The diptych Manon and Jean van Florette tells the story of an urbanite who takes up residence in a village in le Midi. This ‘alien’ is not really welcome. Comp. Marius performs with a minimal set and a maximum of imagination, in the open air and by daylight. 

Las Ideas draws us into the life and mental universe of an artist. We see the transformation of an idea at work from the inside: how it takes shape, grows and acquires a definitive expression.

How many lies, chance encounters and mishaps have actually determined history as we know it? In his new creation, Jan Lauwers travels through history by way of the family trees of all Needcompany’s members. The Blind Poet is about strong women who throw stones and end up on the stake. About a crusader whose suit of armour is too small.

Stand-up philosopher Laura van Dolron considers whether she can teach herself and you how to love. A heart-breaking, hilarious performance; poetic, familiar and outspoken.

An older man and a young woman have drawn up and signed a contract. The man receives the young woman in his house. She will remain here, says the contract, ‘until what must happen has happened’. In this performance the writer and director Peter Verhelst pays tribute to the recently deceased French director Alain Resnais.

Theatre-maker and writer Pieter De Buysser and the Estonian artist Maike Lond are creating a performance inspired by the life of Clara Immerwahr. The wife of Fritz Haber, father of chemical warfare. Clara Immerwahr, a brilliant chemist herself, tried to resist her husband's cocktails of war and science.

In Next Day, the Parisian director Philippe Quesne catapults us into another world. Thirteen children between the ages of 8 and 11 live in a bizarre microcosm without adults. Here dream and reality, music and language, loneliness and group spirit are intertwined.

In Schiller’s drama Maria Stuart, two legendary queens from European history are at each other’s throats: Elizabeth I of England and Mary Stuart of Scotland. Behind the masks of political power stand two women of flesh and blood. Ivo Van Hove directs a ten-member cast, drawn from the companies of Toneelgroep Amsterdam and Toneelhuis.

Theatre maker Laila Soliman looks for the story of the 1919 Egyptian revolution in songs, plays and archives. Into this she weaves the story of two theatre divas of that time – the first Muslim women ever to perform on stage, thus unleashing a revolution in theatre and in the lives of many Muslim women. Are there parallels with today’s Tahrir uprisings? 

In Sounds like War: Kriegserklärung, the Berlin-based performance group andcompany&Co. looks for the relationship between performance art and the art of warfare, creating a sound of battle with space for many voices – maybe an alternative to the so-called ‘concert of European powers’. Davis Freeman closes the evening with a devious performance on violence: What You Need To Know.

Ten million soldiers were killed in WWI. Director Luk Perceval gives them a human face in an evocative polyphony. FRONT gives an impression of life on both sides of this front line: with accounts and characters based on documents of the time, and live music.