A philanthropist – one who still genuinely believes in progress – builds a ship. However much like a fable it may seem, Pieter De Buysser’s planetarium production was inspired by contemporary socio-political realities. Take a chance on this border exploration for nationalists, homeland research for cosmopolitans, and cosmology of a new worldview.

When you read, you make choices. You translate what you read into the language of your life. A book like Tolstoi’s Anna Karenina could also be the collection of lives it has changed, for better or for worse. In this first play Tiago Rodrigues writes for tg STAN, he convincingly builds a bridge between the actors of the Portuguese Teatro Nacional and those of STAN.

Experience what lies at the root of human contact, and how a group can come together in a very direct way. To look at one another without speaking is highly intense. This encounter is based on the annual meeting of Inuit leaders, which is conducted without speaking.

The American quantum physicist David Bohm takes as his premise the self-regulating way in which a group of people functions. You never think alone, but are always linked to the thinking of others. Thus a discussion is the ideal place in which to research and maintain the patterns of this collective thinking – without a moderator.

Forced Entertainment performs Shakespeare’s complete works in only six days. In 36 mini plays that are as funny and fascinating as they are accessible, the theatre pioneers demonstrate their impressive storytelling power yet again. The cast? Everyday home, garden, and kitchen objects. The stage? A one-metre table top.

In 1918, as WW1 was gradually drawing to a close, François Georges Picot and Mark Sykes – a French and a British diplomat respectively – were studying the map of the Middle East. In a secret agreement, they redrew the borders, and the consequences of this act can still be felt today. In Vanishing State, Lucien Bourjeily gives you the chance to go through this exercise afresh, in the full knowledge of what has happened in the Levant over the past hundred years.

Four big screens show a busy street in Jerusalem’s Old Town and the everyday situations that take place there. You hear a voice-over in which Western expats informally – and occasionally even brashly – talk about a culture that is foreign to them.

In this video installation, Els Dietvorst allows the residents of a small Irish fishing village to speak. The pressure caused by European fishing quotas threatens the village’s survival. Dietvorst sets the deeply human individual stories against the backdrop of the wider European political and economic situation.

Inspired by the theory of Bruno Latour and by Aboriginal rituals, you question the relationship between people and things. Is it acceptable for us to speak in the name of things? Or might another relationship conceivably be created, in which we abandon the anthropocentric point of view and see the future from the things’ perspective?

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.

In Rabih Mroué’s video The Pixelated Revolution, a Syrian man uses his telephone to film a sniper shooting him. Smartphones have an unmistakeable revolutionary and commercial potential, but where are the obstacles?