In 1993 Jolente De Keersmaeker and Damiaan De Schrijver, together with Julien Schoenaerts, created Gewoon Ingewikkeld, based on Einfach Kompliziert by Thomas Bernhard. It was inevitable that Bernhard would continue to be one of STAN’s fellow travellers. Now the theatre company presents three Bernhard adaptations as a trilogy: a true Bernhard marathon that is around six hours long.

What is nature saying to us? Myriam Van Imschoot carried out research in a zoo, lay down beside a motorway with a trilling tuning fork, and discovered birds in the woods whose songs imitated chainsaws and ring tones. What Nature Says is a radiophonic performance that slowly calls into question your ideas about human beings, nature and machines.

A prostitute in a North African country during the Arab Spring immerses you in the everyday drag of clients who come and go. Rachid Benzine – Europe’s great herald of enlightened Islam – wrote the text for the Palestinian film actress Hiam Abbass. Director Ruud Gielens opted for a staging that is as restrained as it is intense. After its première last season – two days after the Brussels attacks – it is time to reprise the production.

Three singers/performers create a succession of intriguing tableaux vivants. Ivo Dimchev’s stream of consciousness simultaneously appears on the rear wall. He harnesses the power of the voice, extreme theatricality and a whole arsenal of temperament, and goes in search of what opera is and can be.

A group of twelve performers explores the mystery of pleasure. In a long, sensual movement bodies touch, test, and lose their borders. They vibrate, entering into contact and  composition with their environment, forming unexpected constellations. Mette Ingvartsen looks seven concepts of pleasure straight in the eye.