Boogaerdt/VanderSchoot

Suzan Boogaerdt and Bianca van der Schoot have been working together ever since they graduated together from the Mime Department of the Amsterdam Theatre School in 1999. In 2016 Boogaerdt/VanderSchoot became key artistic associates of Theater Rotterdam. Since then they work in both Rotterdam and Berlin, where they co-create with Susanne Kennedy at the Volksbühne.

Boogaerdt/Vanderschoot create expressive, physical, bold and highly visual theatrical installations which revolve around the struggles and challenges people face in today’s media-driven world. They look for the relevance of theatre in the 21th century, and focus on the development of new theatrical shapes and idioms, that give space and meaning to our post humanity and the flexible and multiple identities that arise from it.

Ever since 2011 they have been working on a series of 'Visual Statements': theatrical representations of ‘la societé du spectacle’ and the role of image culture in our lives. Ours is a universe of representation, in which what's real slowly dies. With their Visual Statements-series, Boogaerdt and Van der Schoot are creating ground-breaking and troubling theatre of a special status in Dutch theatre. This series contains five performances: BIMBO, Small World, Spectacular performance, Hideous (wo)men (a co-operation with director Susanne Kennedy) and The Immortals. At the Venice Biennale 2017, they presented a selection of the series.

The artistic ongoing conversation with Susanne Kennedy was followed up after Hideous (wo)men ) by a radical adaptation of the Orpheus-legend, ORFEO, at the Ruhr Triennale in 2015, in collaboration with Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop. For the Volksbühne in Berlin they made two productions together: Women in Trouble (2017) and Coming Society (2019)

In 2019 Boogaerdt/VanderSchoot start with a new series Future Fossils, a tentacular art project about digital natives in a non-human era. The performance Botanical Wasteland, a co-creation with Touki Delphine, is the first part of the series.