Spaghetti Western
Aurelie Di Marino Renée Goethijn
A world of cowboys, outlaws, heroes, and anti-heroes opens up amidst dirty plates, empty bottles, and shattered glasses. Someone gets their head bashed in for no reason. Christ’s cross is shot to pieces, and a duel using the rubble ensues. Starting from a prologue full of violence and clichés, Spaghetti Western questions the hypocrisy of the new imperialist Western policy. A satirical and epic-historical deconstruction of our (so-called) post-war history.
In this performance, the Wild West is not located in the 19th century, nor in the US. On the contrary. We find ourselves in the Wild West here, everywhere, and now. Images of violence can no longer be banished from daily life. Propaganda justifying Western policy within the geopolitical order is also omnipresent – to such an extent, in fact, that we are beginning to consider it normal. Meanwhile, polarization and unease are growing among the citizenry.
With Spaghetti Western, the actors and theatre-makers Aurelie Di Marino, Renée Goethijn, Femke Stallaert, Michiel Soete, Oscar Briou, Edoardo Ripani, Oxana Sankova, Atta Nasser, Nona Buhrs, Roel Faes, Paola Bartoletti, Yuni Mahieu, Giovanni Barcella, Kaat Arnaert, Tomas Pevenage, and Anthony Chang draw inspiration from the Italian film genre of the same name, the critical variant of the classic American Western, that flourished in the late 1960s.
• Aurelie Di Marino (b. 1986) is a theatre-maker and director. She studied Literary Studies at KU Leuven and obtained a Master in Directing at RITCS School of Arts in Brussels in 2013. In her work, she moves between theatre, performance, and research, developing a distinct artistic trajectory, both individually and within long-term collaborations and collectives. Her artistic practice is characterized by a strong interest in ideology, power, ethics, and collective mythology. She has performed as an actor and maker on stage and in exhibition contexts, and has been involved in productions at venues including Kaaitheater, Antigone, Beursschouwburg, theater arsenaal, detheatermaker, and Buda. From 2013 to 2022, she was one of the core members of Koekelberg Alliance of Crafters (K.A.K.), a collective that, via artistic occupations of public and abandoned spaces in Belgium and internationally, investigated self-organization, community, and artistic autonomy. Since 2022 she has been working on Malgré Tout, a multi-year chronicle of Western ‘civilization’ that premiered in Brussels in June 2025, a collaboration between Kaaitheater and Théâtre Varia.
• Renée Goethijn (b. 1987, BE, she/her) studied in the makers' program at the RITCS School of Arts in Brussels. She explores the boundaries between theatre and visual art, creating visual, absurd performances in which the scenography often forms the core of the production. In doing so, she creates bizarre parallel realities that expose the principles and mechanisms that steer and determine our societal reality. Since her graduation, Renée’s artistic work has consisted of a continuous interplay between an individual trajectory, collective practices, and other collaborations. She founded Koekelberg Alliance of Crafters (K.A.K.) in 2014 with a number of other former RITCS students – a horizontal alliance of 16 theatre-makers, tinkerers, thinkers, and other charlatans in search of alternative forms of creation, presentation, and collectivity. With K.A.K. she has created Office de Tourisme/ Agence de Voyage (2016), Life, Death and Television (2018), Snøw (2019), The Unheard (2020). At Kunstenwerkplaats (KWP), she created 4 Women Getting Sick (2025), a co-production of Kaaitheater, Viernulvier, Antigone, C-takt/Beyond the black box, among other productions.
Van en met Aurelie Di Marino, Renée Goethijn, Tomas Pevenage, Kaat Arnaert, Femke Stallaert, Michiel Soete, Oscar Briou, Edoardo Ripani, Oxana Sankova, Atta Nasser, Nona Buhrs, Roel Faes, Paola Bartoletti, Giovanni Barcella, Yuni Mahieu, Anthony Chang, Anne-Catherine Kunz | Productie KWP Kunstenwerkplaats | Coproductie Toneelhuis, De Grote Post, Kaaitheater, De Brakke Grond | Met de steun van De Vlaamse Gemeenschap, Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie | Met dank aan NtGent
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