Ophelia Comes to Brooklyn is a theatre script that Antje Katcher wrote in 1982. In 1967, when she was 20 years old, she emigrated from a small German town to New York City. When she died in 2014, she left an inheritance for her niece: Katja Dreyer. Now, by staging Ophelia Comes to Brooklyn, three actors are attempting to decipher the story – the play and Antje’s life itself.

In Museum of Lungs, author and performer Stacy Hardy talks about her life with TBC, about the years before the diagnosis, and about her treatments since. She combines intimate, personal testimonies with historical archival materials. Together with musicians Neo Muyanga and Nancy Mounir, director Laila Soliman and Hardy also show how vulnerability and disease can initiate resistance and change.

Two theatre makers. One from Bagdad, the other from Amsterdam. Together, they perform nine miniatures which together form on theatre evening. It is the search of two wandering souls for common ground, rooted in the Great Themes. De verse tijd is an encounter between two men who are sometimes diametrically opposed, but who can also be fraternally supportive.

Annie Dorsen takes you on a sublime journey through the digital infinity in the dark of an inflatable planetarium. A lone performer reads texts culled from comments on the internet. Gradually, fragments of narrative emerge from the online chatter.

In Dream Mandé – Djata, Rokia Traore narrates the epic of King Soundiata Keita, the unifier of the great 13^th-century Mandé Empire. Traoré blends classic songs by the Mandé griots into her narrative. These poets and singers were responsible for a unique form of oral history. It is thanks to them that the story of Soundiata Keita survives. The King based his power on respect and not on greed or violence.

They’ve had enough of lonely nights onstage, so Laura van Dolron and Willem de Wolf from the KOE want to answer all your questions. The actors search and struggle, assisted by two musicians. Every evening, this results in a live philosophical theatre concert full of poetry, thought, action, hope and despair…and ultimately there is perhaps one answer that transcends all questions.

What is theatre? What do emotions and history signify on the stage? Faustin Linyekula shows his personal perspective on the history of dance and theatre in Africa. To what extent does the past define the present and even the future? Accompanied by music by Ray Lema, he challenges the basic techniques of “real theatre”.