Het Zuidelijk Toneel creates theatre. Artistic director Piet Menu and a diverse group of theater makers from the Netherlands and Flanders (Belgium) have built an open, engaging and multifaceted theater company. The best makers under one roof. Het Zuidelijk Toneel and its makers are bound by an inherent drive to enter into dialogue with the audience. Challenging, evocative. Our work takes place in the real world, and the real world is part of our art making process. Our central theme: connection to The Other and how we see ourselves within that reflection. HZT has been based in Tilburg since 2010. Het Zuidelijk Toneel is a national theatre company with a focus on the Brabant Region of the Netherlands.
Meet the Millennials
In theatrical lecture performance Meet the Millenials creator Lucas De Man (NL/BE) takes you on a fascinating trip: lightning fast you travel through six megacities in Asia. During the performance you meet a contemporary generation of hope in Seoul, Singapore, Taipei, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Shenzhen. The dedicated millennials, of both Europe and Asia, share the futuristic challenges of a rapidly changing and sometimes terrifying world.
Europe and Asia may know cultural differences, mostly we share common ground as we try to live the good life. How do we deal with progressive ideas on love and sex, while committing to traditional community values? And how do we face the future that keeps on closing in as robotics take over daily life? The performance play is a combination of film footage, documentary, manga animations, storytelling and the most unlikely encounters with artists, scientists, social activists, students and professors.
Meet the Millennials inspires. It connects stories of daily life, work, education, artificial intelligence, emancipation and individual happiness in megacities. Lucas De Man shows the mind blowing effects of radical, fast forward thinking change. It is the story of a taboo breaking generation in East and West.
Fotograaf Phile Deprez
De Man door Europa, een theatraal reisverslag
De Man in Europe
Assaults on European territory, closing borders and refugees stuffed in trains. There is a pressure on European society that we cannot deny anymore. The developments that our continent is dealing with, are at the base of De Man in Europe. For this solo-performance Lucas De Man travelled through Europe, visiting 17 cities in 8 countries and conducting interviews with more than 20 creators that are rooting for change and are all working on remodeling the society that they live in. Back here in the Netherlands, Lucas takes you with him on his journey and through Europe’s history.
In the press:
“Lucas De Man grabs his audience in a passionate way.” ★★★★ de Volkskrant
“De Man is a charming theatre personality with an opinionated view, who effortlessly guides his audience through philosophical or scientific, sometimes very complex, discourses.” Trouw
“Very rarely does a show cause such insight into current affairs.” Cultuurpers
For one month, Lucas and his team travelled through cities in the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Italy, Spain, Germany, Turkey and Greece. They spoke with historians about some of Europe’s great historic visionaries such as Jheronimus Bosch, Erasmus, Thomas More and Luther as well as with contemporary creators: artists, creative minds and socially creative people in a wide sense. They are all researching new ways to form a society; to live together in this time of change. In De Man in Europe, Lucas creates a contrast between the current mindsets he encountered and those of the former transitory times; the change from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. In those days, a generation of visionaries emerged in Europe. In the short time-span of no more than 70 years they formed the base of modern Europe. Lucas will guide you through the main insights and controversies of a new generation of Europeans.
In the press:
“Lucas De Man grabs his audience in a passionate way.” ★★★★ de Volkskrant
“De Man is a charming theatre personality with an opinionated view, who effortlessly guides his audience through philosophical or scientific, sometimes very complex, discourses.” Trouw
“Very rarely does a show cause such insight into current affairs.” Cultuurpers
This performance is part of the cultural program of the Dutch Presidency of the European Union. It is coproduced by Het Zuidelijk Toneel and Company New Heroes in collaboration with Europe By People, JB500 and ECF.
De Man in Europe is part of the art project in Search of Europe. Discovering the Self. This project is coproduced by Het Zuidelijk Toneel and Company New Heroes, in collaboration with several (international) partners. For more information please see www.insearchofeurope.eu
Zvizdal. Een filmisch portret over twee mensen die in spookdorp wonen.
Zvizdal
A filmic portrait about two people, living in a ghost town.
A story about solitude and survival, the results of a failed atomic experiment.
1986. About 90 towns and villages around Pripyat are evacuated.
The failure of an atomic experiment causes a drastic change in the lives of the locals. They leave their houses never to return.
Pétro and Nadia, a married couple of 60-year-olds who were born and raised in Zvizdal, refuse to be evacuated. They prefer to stay put in their old village, in their own house. A ghost town. All their acquaintances have left, their plundered houses bear witness to better days. Petrified places, overgrown by nature.
Between 2011 and 2016 Berlin follows Pétro and Nadia in an effort to portray the evolution of their story over the years. How does one bear years of isolation? There is the lack of electricity, of running water and heating. There are the superstitions, there is the vodka, the muttering, the cursing and praying and singing, the toothaches, the ailments of old age, the 20-km walk to the nearest shop, the wait for someone from civilization.
Zvizdal draws a portrait of solitude, survival, poverty, hope and love between two elderly people in their eighties surrounded by colourless, odourless but omnipresent radiation.
Yellow Banana
Voted #1 Attraction. Take a jaw-dropping journey across the continent and celebrate the 250 million years anniversary of the Eurasian Plate.
Immerse yourself into the rich heritage of the yet unknown! Yellow Banana will bring to life the spirit of Eurasia.
‘I want to have fun, fun with myself, fun with you, fun with them and fun with us. A moment of freedom in a freaking world!’ Olivia Hyunsin Kim
Olivia Hyunsin Kim (Siegen/Germany, 1987) is a choreographer and performance artist. As ddanddarakim she collaborates with various artists.
ACT
Samuel Beckett – poet, writer, winner of the Nobel Prize – was not optimistic about men’s fate. Multi-artist Kris Verdonck explores Beckett’s ideas on mankind – mankind on the edge of extinction – with a mix of theatre, video-art and science.
Beckett’s Stories and Texts for Nothing (1946-1952) – about an old man and his impossible quest to find a place for himself in the world – forms the fundament of ACT, with renowned actor Johan Leysen, who stages the texts of Beckett. Before and after the performance visitors can visit the video-installation and the lecture (on video) of Jean Paul Van Bendegem, professor of logic and philosophy of science.
With this trail, artist and theatre director Kris Verdonck explores the fascination he shares with Beckett for technology and the growing battle between man and machine. Is there still a place for mankind in a world where machines are becoming even more sophisticated in their capability of replacing humans? A world that mankind itself is leading to a successful destruction?
TAL.kshow
For the digital edition of teh Holland Festival 2.0 2.0 BOG. & Het Zui8delijk Toneel will hold a short talkshow about language.
Follow everything live on June 20th via www.hollandfestival.nl
A philosophical, absurdist wordless composition all about words The average adult has a
vocabulary of 40,000 words. These words enable us to express ourselves, communicate
and give meaning to things. At the same time, words are often limiting or even confusing.
In TAL., the Flemish-Dutch theatre makers that make up BOG. have teamed up with
composer Jens Bouttery and a number of bilingual guest actors to dissect the most
important tool human beings have at their disposal: language. TAL. is an attempt to talk
about language without explicitly naming everything. Forming a ten strong choir, they go
in search of multilingual polyphony. Together they present a philosophical, absurd and
occasionally Dadaist concert in which language – which can connect us just as much as it
can divide us – is taken apart and put back together in wholly new ways.