron Circle Club she wants to save as many people as she can with her cakes. And Forza is Forza: not very good with words, but all the better with music. She sits in silence, composing and fantasising about the best song ever.

This cacophony around Blanche and Forza (a cacophony) is a musical-culinary show about friendship and loneliness. Katrien Pierlet has performed with companies such as Studio Orka, Laika and Bronks; Sofie Palmers with hetpaleis, Cie. de KOE and Het Gevolg.

concept | performance | text: Sofie Palmers and Katrien Pierlet
music: Michiel van Cleuvenbergen, Sofie Palmers

If you use the sign language interpreter, please announce your arrival via: toegankelijkheid@festivalboulevard.nl 
Then we reserve a place for you.

Dozens of composers have created music for the Stabat Mater, the 13th-century poem about Mary mourning her crucified son. Soothing to the ears. And to the eyes and mind, as this international project proves. In 2016 the dance festival in the Italian city of Bassano del Grappa invited a number of female choreographers to create a Stabat Mater for church performances. Three of these were presented at Boulevard 2017. The latest edition – also to be performed in churches and chapels – consists of one dance piece, one installation and a music performance.

In her Stabat Mater, choreographer Patricia Okenwa of Londonbased company Rambert stresses motherhood – her own and that of her four dancers and many other mothers. Geoff Holroyde and James Holroyde have created a soundscape reflecting on motherhood from their perspective.

Choreographer Kristel van Issum, who for years led dance company T.r.a.s.h., is creating #Catalog of Shadows, in which Ulrika Kinn Svensson examines seven female archetypes. This performance is in English

Mezzo soprano Cora Burggraaf and reed organist Annelies Focquaert present Miroir de peine et d’amour [1923], a poetry cycle by Henri Ghéon set to music by Hendrik Andriessen. Ghéon wrote an ode to the love between mothers and sons after witnessing his own mother die in a car crash. The three pieces together form a ‘chapel route’: you can attend three pieces on a single ticket. In between performances you'll walk to the next chapel. Wear comfortable clothes and walking shoes!

Premiere

Stabat Mater
choreography: Patricia Okenwa
dance: Piedad Albarracin, Anna Borini, Estela Merlos
music: Geoff Holroyde and James Holroyde
photo: Stephen Wright Photography

#Catalog of Shadows
concept | regie | choreography | text: Kristel van Issum
text | performance: Ulrika Kinn Svensson
vormgeving:  Kristel van Issum en Martin Kers
music: Han Stubbe
video | animation: Martin Kers
costume design: Kristel van Issum en Ulrika Kinn Svensson
production: DansBrabant and Theaterfestival Boulevard
Thanks to Theaters Tilburg
Spoken in English

Miroir de peine et d’amour
vocals | concept: Cora Burggraaf
harmonium: Annelies Focquaert
music: Hendrik Andriessen

In Spain a cantina is a place near the train station where you can have a quick drink or snack, comment on the news and curse your boss. In Italy it is a chilly cellar where you keep your wine and other things to titillate your taste buds. In the Netherlands a ‘kantine’ is an often bleakly furnished room with long tables and lukewarm fried snacks. In Mexico? A place with plastic chairs, colourful walls and sun-bleached parasols where you get drunk, engage in hot debates, and if need be, end up fighting each other.

Cantina by the Antwerp theatre company Laika is all these things balled into one. A place where actors and singers will transport you. Where they serve simmering desires, hot peppered secrets and plain truths. But most of all a place that serves surprisingly delicious dishes. Hungry? Laika satisfies with sensory, elegant and imaginative theatre. Share the canned dreams & good food!

Dutch premiere

from and with: Abigail Abraham, Peter De Bie, Marjan De Schutter, Marlies Jacques, Leentje Kerremans, Alain Rinckhout, Jo Roets, Pieter Smet, Michiel Soete, Rik Van Gysegem, Anton Van Haver, Michiel Van Opstal, Mieke Versyp and seven Bosschenaren
coproduction: Valletta 2018, Culturele Hoofdstad van Europa
 

Performance related to 'Den Bosch Celebrates Food'
Made possible by 'Algemene Afvaardiging van de Vlaamse Regering in Nederland'

This performance can be booked in combination with Julie Cafmeyer - Is this porn? No, this is love. for Thursday 2 August. Select one of these two performances and the combiticket option is offered.

If you use the sign language interpreter, please announce your arrival via: toegankelijkheid@festivalboulevard.nl 
Then we reserve a place for you.

Behind the steamed up windows of a garden greenhouse, four men in tailored suits are doing an a capella performance of a Schubert song: “Wie schön bist du”. A woman – a real one, in high heels, red suit and a pearl necklace – is trying desperately to rid herself of her very loud crop.

Echte vrouwen joggen in regenpak [A real woman would jog in rainproof gear] is a hilarious exploration of shifting four-part harmonies and the number of men that can fit inside a compost bin. But first and foremost this imaginative music theatre show is a statement about the thing any real woman wants: some time to herself.

Seventeen years ago Jetse Batelaan [1978] made this show with Elien van den Hoek. The two share a love of sophisticated simplicity and surreal slapstick. Boulevard regards Echte vrouwen joggen in regenpak as part of the canon of Dutch theatre. During the festival this remake will be performed at the Josephkwartier, with all the windows flung wide open – for good reasons. N.B. Are you allergic to endive? Contact your GP.

concept and regie: Jetse Batelaan and Elien van den Hoek
performance: Marie Groothof, Hendrik Kegels, Mees Walter, Coen Bril, Jelle Hoekstra and many others

This performance can be booked in combination with Compagnia Pippo Delbono - Orchids for Friday 10 August. Select one of these two performances and the combiticket option is offered.

Dancers Igor Urzelai [1983] and Moreno Solinas [1987] invite you to explore what happens when you put yourself on hold. A performance as a generous and patient walk into a cloud of attention and time. The challenge: to come, or stay, close to yourselves. 

Honest attention is what drives the dance performance Andante, the musician’s term for moderately slow. Because, according to the French philosopher Simone Weil, attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. Igor & Moreno make hypnotic and visceral works. At Boulevard 2016 and 2017 they stunned with Idiot Syncrasy and A Room For All Our Tomorrows.

Dutch premiere

concept: Igor Urzelai and Moreno Solinas
dans: Giorgia Nardin, Eleanor Sikorski, Moreno Solinas and Igor Urzelai
coproductie: The Place and TIR Danza
There is an after-talk following the performance on 9th of August at 7.00 pm with Igor & Moreno.

This performance can be booked in combination with Het Houten Huis | De Noorderlingen – Valavond for Wednesday 8 August. Select one of these two performances and the combiticket option is offered.

Some like jump music and tits-and-bums comedy; some like  the ballet and homespun love songs; others observe the world through a camera and are closet accomplished beatboxers. 

Choreographer Benjamin Vandewalle is fascinated with encounters and how they can tilt your perspective on the world. In Common Ground he meets two professional dancers who have an impairment. Together they are going in search of common ground. They share a love of dance, and movement helps them get to know each other better. Who is the other dancer? Who am I? How are we alike, and how are we different? And most importantly: what can we learn from each other?

Het Nieuwsblad “Watching Kobe and Hannah dancing is watching something truly authentic.”

E-tcetera “Wyffels and Bekemans are able to infuse their performance with such truthfulness and emotion, while also going out of character, that they present their audience with some wonderfully unpredictable interactions.”

Dutch premiere

by and with: Benjamin Vandewalle, Kobe Wyffels, Hannah Bekemans
music composition: Fulco Ottervanger
music performance: Christian Mendoza, Fulco Ottervanger
costume design: Sofie Durnez
lighting design | technique: Marlies Jacques
dramaturgy: Charlotte De Somviele
photography: Yuri Van der Hoeven
production: Platform-K & Vooruit
support: Konekt, Lucky Trimmer, Stad Gent, Provincie Oost-Vlaanderen & Vlaamse Overheid

By the looks of it, Luuk lives with a very normal family. By the looks of it, they are all doing their best to keep going. Anything is better than to stop and think about that painful event that turned their whole world upside down. By the looks of it. Broer was inspired by the part-autobiographical young adult book Gebr., in which Ted van Lieshout writes about the loss of a brother. A text-based play mixed with movement.

What are you doing.
I’m walking.
Where to.
Nowhere.
Or are you walking away from something.
No I’m not.
Might as well keep still then. The effect would be the same.

She is young and in love. Life is good. But soon war smothers every bit of happiness. Her sweetheart is leaving for the front; she stays behind, alone. When another woman’s young son comes into her life she instinctively chooses to do the right thing and takes him into her care. Increasing her risk of losing even more than she already had. What do you do when the very thing for which you gave up all is taken away from you?

Unannounced, a young country singer-with-guitar stepped onto a crate during Boulevard 2015. Stunning vocals, swooning audiences. It was Pete Buijs, here on holiday from Chicago. Long live traditions: every night at 10 PM, a different singer-songwriter will be giving a [free] show beneath the chestnut tress outside LOF restaurant.

The Brussels-Congolese singer and multiinstrumentalist Témé Tan mixes African roots with soul, hip hop, Latin vibes and electronic beats into an über-modern brand of pop. Cosmopolitan and classic.

A Colombian riot party band that can blow away entire walls – be warned, Donald Trump. Their strength: Latin music, theatre, dance, humour and absurdist lyrics. A crazy musical outfit. Endorsed by VPRO.

Minou Bosua [44], who was one half of cabaret duo De Bloeiende Maagden for many years, is working on a show with her mother Jopie [88]. Together they are showing us that old age is much more than just deterioration, lack of care and end-of-life plans. These studio meetings will feature brief tryouts, film fragments and open rehearsals. Visitors witness the creation of a show – a unique opportunity.

concept | performance: Minou and Jopie Bosua

Very few have managed to tip the balance between violence, art and sex with such force as the Italian composer Carlo Gesualdo [1566-1613]. An intellectual who wrote extraordinarily beautiful music. But who also had a forest felled because the rustling of the leaves disturbed him, drank menses to subside his bouts of depression, and tortured animals. On 16 October 1590, Gesualdo caught his wife cheating on him.

And now look at them lying there, the two lovebirds, brutally murdered: Maria and her lover, Duke Fabrizio. Gesualdo went on to be accused of further homicides and abuse. For theatre company De Warme Winkel and the Nederlands Kamerkoor prince Gesualdo – he was a member of the Neapolitan aristocracy – is a sinister treasure trove. His killing his darlings attracts and repels. A confusion for the ages, as this unique music theatre show proves, while leering at the Marquis de Sade, O.J. Simpson, IS, North-Korea and Trump. Gesualdo is a fascinating encounter between a cruel biography and the poetic beauty of the worldly madrigal.

concept | performance: Florian Myjer, Vincent Rietveld, Mara van Vlijmen, Ward Weemhoff, Marieke de Zwaan
vocals | performance: Nederlands Kamerkoor
idea: Tido Visser, De Warme Winkel
coproduction: Holland Festival, deSingel Antwerpen
supported by Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds and Stichting Zabawas

For full credits visit the website from De Warme Winkel

If you use the audio description, please announce your arrival via: toegankelijkheid@festivalboulevard.nl 
Then we reserve a place for you.

What if you no longer want to be a human being, but something else? A goat, for instance. What would be the consequences? Are human beings even capable of becoming something else? What would it take to undergo such a transformation? In the wordless stage performance Goat Song, Mees Borgman portrays a woman who wants to find herself by disappearing from herself.

The creator is the Norwegian director Espen Hjort [1989] who graduated in 2016 with a highly praised Hamlet. NRC and De Groene Amsterdammer have called his work miraculous and intriguing. The starting point for Goat Song were Hjorts vacations in the Norwegian landscape and his worries about the dichotomy between man and nature.

regie: Espen Hjort
performance: Mees Borgman
dramaturgy: Marijn Lems
design: Sanne Lips
sounddesign: Marko Ivic
coach: Jan Martens
production: Theater Utrecht

This performance can be booked in combination with De Warme Winkel | Nederlands Kamerkoor – Gesualdo for Thursday 9 August. Select one of these two performances and the combiticket option is offered.

A double suicide? What nonsense. A tragic love affair, sure: neither Juliet nor Romeo would deny it was that. But an end-of-life clinic on speed dial? Come on. Where Shakespeare ended their tragedy with a flourish, the two of them stayed the course, pining away for each other. It even led to a marriage. Now Romeo and his Juliet are in their disillusioned forties, attending couple’s therapy. We get to witness their bittersweet fights, alongside the first time they met, danced and had sex. Then the children were born. The rest is howling history.

Juliet and Romeo is intelligent, accessible dance theatre. Its theme: the lies we tell ourselves about love. In 2016 Ben Duke stole Boulevard hearts and minds with Paradise Lost. Now he is on his knees, begging to Solène, who sits ruminating. Popcorn, the past. A touching, wry, and loving piece.

The Guardian: “Smart, subversive and sexy” *****
The Stage: “A goddamn masterpiece.” *****

Dutch premiere

English spoken, Dutch surtitles

concept: Ben Duke
performance | dance: Ben Duke en Solène Weinachter

Lost Dog / Ben Duke is present on the 7th of August at Talk of the Town.

This performance can be booked in combination with Bonte Hond – IK for Tuesday 7 August. Select one of these two performances and the combiticket option is offered.

If you use the sign language interpreter, please announce your arrival via: toegankelijkheid@festivalboulevard.nl 
Then we reserve a place for you.

Unannounced, a young country singer-with-guitar stepped onto a crate during Boulevard 2015. Stunning vocals, swooning audiences. It was Pete Buijs, here on holiday from Chicago. Long live traditions: every night at 10 PM, a different singer-songwriter will be giving a [free] show beneath the chestnut tress outside LOF restaurant.

A cowskull player from Spain – for real – who embraces boogie-woogie and the barest rock-‘n’-roll but also The Residents. Even stranger than Rivella. And that’s a wheybased fizzy drink. Energetic and animalistic.

My granny is a mega-hero Supergran. She’s got so many unbelievable superpowers. She has the answer to every question in the whole wide world. She can fix the holes in your trousers even before you make them. She can fly, she sees the future and knows all about the past. Upstairs in granny’s house is a room with a rusty old lock on the door. She says I can’t go there. I think she’s hiding something from the old days in there.

Superoma [Supergran] is performed in a set that was knitted by seventeen super grannies from Amsterdam-Noord. A comfy-cosy and mothfree piece directed by Anne Maike Mertens.

concept & idea: Anne Maike Mertens, Malou de Roy van Zuydewijn [tekst], Bibi Trompetter
regie: Anne Maike Mertens
performance: Lottie de Bruijn, Judith van den Berg

Google wrote: “We want Google to be the third of your brain.” But fifty-one percent would be even better, wouldn’t it? It is only a matter of time: we are already sharing our most intimate moments online and growing more and more dependent on our digital lives. The woman in The Gentle Woman finds herself confronted with questions about who she is and what it means to be human.

Actresses Lineke Rijxman [5.240 Google hits] and Rosa van Leeuwen [1.820 hits] are performing in a play by guest director Davy Pieters [3.010 hits], who became a surprise hit at Boulevard 2014 with The Truth about Kate, a solo about behaving precisely as we present ourselves on the internet.

Pay attention! This performance has strobe effects.

concept: Davy Pieter en Lineke Rijxman
regie: Davy Pieters
performance: Lineke Rijxman Rosa van Leeuwen
text: Jibbe Willems
coproduction: Frascati Producties

This performance can be booked in combination with Tabea Martin – Pink for Girls and Blue for Boys for Sunday 12 August. Select one of these two performances and the combiticket option is offered.

Charming little Floortje rents out the unused space underneath her table to the penniless cobbler Dragomir. They get along smashingly together. But Floortje’s friends and family are not at all charmed by this good-for-nothing who gapes in jolly admiration, day in, day out, at his landlady’s legs. After Dragomir’s old friend joins him in the cosy space between the rug and the table top, Floortje and her lodgers receive some unexpected ‘help’.

Theatre maker Pippo Delbono [1959] has fifteen performers, people with a disability and street artists at his disposal. They have placed themselves in the service of art, and of him – the Italian Grand Master. He turns the fifteen into living paintings. But these will never hang level, because Delbono has a soft spot for lives that have come out of joint. One of his performers is Bobò, a deaf-mute man who spent 45 years in a mental home before becoming part of this much talked-about company.

Orchids is a chain of intriguing, baroque collages. Delbono toys with references to Catholicism and homosexuality and likes to blur the boundaries between what is real and what is fake. His tableaus are so drenched in symbolism and emotions that many of them drip from their frames. His textual inspiration comes from the likes of Shakespeare, Kerouac, Deep Purple and Büchner. For Pippo Delbono the orchid is the most enchanting of flowers, and the most depraved at the same time, “because you cannot see whether it is real or fake – just like the times we are living in right now.” A hallucinatory Gesamtkunstwerk about lying the truth.

La Repubblica” “A beautiful piece of work, full of rare tenderness. It tells us who Pippo Delbono really is: the craziest, least polished, most exaggerated talent in Italian theatre.”
The Timeout: "It moves you, cracks you up; it bludgeons you with its force, and shakes you with its fragile beauty."
Napolike: "The theater returns to its original role: to desperately find meaning in life. To continue, despite everything, to talk about love."

Dutch premiere

Spoken in Italian, Dutch and English surtitles

concept | regie | film | image: Pippo Delbono
performance: Dolly Albertin, Gianluca Ballarè, Bobò, Margherita Clemente, Pippo Delbono, Ilaria Distante, Simone Goggiano, Mario Intruglio, Nelson Lariccia, Gianni Parenti, Pepe Robledo, Grazia Spinella
production: Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione, Teatro di Roma, Nuova Scena - Arena del Sole - Teatro Stabile di Bologna, Théâtre du Rond Point - Parigi, Maison de la Culture d’Amiens - Centre de Création et de Production

A double suicide? What nonsense. A tragic love affair, sure: neither Juliet nor Romeo would deny it was that. But an end-of-life clinic on speed dial? Come on. Where Shakespeare ended their tragedy with a flourish, the two of them stayed the course, pining away for each other. It even led to a marriage. Now Romeo and his Juliet are in their disillusioned forties, attending couple’s therapy. We get to witness their bittersweet fights, alongside the first time they met, danced and had sex. Then the children were born. The rest is howling history.

Juliet and Romeo is intelligent, accessible dance theatre. Its theme: the lies we tell ourselves about love. In 2016 Ben Duke stole Boulevard hearts and minds with Paradise Lost. Now he is on his knees, begging to Solène, who sits ruminating. Popcorn, the past. A touching, wry, and loving piece.

The Guardian: “Smart, subversive and sexy” *****
The Stage: “A goddamn masterpiece.” *****

Dutch premiere

English spoken, Dutch surtitles

concept: Ben Duke
performance | dance: Ben Duke en Solène Weinachter

Lost Dog / Ben Duke is present on the 7th of August at Talk of the Town.

This performance can be booked in combination with Bonte Hond – IK for Tuesday 7 August. Select one of these two performances and the combiticket option is offered.

If you use the audio description, please announce your arrival via: toegankelijkheid@festivalboulevard.nl 
Then we reserve a place for you.

Onverschrokken, ontembaar en onaangepast. Drie O’s waar veiligheidsdeskundigen al snel zenuwachtig van raken. Liz Aggiss niet, want deze O’s vormen haar karakterbeschrijving.

In de soloperformance Slap and Tickle stelt ze de oudere vrouw en haar lichaam centraal. Intens onderzoekt ze situaties waarin de vrouw in opstand komt tegen sociale codes, aannames en haar eigen naïviteit. Dat levert een explosieve mix van punk, anarchie, hedendaagse dansperformance, protest en maatschappelijk debat op, gedrenkt in zoutzurige humor.

In 1986 ondersteunde ze The Stranglers met haar visuele cabarettroep The Wild Wigglers; in 2017 won ze de Total Theatre Award Edinburgh Festival, de oogst van dertig jaar compromisloze fysieke performances, dansfilms en choreografieën.

The Guardian: “Puntig en verbluffend grappig.”
Seeing Dance.com: “Rauwe, ongeremde humor, die een hele wereld van vooroordelen met betrekking tot seksen ontmaskert.”
Exeunt Magazine: "Part fever-dream burlesque, part twisted nursery rhyme, it explores the dichotomy of societal expectations of women."

Nederlandse première

Engels gesproken

concept | performance: Liz Aggiss
There is an after-talk following the performance on Friday the 10th and Saturday the 11th of August at 9.30 pm with Liz Aggiss.

Deze voorstelling is voordelig in combinatie te boeken met Wild Vlees | Frascati Producties – Dear friend, wolves have always eaten sheep voor zaterdag 11 augustus. Selecteer één van deze twee voorstellingen en de optie combiticket wordt aangeboden.

Unannounced, a young country singer-with-guitar stepped onto a crate during Boulevard 2015. Stunning vocals, swooning audiences. It was Pete Buijs, here on holiday from Chicago. Long live traditions: every night at 10 PM, a different singer-songwriter will be giving a [free] show beneath the chestnut tress outside LOF restaurant.

Guitar picking drenched in reverb. Pounding beats. A dopy but sick little organ. Pulsating bass vibes. Add these up and you get The Akulas from Ghent: catchy instrumental surf riding waves of ska and garage.

Just for once housewife Frida would like to shine. In her own big show! She believes in perseverance, control and an eye for detail. Until she realises people have minds of their own. As do machines. A tragic comedy.

Together with Theater met Tolk (from our flag bearers Frank Allard and Aschwin van Leeuwen), we organize a signing café in the bar opposite Theater aan de Parade on 11 August from 3 pm onwards. Here, besides a lot of fun, we provide enough light and a bar worker who speaks fluent sign language!

During this day there are several tent performances available for people with a hearing impairment! Some people have a sign language interpreter. More information will soon follow on which performances these are!

A jigsaw jungle: five artists wriggle, throw and stack themselves onto a tall heap of puzzle pieces. The sum of what we do is a physically masterful piece that offers not a millisecond of predictability. The sum of this Rotterdam-based company: high score.

A book of poetry inspired Kim-Jomi Fischer [1985] and Marta Alstadsaeter [1990] to create their show Engel. One of them is a circus acrobat, the other a dancer. In a physical dialogue the two melt together, juxtaposing body weight with balance.

Everything has been put in place for a wild party. The four performers – two men and two women – are ready to roll. They start roughhousing and grow wilder and wilder. And every time they take a tumble or mouth someone off, the realisation grows that the crazy-in-a-good-way dance show Pink for Girls & Blue for Boys deals with the delineation between boys and girls.

The starting material for the Swiss choreographer Tabea Martin were talks she had with children. Are tears ever pink? Or blue? How and when does the inescapable dichotomy between boys and girls begin? The four dancers are throwing all the prejudices and clichés about gender on a big giant heap and start a bonfire. It’s party time, and time to neatly wipe the floor with every unwritten law of theatre for young audiences. Pink for Girls & Blue for Boys is an absurdist dance show that invites everyone to playfully cross old boundaries. P.S. the grammatical gender of the word boundary? Female. For now.

choreografy: Tabea Martin
dramaturgy: Irina Müller
dance: Carl Staaf, Maria de Dueñas Lopez, Miguel Do Vale, Melanie Wirz

Tabea Martin is present on the 11th of August at Talk of the Town.

This performance can be booked in combination with mugmetdegoudentand | Davy Pieters – The Gentle Woman for Sunday 12 August. Select one of these two performances and the combiticket option is offered.

He has criss-crossed the world: from Brazil to Portugal to Belgium. He has worked with top choreographers like Wim Vandekeybus [Ultima Vez]. As Raizes he is showing us a dazzling form of dance from Brazil.

concept: Ricardo Ambrózio 
creation, interpretation:  Alison Clarke, Claudio Rabeca, Pieter Desmet
original music: Claudio Rabeca
costumes: Renata Lamenza 
costume assistance: Cisse Royens 
co-production: Ilú Dança Teatro
Special thanks to CC De Werft, CC Wolubilis, Maison de la Creation, Workspace Brussels, GC De Kriekelaar, Ultima Vez, Jenna Jalonen, Beno Novak, Luis García López (Fruta) Marina Abib, Mufutau Yusuf, Rodrigo Ramalho Dominique Pollet

In 2017 the Familiar Faces four graduated from Fontys Academy for Circus and Performance Art in Tilburg. And last autumn they won the BNG Bank Circus Prize: watch them cartwheeling for joy. Not where this came from is a highly physical show in constant danger of collapsing. An ode to falling down, getting back up and sometimes keeping still.

Mother Jopie [88] intends not to die, ever. Daughter Minou [44] has promised to help her achieve it. Mother dances and teaches us the art of living. Start your day with an empty bowel – you can’t think on a congested one. Make sure you have at least one living houseplant. Sing every day, for those you have forgotten. What are the consequences of mother’s lust for life for her daughter?

During two festive evenings that may end up as life-prolonging dance parties, old age is shown to entail so much besides deterioration, lack of care and end-of-life plans. A reverse euthanasia, says Minou Bosua.

After these previews, which are called Minoux zwiert met moeder richting eeuwigheid, een levensverlengend dance event the show Moeder mag niet dood [Mother musn’t die] will premiere in the Verkadefabriek this October.

idea en text: Minou Bosua, developed in collaboration with Maasja Ooms
performance: Minou Bosua en Jopie Bosua

Performing Gender: Dance makes differences is a comprehensive project initiated by six European festivals – including Boulevard in collaboration with DansBrabant – and five choreographers, five dramaturgs and fifty dancers from five countries [Spain, Slovenia, England, Italy and the Netherlands]. They are using dance to research the theme of gender, identity and/or sexual preference. The objective: to encourage people talking about the subject. During Boulevard they will be talking to [‘hands-on’] experts, giving people from ‘s-Hertogenbosch a workshop, and working on their solos at Bank van Leening. The results will be presented on Saturday 11 August.

Please Note: Boulevard 2018 offers a range of shows featuring gender, traditional male/ female roles, love relationships and ultimate machismo, such as Orchids by Pippo Delbono [IT], Pink for Girls… by Tabea Martin [CH], Slap & Tickle by Liz Aggiss [GB] and 71Bodies, 1Dance by Daniel Mariblanca [ES].

They are the Google Translate of Dutchlanguage beat music, or ‘nederbiet’. But far more exciting. Just hand these five sharpdressed men an English song lyric and The Kik is sure to produce a Dutch re-wording that is so smooth it surpasses even the original. They first caused a storm as the in-house band on daily talkshow De Wereld Draait Door.

Since then they have given forty hits new lyrics, in Dutch. On the Giel Beelen Show they performed a rewrite of In Your Arms by Chef’ Special, and on Radio 1 they played Bankje in de zon set to The Kinks’ Sunny Afternoon.

For their theatre concert show The Kik Hertaalt! this group of musicians have selected their very best. Frontman Dave von Raven will be revealing the stories behind the greatest hits.

regie: Gérard van Kalmthout
music: Dave von Raven, Marcel Groenewegen, Arjan Spies, Ries Doms en Paul Zoontjens

The year is 1095 – it’s the depths of the Middle Ages, and religious fanaticism is everywhere. The young Flemish monk Bennie goes on the run. He ends up in what is left of Cordoba, where the last caliph has been chased out after centuries of Moorish rule.

1095 is a broken mirror doling out some nasty cuts to today’s world with leaders yelling, religion flaring up and undocumented drifters roaming the land. But 1095 is more than mere lament or satire. It is a story of love’s blindness, physical intoxication and betrayal. The stagecraft is energetic and unpredictable. At Boulevard 2016 they created complete disorder with The Winter’s Tale. And 1095 matches its daring, maniacal and overwhelming abundance.

regie: Lisaboa Houbrechts
performance: Seppe Decubber, Maxime Rouquart, Lobke Leirens, Romy Louise Lauwers, Victor Lauwers
text: Victor Lauwers
scenography: Oscar van der Put
coproduction: Monty Kultuurfaktorij en Toneelhuis

Lisaboa Houbrechts / Kuiperskaai is present on the 12th of August at Talk of the Town.

Unannounced, a young country singer-with-guitar stepped onto a crate during Boulevard 2015. Stunning vocals, swooning audiences. It was Pete Buijs, here on holiday from Chicago. Long live traditions: every night at 10 PM, a different singer-songwriter will be giving a [free] show beneath the chestnut tress outside LOF restaurant.

A high-energy rock ’n roll band powered by a pumping piano. An ode to Jerry Lee Lewis aka The Killer, the fifties and sixties. Including Great Balls of Fire and Johnny B. Goode? Frontman Jeroen Sweers grins a telling grin.

At the Muzerije building the cream of the crop from Fontys School of Fine and Performing Arts will be presenting their graduation projects. An expert jury decides who gets the coveted FONTYS ENTRÉE PRIZE 2018. There are two trophies: one for performing artist and one for arts teacher. The award ceremony will be held on Sunday 12 August at 2.00 PM.

Behind the steamed up windows of a garden greenhouse, four men in tailored suits are doing an a capella performance of a Schubert song: “Wie schön bist du”. A woman – a real one, in high heels, red suit and a pearl necklace – is trying desperately to rid herself of her very loud crop.

Echte vrouwen joggen in regenpak [A real woman would jog in rainproof gear] is a hilarious exploration of shifting four-part harmonies and the number of men that can fit inside a compost bin. But first and foremost this imaginative music theatre show is a statement about the thing any real woman wants: some time to herself.

Seventeen years ago Jetse Batelaan [1978] made this show with Elien van den Hoek. The two share a love of sophisticated simplicity and surreal slapstick. Boulevard regards Echte vrouwen joggen in regenpak as part of the canon of Dutch theatre. During the festival this remake will be performed at the Josephkwartier, with all the windows flung wide open – for good reasons. N.B. Are you allergic to endive? Contact your GP.

concept and regie: Jetse Batelaan and Elien van den Hoek
performance: Marie Groothof, Hendrik Kegels, Mees Walter, Coen Bril, Jelle Hoekstra and many others

This performance can be booked in combination with Compagnia Pippo Delbono - Orchids for Friday 10 August. Select one of these two performances and the combiticket option is offered.

If you use the audio description, please announce your arrival via: toegankelijkheid@festivalboulevard.nl
Then we reserve a place for you.

Viçosa is a small town in Brazil. The local Tourist Office can give you two fun facts about the town. In reverse order of importance: former president Artur Bernades was born here. And, more importantly: so was Grupo Impacto de Dança, those kids who teach the art of urban dance and hip hop in underprivileged districts. Three Screams is the name of their exciting dance show: one before, one during and one after their escape from exclusion.

general direction: Patrícia Lima, Lidiane Jacinto
artistic direction: Mario Nascimento
choreographic assistant: Rosa Antuña
urban and contemporary dance workshop: Fábio Costa
dancers: Adriano Luis Ramos, Alex Luis Ramos, Cleison Lana, Felipe Viana, Jean Carlo do Nascimento, Luís Filipe Claudino, Marco Antônio de Jesus, Rafael Gregório, Rafael Tiko, Rariel Escolástico, Wellington Júlio, Sávio Caetano and Marco Antônio de Jesus
lighting project: Patricia Lima and Arlindo Batista
sound and lighting technician: Rodrigo Alves
executive production (Brasil): Patrícia Lima
promotion and executive production (Europe): Fadas e Elfos – Associação Cultural
production assistants: Renata Brandão, Lilian Moura
photography: Reyner Araujo
marketing, communication and graphic design: Rita Márcia Costa
press office: Lílian Moura
sponsors: Incentive Law for Culture of Brazil, Haskell Cosmetica Natural, Buffet Trigo Leve, Help Loja de Creditos, Ministry of Cultrue from Brazil - Federal Government

Few things are as intoxicating as Eau de Cologne mixed with Schnapps on a sultry summer evening. Follow the scent and you will find yourself inside this Berlin cabaret. Enter at your own peril, of course, because all the singing and the satire are sure to go to your head.

Les Âmes Perdues is a piece of music theatre that will knock you out if you’re not careful, featuring work by Francis Poulenc, Benjamin Britten, Kurt Weill, Edith Piaf, Jacques Brel and others. With Les Âmes Perdues, Muziektheater Transparant is moving into new territory where self-mockery, parody and sensuality rule. Welcome to the 1920s: war is coming, money makes the world go around, and the only thing we know for sure is that tomorrow may never come. Dansez, dansez!

regie: Wouter Van Looy
music: Francis Poulenc, Benjamin Britten, Kurt Weill, Mischa Spoliansky, Friedrich Hollaender, Edith Piaf, Jacques Brel, Erik Satie
text: Karl Valentin, Bertolt Brecht, Paul Van Ostaijen and others
performance and vocals: Isaak Duerinck, Naomi Beeldens, Alexandra Oppo, Ewout Lehoucq

Unannounced, a young country singer-with-guitar stepped onto a crate during Boulevard 2015. Stunning vocals, swooning audiences. It was Pete Buijs, here on holiday from Chicago. Long live traditions: every night at 10 PM, a different singer-songwriter will be giving a [free] show beneath the chestnut tress outside LOF restaurant.