I am an Amsterdam based theatre maker. I like to work on the intersection of theatre, visual art, literature, social science and gaming. In the past ten years, I have made several lifesize board games, interacting in diverse ways with an audience: STRANGER (2012), RULE (2014), THIS CAN’T HAPPEN (2017) and FOREST (2020).
I think of my theatre as a societal laboratory, in which the visitor always takes position, both consciously and unconsciously. With these social playgrounds I want to offer the audience a possibility to investigate attitudes and actions at the point where the personal and the political meet.
Joe Kelleher (professor at Roehampton University in London) has written something about my work that I like:
‘It is complex (always) without being complicated, and that is a precious quality. Perhaps it is through what she understands of language and what she credits her audience, her collaborators, to be capable of, that she enables understanding in others: the sort of understanding that is ever entertaining, although the sort of entertainment that is never without its complexities.
I initiate my own projects, and I also work on commision, for example as writer and director of the ‘junior production’ of Toneelgroep Amsterdam, a project with a big group of engaged adolescents. I teach, mainly in art education and I work as a researcher at DAS graduate school in Amsterdam. My research involves ways to speak about interaction in art and the ‘social knowledge’ that can arise from it. I was a member of ‘Het Transitiebureau’ (‘The Transition Office’), which investigates possible roles of art in our society and I was co-founder of ‘The Agenda’, a discussion platform for the performing arts sector in the Netherlands.
I hold an MA in Dutch Language and Literature from the University of Groningen, studied Performance at the Theatre School in Maastricht and have been part of DasArts, the performance master in Amsterdam. In 2013 I founded Stichting Stranger, which produces my work.
My work is produced by Stichting Stranger
Board members: Anke Bangma, Martha van Meegen, Tobias Kokkelmans