In the spring of 2006 the four actors at Tg Stan (Jolente De Keersmaeker, Sara De Roo, Damiaan De Schrijver and Frank Vercruyssen) plan to make a new performance together without the participation of any outsiders; they have not done this since 1997. Itis called of / niet and it is based on texts by Harold Pinter and Alan Ayckbourn. Expect to a play and a performance with strong acting and a highly individual interpretation.

The director Josse De Pauw, screenwriter Marc Didden and musician Roland have set up a project for Het Toneelhuis based on the beat poets: Burroughs, Kerouac, Ginsberg and other distinguished kindred spirits. It is the portrait of an era and a wild generation. The performance is a cross between a reading and a concert. In addition to actors there are guest appearances by writers and musicians every evening.

During the 2004 Comedy Festival, Tristero presented the unique and critical soap, Abigail’s Party, by Mike Leigh. Tristero’s new performance, Play with repeats, is the work of yet another Briton, Martin Crimp. Crimp describes our turbulent world with humour and ruthless precision. In Play with repeats Tony looks back on his life on the eve of his fortieth birthday. Tristero takes you on a journey through time and various locations in the Kaaitheater Studios. The audience finds itself in a maze, a joke and a thriller.

Alan Ayckbourn (1939) is well-known for the comedies which, with their light touch, make palpable the hidden pain in relationships. In Kruistochten (The Norman Conquests, 1973), he follows six characters in the course of a weekend. A theatrical epic, lasting almost five hours and packed with hilarious drama and bitter comedy. This, Van Hove's first Ayckbourn, was selected for the 2005 Theatre Festival.

Hydrogen can produce clean energy. By 2020 plenty of cars will run on hydrogen. A revolution 'more significant than the invention of the computer and the internal combustion engine'. How will we handle it, or how will we be handled in this regard? KNOWH₂OW is a new energy piece, after the successful PIPELINES that Jan Ritsema and Bojana Cvejic produced in 2004 together with Dirk Roofthooft and Mette Ingvartsen.

A man and a woman take turns to speak. The woman tells the story of a relationship that has ended, and changes the story with each telling. The man tells a large number of different stories based on other people's lives; each story is a snapshot of a sorrow great or small. Exquisite Pain by the English group Forced Entertainment is an intimate performance based on the wonderful reading and picture book Douleur exquise by the French artist Sophie Calle.

In performances such as Just Before, I said I, Quartett and In Real Time, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and her sister Jolente (of Tg Stan) examine the relationship between language and movement. This also applies to Kassandra - speaking in twelve voices, which is danced to an English script written by Oscar van Woensel (see Dood Paard) for the seven female and five male dancers in Rosas. This new version of Kassandra comprises more dance material than in the first performance.

Dood Paard will perform all its Shakespeare adaptations in one series. The group will perform a revival of the three Roman tragedies on the violence of politics: Titus (adapted from Titus Andronicus), J.C. (adapted from Julius Caesar) and Coriolanus. Zomernachtliefde is a new comedy (based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream) about the violence of love, performed in collaboration with Tg Monk. The performances are ridiculous and moving, rhetorical and ordinary, and theatrical and cinematic all at the same time.

Jan Decorte was absent from the stage for slightly less than a year, but during that time wrote a great many plays, including the twin works & and "Burgaudine". & (and) is a visionary piece about Christ, Semira Adamu and the world. Decorte performs this play himself, in English. "Burgaudine" (French for mother-of-pearl) describes a world in which horror and beauty coincide. This play in French is danced and spoken by Sigrid Vinks.

Last season, at Toneelgroep Amsterdam, Ivo van Hove did a series on marriage, family and tutti quanti in which he himself directed three memorable productions: Scenes from a Marriage by Ingmar Bergman, The Norman Conquests, a profound comedy by Alan Ayckbourn (selected for the 2005 Theatre Festival) and The Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare. The last two will be included in this season’s programme.

Needcompany is our guest with the new production by Grace Ellen Barkey and a new Needlapb. Needlapbs are unpredictable ‘revues’ with ideas and sketches hatched by Jan Lauwers and his performers. Needlapb 11 concludes with a party.