Arends - TG Echo & de Poezieboys

In Arends, the Poezieboys and punk-poetic theatre group ECHO welcome the audience to a raw, self-sabotaging yet playful and humorous evening about poet Jan Arends. The performance consists of poetry, personal stories, tirades, nocturnal phone conversations and absurd fantasy worlds.

Jan Arends was one of the most uncompromising voices in Dutch literature. In his spare, razor-sharp poems, he wrote about loneliness, psychological suffering and the feeling of not belonging anywhere - sharp, unpredictable and difficult, but behind his anger lay a deeply wounded person. Using his work as a starting point, Anna Schoen, Joep Hendrikx and Jos Nargy ask: how much space do we make for people who don't fit?

Theatre group ECHO creates raw, absurdist and activist theatre that explores the edges of what is comfortable. Previously they created BUNKER (about living with fear and depression) and HOOPJE MENS, a science fiction thriller about identity and coexistence. The Poezieboys (Jos Nargy and Joep Hendrikx) bring literature, performance and music together in unsettling poetry performances and have previously performed at De Parade, Oerol and Lowlands. They previously created the performances GEESTEN, LORCA and PEREC.

Credits: concept, text and performance: Jos Nargy, Joep Hendrikx and Anna Schoen | direction: Jessie l'Herminez | text: Anne Hazeleger | set design: Noa Helder and Jessica Helbach | costumes: Sjaan Hofstede and Pleun Verhees | music: Amber Docters van Leeuwen | based on texts by Jan Arends