Please don't make love to me, I'm exhausted - DeRonde/Deroo

A humorous and moving performance about survival through chasing small moments of happiness.

In Please don't make love to me, I'm exhausted, three figures each search for meaning in their own way. A clown in an interrogation room stares tragicomically ahead - though that might be the smudged makeup - and stubbornly keeps folding balloon animals while the questions keep coming. A merman drags himself forward, gasping, craving the last drops of water to feel like a fish one more time. Two stand-up comedians desperately try to coax a laugh from an audience that stares back coldly. The same question echoes throughout: how do you move forward when everything around you is crumbling?

DeRonde/Deroo - Tom de Ronde (28) and Nick Deroo (36) - creates cinematic, physical and acrobatic theatre. The body is their starting point; they explore its (im)possibilities to achieve poetic and unpredictable expression. In 2025, the duo received the Wim Bary Stipendium from the Cultuurfonds for their promising work.