Performers

orangcosong & guests
IsLand Bar
/JPN, INA-SUI, CHN-NLD, PHL-GER, JPN-ITA, THA-CHN-GER, HKG-NLD, VNM-GER/

Island Bar is a performance project conflating cocktail-making and storytelling in a bar environment. Each of the migrant artists hosts an island to serve a signature cocktail (alcoholic or non-alcoholic), a political concoction of island histories and realities. 

As an audience member, you are invited to take a seat at the bar, taste, and listen. The informal cafe setting is transformed into a space for intimacy and conversation. IslandBar is an invitation to share a drink and rethink the narratives that shape our social and cultural identities.

orangcosong is a Japanese artist collective founded by Minori Sumiyoshiyama and Chikara Fujiwara, who are based in Yokohama and have worked in various cities in Asia, Europe, and Africa. While based on their experience in the performing arts, they have mainly conducted art projects outside theatres. Especially after covid-19 disaster, they have been trying to create ‘spaces for dialogue, exploration, exchange’ both on-site and online where people can meet safely and develop their trust.

Duration: about twenty minutes without intermission
Language: English
The show is not recommended for people under 18 years old.

Performances:
Thu, 2.07 at 17.00–22.00 Rakvere Theatre basement (BUY TICKET, ticket sale starts at 15th of April at 12.00)
Fri, 3.07 at 17.00–22.00 Rakvere Theatre basement (BUY TICKET, ticket sale starts at 15th of April at 12.00)
Sat, 4.07 at 15.00–20.00 Rakvere Theatre basement (BUY TICKET, ticket sale starts at 15th of April at 12.00)

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Artistic Direction: orangcosong
Artists & Performers: Chikara Fujiwara /JPN/, Eddie Hara /INA-SUI/ , Eva Lou /CHI-NDL/, Minori Sumiyoshiyama /JPN/, Pepe Dayaw /PHL-GER/, Rino Daidoji /JPN-ITA/, Scarlet Yu /THA-GER/, Serene Hui /CHA-NDL/, Tam Thi Pham /VNM-GER/
Drinks Consultant: Gonçalo de Sousa Monteiro (Buck & Breck, Berlin)
Producers: Iris Chan & Stéphane Noël (Materialise / HK)
Thanks: Yoveza Wong

Production Credits: IsLand Bar (2026) is a co-production of SPRING Festival (Utrecht / NL), orangcosong (Yokohama / JP) and Materialise (Hong Kong). The project is part of the Asia-Europe Cultural Festival (AECFest) Residency Programme 2025, organised by the Asia-Europe Foundation (Singapore). The project is supported by The Saison Foundation (Tokyo / JP) IsLand Bar is an open-source project by Taipei Performing Arts Center (TPAC), first initiated as an experiment in ADAM (Asia Discovers Asia Meeting for Contemporary Performance) 2017, and commissioned in Taipei Arts Festival 2018 led by principal artists Scarlet Yu (HK/DE), Chikara Fujiwara (JP) and Lee Ming-Chen (TW).

Participants ✕ Lead Artists (orangcosong) 

Chikara Fujiwara

An artist based in Yokohama. After studying political science at university, Chikara worked as a magazine editor and theater critic. In 2014, he initiated Engeki Quest, a walk-based tour project that has been realized in numerous cities around the world. In 2017, he co-developed “IsLand Bar” with multinational artists at ADAM artist lab in Taipei. He also made video works Stay Home Labyrinth (2020) and Maya/Dolores (2024). His practice centers on themes such as the “invisible walls” that generate prejudice and discrimination, and “mobility and gravity,” concepts related to migratory movement. He was a Saison Fellow of The Saison Foundation (2017–20) and a Cultural Envoy of the Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japan (2017). 

Instagram: @chikara_orangcosong @orangcosong

Minori Sumiyoshiyama

After studying architecture in Kyoto and beginning her career as a dancer, Minori now works as a transdisciplinary artist. Since 2017, she has presented Hitsudankai – From now/here, Silence, a performance in which participants communicate solely through handwritten notes in complete silence, in cities across Asia, Africa, and Europe. In 2020, she co-founded 2x2 WindowS, an online international project with multimedia composer Tam Thi Pham. In recent years, her practice has extended across both analog and digital realms, including video, graphic design, handicraft, cooking, and workshop using generative AI. 

Website: https://orangcosong.com/ Instagram: @minori_orangcosong @orangcosong 

Guest Artists 

Eddie Hara

Born in 1957 in Salatiga, Java, Indonesia, Eddie Hara currently lives and works in Basel, Switzerland. Eddie Hara started off as a playful, childlike colourist; influenced by the European art movements including Trans-Avantguardia, Neue Wilde Movement and Fluxus, as well as subculture and underground expressions like graffiti, comics, street and anything unusual. Living on and off in Europe and in Indonesia, Eddie Hara used to be a kind of marginal artist who was not afraid to give his opinions on political problems, sexism, gender issues and racial issues, environmental problems, the prevalent poverty and the resulting violence in our society. Despite this serious aspect in his art, his canvases which are populated by mutant women and strange animals display a solid dose of irony and humour. 

Instagram: haramaeder 

Eva Lou

Eva Lou is an artist, dramaturge, and creative facilitator currently based in Amsterdam. She creates performances, contemporary theater, workshops, and publications. Her practice centres on relationality and ways of being together, drawing on social practices and curatorial frameworks. Through her work, Eva examines modes of participation, the power of silence and encryption, and the (re)production and fictionality of collective memory. Co-creation and collaboration are vital to her artistic beliefs: she is a member of the "_ao_ao_ing ensemble", a performance collective based in Shanghai. Her work has been presented in theatres, contemporary art museums, and cultural institutions in the United States, China, and the Netherlands, as well as in mountains and rivers, on the street, in shopping malls, the back of a caravan, a sex shop, and virtual spaces. Eva is an active ally of art education initiatives for children living in rural China and the Deaf art scene in Shanghai. She weaves her artistic sensibilities into these contexts through leading art camps and workshops, planning events, and co-curating programs. 

Instagram: @lycheeva Website: aoaoing.com 

Pepe Dayaw

Pepe Dayaw is a polymathic artist, designer and producer working in the fields of performance, textile & costumes and transmedia publishing. Since moving to Europe in 2010, Dayaw has been creating situations and materialities of taste, movement and tactility that depart from a synthesis of a Filipino migrant fiction: queer, melodramatic, karaoke loving and a polyglottic jack of many trades. Pepe draws aesthetic and philosophic inspiration from their migrant autoethnography, renewing and remixing the contemporary while paying homage to their tropical island heritage. 

Instagram: @pepedayaw 

Rino Daidoji

Born in Tokyo, Rino Daidoji is an actor/ performer and artist based in Italy and Japan. She is a co-founding member of Tokyo-based experimental theater company FAIFAI, and has appeared in a diverse range of domestic and international productions with the company. She began developing her solo work in 2014 and moved to Cesena in northern Italy in 2015. In her performance works she often makes reference to her daily life and the close people around her, blending various connections as emotive semi-fictional fantasies. In recent years, she has also appeared in productions by other artists from the Netherlands, Australia, and Italy. In addition to her artistic career, Rino is also an active knitter, selling colourful handmade crocheted products under the name Ponzu Knits. 

Instagram: @rinoooooooooo Instagram: @ponzuknits 

Scarlet Yu

Scarlet Yu Mei is a Hong Kong–born Thai-Chinese artist whose practice moves through the intersections of choreography, performance, and relational ecologies. Working with encounter as methodology, she approaches each meeting between bodies, materials, and environments as a generative site where identity, memory, and the politics of living-in-di!erence surface and shift. Her works create choreographic situations that reveal how belonging, estrangement, and diasporic inheritance are negotiated through everyday gestures and embodied attention. Through conversational structures and sensorial interfaces, Yu crafts spaces where autobiography becomes collective inquiry and where transformation can be felt and reimagined. Her works have been presented at Tai Kwun – Contemporary Art (Hong Kong), Centre Pompidou, Taipei Performing Arts Center, Carriageworks (Sydney), Skulptur Projekte Münster 2017, Rockbund Museum (Shanghai), Casa del Lago (Mexico City), Art Central Hong Kong (2024), Serendipity Arts Festival, and Taipei and Tainan Arts Festivals. She has mentored at HZT Berlin, served as a jury member for Tanzplattform Deutschland (2018), and previously worked as Rehearsal Director of Arts Fission Company. She holds an MFA in Choreography from the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. 

Website: https://www.scarletyu.com/

Serene Hui

Serene Hui is an artist currently based in the Netherlands and Hong Kong. Her practice is research-focused and multi-faceted, engaging primarily with installation, audio and live works, printmaking and text. Serene's work is involved in a discursive, artistic and political exploration of her own context, using the geographical distance from personal lived experiences to investigate the wider socio-political impact of how meaning is made and who has access to making it. In her works she addresses obscurity and nuances by creating an ontological shift of displacement - meaning to transform social conventions, normative ignorance, and language ambiguity into resistance, reflection and criticism of contemporary systems. Her current project Tiger’s Head, Nail’s Tail stems from her century-old Chinese grandfather’s oral histories, in turn leading into a thread of research that delves into the human migration and material flow around Southeast Asia, in the shadow of the colonial matrix of power during the cold war. Serene’s works have been included in group exhibitions at the Thailand Biennale 2025 (upcoming) ; Ford Foundation Gallery, New York; TENT, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong; MMCA, South Korea; Para Site, Hong Kong and elsewhere. Her print editions are collected by Frans Masereel Centrum, Belgium; Huis van het Boek (Museum Photo by Véronique Kolber Meermanno) and KB National Library in the Netherlands. She has been an artist-in-residence at Casino Luxembourg – Forum d’art contemporain, Luxembourg; Frans Masereel Centrum, Belgium; MMCA Changdong Seoul, South Korea; Nida Art Colony, Lithuania and more. Her artistic practice has been awarded with the Artist Grant and Artist Project Grant by Mondriaan Fonds, The Netherlands since 2023. 

Instagram: @clokserene

Tam Thi Pham

Tam Thi Pham is a Vietnamese multimedia composer, improviser, and performer based in Hamburg, Germany. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Musicology from the Vietnam National Academy of Music and a Master’s degree in Multimedia Composition at Hochschule für Musik und Theater, Hamburg. Over the years, Tam has carved out a unique space for herself in the contemporary music world. Her work as a composer is all about pushing the boundaries. She loves discovering new sounds, experimenting with different forms of expression, and delving into the performative aspects of music. Pham is recognised for her interdisciplinary collaborations with choreographers and dancers from Japan, Vietnam, and Germany. She works with improvisation and contact dance while integrating technology into live and networked performances, creating dynamic experiences where music, movement, and technology intersect. 

Instagram: @kokoropham Website: https://tamthipham.com/

Producers 

Iris Chan

Iris Chan is a Hong Kong-based Production Manager at Materialise Limited, specialising in international productions. She excels at cross-border collaborations, managing projects across Asia and Europe, and leading diverse, multilingual teams with clear and effective communication. Her strong stakeholder engagement skills, combined with her expertise in project execution and deep local connections, make her a key driver of globally-minded, sustainable artistic projects. IsLand Bar is her first major production in the field of performing arts and it immediately offered her a chance to use her knowledge and her social capacities to further develop both professionally and personally. 

Instagram: @irisiolo 

Stéphane Noël

Born in Switzerland and based in Hong Kong, Stéphane Noël has worked extensively as a producer and curator of contemporary performing arts. He served as director of Les Urbaines festival and as co-director of Belluard festival, both in Switzerland. His knowledge and skills led him to join the artistic and editorial board of Gaîté lyrique in Paris, act as a consultant for European.Lab in Lyon and as a statutory advisor for IETM, international network for contemporary performing arts. In 2023, Stéphane joined Azkuna Zentroa in Bilbao as artistic advisor, focusing on community projects. Over the last ten years, Stéphane Noël has continued producing and distributing the work of independent artists from Asia and Europe with a particular attention given to exchanges between these two continents. In parallel, Stéphane has been collaborating with Swiss and Asian institutions such as Pro Helvetia (Swiss Arts Council), Reso (Dance Network Switzerland), National Culture and Arts Foundation (Taiwan), National Arts Council (Singapore), Korea Arts Management Services and the Saison Foundation (Japan), helping them connect with their Asian counterparts and producing platforms, showcase or networking events on their behalf. 

Website: https://materialise.io/ Instagram: @materialise_hk @_stephane_noel

ONTROEREND GOED
Handle with Care
/BEL/

Handle with Care is theatre stripped down to its essence. No actors, no technicians. Just a box. And you.

A box is mailed to the theatre. The instructions are clear: Invite a group of people, on a specific night, at a specific time. Let the audience take their seats. Place the box at the centre of the stage. The audience is waiting. And then an audience member stands up and opens the box.

The show has started.

In Handle with Care, Ontroerend Goed puts you in control. We provide the structure; you shape the experience. Choose your role—take the lead or observe as others make choices that steer the performance in unexpected directions. Together, you create something special: a shared experience filled with reflections on time, transience, and togetherness.

And don’t worry—there are no wrong choices in Handle with Care. You’ve got this. For one hour, you’ll live something unique, fleeting, and unrepeatable.

Here. Now. Together. No one is watching. What is yours, stays yours. Take good care of it. And send us a postcard.

Duration: between 60 & 90 minutes, depending on the group
Language: simple English
Age: 14+

Performances:
Wed, 2.07 at 17:00 in Culture Centre big hall (in Estonian) (BUY TICKET, ticket sale starts at 15th of April at 12.00)
Thu, 3.07 at 19:30 in Culture Centre big hall (in Estonian) (BUY TICKET, ticket sale starts at 15th of April at 12.00)
Fri, 4.07 at 15:30 in Culture Centre big hall (in English) (BUY TICKET, ticket sale starts at 15th of April at 12.00)

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The Belgian theatre-performance-group Ontroerend Goed (a punning name, roughly translated as “Feel Estate”) produces self-devised work grounded in the here and now, inviting their audiences to participate as well as observe. Whether they are performing backwards, turning spectators into voters who eliminate actors, guiding strangers through a labyrinth of mirrors and avatars to meet themselves, or placing the audience at the controls of the financial system, the company has made it its trademark to be unpredictable in content and form.

They first emerged on the international scene in 2007, with ‘The Smile Off Your Face’, a one-on-one show in which the audience is tied to a wheelchair and then blindfolded. Their hit show ‘Once and For All’ was an uncompromising celebration of raw teenage energy on stage. Since then, the Belgian company has won numerous prizes across Europe and has hit New York, Sydney, and London to critical acclaim.

Ontroerend Goed is Alexander Devriendt, Charlotte De Bruyne, Karolien De Bleser, Aurélie Lannoy, Leonore Spee, Samir Veen, Remi Cosijn, Wim Smet, Hannes Pieters, Luna Boone, Justine Boutens & Beth Thyrion

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“More than a decade on, Ontroerend Goed is no less exciting as a company but it has matured, becoming more compassionate in the way it explores and uses intimacy. It recognises a responsibility beyond the time spent in the theatre together.”
Lyn Gardner, The Stage

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Concept & creation: Alexander Devriendt, Karolien De Bleser, Samir Veen, Leonore Spee & Charlotte De Bruyne
Design: Nick Mattan & Edouard Devriendt
Voices: Silvio Vovk (HR), Jong Wook Yang (KR), Gina Beuk (DE), Karolien De Bleser, Leonore Spee, Samir Veen, Charlotte De Bruyne, Aurélie Lannoy, Alexander Devriendt, i.a.
Translation: Martine Bom (FR), Aurélie Lannoy (FR), Samir Veen (EN), Tiffer Hutchings (editor EN), Lore Meesters (DE), Hong Zhan (CN), Tai Yin Chang (CN), Mima Simić (HR), Dayoung Jeong (KR), Andrea Romano (IT), i.a.
Production team: Leda Decleyre, Lynn Van den Bergh, Willie-Marie Hermans & Hannes Pieters
Assembly: Jana Vos, Emma Verhaegen, Roos-Marie De Schryver, Juta Donckers
Photography: Ans Brys & Joëlle Desmet
Video: Aaron Denolf

Production: Ontroerend Goed
Coproduction: NTGent (BE); Stadttheater Schaffhausen (CH); Melbourne Fringe (AU); Theatre Royal Plymouth (UK); Take Me Somewhere, Glasgow (UK); CCAM Scène Nationale de Vandœuvre-lès-Nancy (FR); IDFA, Amsterdam (NL); De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam (NL); YOUNG Theatre, Shanghai (CN); Hexagone Scène Nationale, Meylan (FR); MAIF Social Club – Biennale Némo, Paris (FR); La Comédie de Clermont-Ferrand (FR); Lowry, Salford (UK); Scène Nationale Carré-Colonnes, Saint-Médard-en-Jalles (FR); Theater RAMPE, Stuttgart (DE); The Zoom Arts Center, Seoul (KR); Hong Kong Arts Festival (HK); Cambridge Junction (UK); The Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb (HR); La Mouche, Saint-Genis-Laval (FR); Sapienze CREA, Nuovo Teatro Ateneo, Rome (IT); Gothenburg English Studio Theatre (SE); Perpodium, Antwerpen (BE)
With the support of: the Flemish Community, the city of Ghent, the Tax Shelter measures of the Belgian federal government & Cronos Invest
Many thanks to: Angelo Tijssens, Wouter Lambrechts, zwartopwit, Speelkaartenmuseum / Rock Paper Pencil, Turnhout

MARTIN MESSIER
Sewing Machine Orchestra (installation)
/CAN/

Singer sewing machines, objects charged with collective memory and family histories, evoke a transfigured past brought back to the present and decontextualized. In Sewing Machine Orchestra, twelve domestic machines, collected and diverted from their utilitarian function, become the protagonists of a choreography orchestrated by computer and amplified by contact microphones.

Directly inspired by the performance of the same name, this installation reveals the sound and light potential of this familiar object. Unsettling in the agitation it generates, the work evolves in a crescendo of sound: like a polycephalic mechanical monster, the machines come to life with increasing intensity, filling the space with a low tone.

The omnipresent light accentuates the spectral effect of the installation. It transcends the overall choreography and casts the shadows of these ghostly objects, symbolically reanimating an industrial and domestic past. This hybrid work invites us to take part in an unsettling experiment on our links to collective memory and its materiality.

Installation in Rakvere Theatre’s rehearsal room
Wed, 1.07 - 17.30-21.00 (entry in live queue)
Thu, 2.07 - 16.00-23.00 (entry in live queue)
Fri, 3.07 - 16.00-23.00 (entry in live queue)​
Sat, 4.07 - 14.00-23.00 (entry in live queue)
Sun, 5.07 - 14.00-18.00 (entry in live queue)

FOR FREE

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A key figure on the Quebec and international art scenes, Martin Messier orchestrates a dialogue between sound, light and movement. His art of staging and his ability to combine technologies with natural elements (water, smoke, waves, electricity) have led him to develop a body of work on our perception of physical phenomena. He explores their manifestations - from the most imperceptible to the most monumental - through extraordinary devices. His performances and installations oscillate between order and chaos, creating a contemplative tension that invites the audience into a synesthetic experience, sometimes close to the spiritual. 

After exploring the musicality of everyday objects - from projectors (Projectors, 2014) to sewing machines in Sewing Machine Orchestra (2010) - Martin Messier has extended his research to abstract sound and visual textures. 

His work is presented by international institutions dedicated to live performance and contemporary art, such as the Festival TransAmériques, Trafó Budapest, Arts Korea Lab Festival in Seoul and the Festival of contemporary arts in Prague. Martin Messier's award-winning works (Prix Ars Electronica, Japan Media Arts Awards, World OMOSIROI Award, etc.) have been programmed at major digital arts centers and festivals such as Mutek, Transmediale, Sonar and Nemo. The artist teams up with digital artists (Nicolas Bernier, Samuel St-Aubin...) and renowned dancers (Caroline Laurin-Beaucage, Anne Thériault...), and surrounds himself with talented creative technologists (Nathanaël Lécaudé, David Gardener...). 

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Concept, programming, light and sound: Martin Messier
Technical director during creative process: Jean-François Piché
Technical director: Maxime Bouchard
Producer: 14 lieux
Co-producer: Maison des Arts de Créteil

MART KANGRO
Medium
/EST/

Mart Kangro’s new solo production, MEDIUM, unfolds at the intersection of body and screen, delivering messages and carrying meanings.

MEDIUM begins where his previous work, Pantheon, left off. While Pantheon examined world cultural history as a vast network, Kangro now stands with his own body in the midst of today’s fragmented avalanche of information. "What and how we consume within the media field creates the body we actually live in," says Kangro. Are we becoming exactly who today's news designs us to be?

Kangro has long been fascinated by the process of piecing together a whole from shards. Out of seemingly disconnected fragments, an unexpected narrative emerges. "I work in the hope that the sum of these life-shards reveals something beyond the eye's grasp, something that doesn't yet have a name," Kangro explains. "Something operating in the in-between, which we only become aware of with a delay. It is always there before us. We are always late."

We have the freedom to participate in everything. But with what meanings do we allow our bodies to be shaped—and by whom? What’s real? What’s no longer real? Where is the line between the physical world and the imaginary?

Once again, Kangro and his worn-out body are stuck under a waterfall of information overload, trying to figure out how to cope. He’s a funny one, this Kangro: simultaneously denying and despising the whole mess, yet hopelessly addicted and right in the thick of it.

Duration: 1 hour 20 minutes, no intermission
Language: English or Estonian

Performances:
Sat, 4.07 at 20.15 in Hõõg (in English) (BUY TICKET, ticket sale starts at 15th of April at 12.00)
Sun, 5.07 at 16.00 in Hõõg (in Estonian) (BUY TICKET, ticket sale starts at 15th of April at 12.00)

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Mart Kangro is a freelance choreographer, director and dancer. In his works, he focuses on the meaningfulness of the human body and movement in theatre as semiotic space-time, and on existential issues of stage situation. His productions have been performed at major festivals in more than 20 countries across Europe. During the past seven years he has created collaborative performances together with actor and director Juhan Ulfsak and dramaturge Eero Epner. Besides that he has directed performances where he himself is not cast.

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Author and performer: Mart Kangro
Dramaturge: Nicolette Kretz
Text dramaturgs: Eero Epner and Mart Kangro
Scenographer: Kristel Zimmer
Sound designer: Raido Linkmann
Light designer: Priidu Adlas (Eesti Draamateater)
Space: Mart Kangro
Project managers: Jaak Prints and Mart Kangro
Technical solutions: Herkko Labi
Video: Kristel Zimmer, Herkko Labi, Mart Kangro

MAIKE LOND
Three Ballads, a Story and My Mother’s Estate
/EST/

The agreed starting point of the production is a letter that the director sent to the dramaturge in 2023. From this first letter, material began to unfold that reflects on the course of life and its documentation – the small achievements that do not find a place in a biography, but which have a decisive role on future, past and present..

This first letter from the director went almost like this:
“A while ago I heard a punk song called "We Tried Nothing And We Are All Out Of Ideas". Obviously the song was shit, because what else would you expect from a band that didn't even try to come up with a title. It's a quote from The Simpsons – Ned's parents take him to a program for misbehaving children and tell the program host: we tried nothing and we are all out of ideas.

The upcoming production is exactly that - it doesn't try anything, it doesn't invent or offer anything new; it probably doesn't even discover anything new.

So here we are. It is what it is.

A play for everyone who feels they are neither here nor there. Like me. Like you.”

Of course, all of this is irrelevant, as the conversation was joined by a high school graduate and the director's only child, who doesn't even have a CV and isn't interested in any of this.

Three Ballads, a Story and My Mother's Estate is about two people moving further, moving on.

Duration: 60 min
Language: English or Estonian
 

Performances:
Fri, 3.07 at 19.30 in Rakvere Theatre’s Small Hall (in Estonian) (BUY TICKET, ticket sale starts at 15th of April at 12.00)
Sat, 4.07 at 17.30 in Rakvere Theatre’s Small Hall (in English) (BUY TICKET, ticket sale starts at 15th of April at 12.00)

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Maike Lond has a diploma from the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague. She is an artist working in the frame of white cube as well as black box. Maike is one of the initiators of an artist collective MIMproject and performing arts venue elektron.art. Her installations and performances (“Postuganda”, “10 journeys to a place where nothing happens*”, “99 Words for Void”, “Nobody’s Radio”) have been displayed and shown in theaters, media centers and festivals around Europe. She is a light designer and dramaturge. She works in kitchens and bars and plays guitar in a noise rock band. Maike is living and working in Tallinn, Estonia.

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Performance: Maike Lond, Lukas Jansen and Kim Noble
On stage: Maike Lond and Lukas Jansen
Dramaturge: Kim Noble
Sound: Ken-Eerik Kannike, Maike Lond and Lukas Jansen
Choreographer: Daniela Privis
Scenography: Linda Mai Kari
Light and technical support: Henry Kasch
Project Manager: Eneli Järs
Co-Producers: Maike Lond, Kanuti Gildi SAAL
Supported by: Cultural Endowment of Estonia

LOLA ARIAS
Reas (film)
/ARG/

Yoseli has a tattoo of the Eiffel Tower on her back and has always wanted to travel to Europe, but she was arrested at the airport for drug trafficking. Nacho is a transman who was arrested for swindling and started a rock band in jail. Gentle or rough, blonde or shaved, cis or trans, long-term inmates or newly admitted: in this hybrid musical, they all re-enact their lives in a Buenos Aires prison. REAS is a collective work that reinvents the musical genre: the performers dance and sing about their past in prison, relive their life as fiction, and invent, through fantasy and imagination, a possible future for themselves.

Runtime: 82 min
Language: Spanish 
Subtitles Estonian / English

Screening times:
Sat, 4.07 at 15.30 in Rakvere Theatre Cinema  (BUY TICKET, ticket sale starts at 15th of April at 12.00)
Sun, 5.07 at 14 in Rakvere Theater Cinema (BUY TICKET, ticket sale starts at 15th of April at 12.00)

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Lola Arias is an Argentinian writer, theatre and film director. She is a multifaceted artist whose work brings together people from different backgrounds (war veterans, refugees, sex workers, etc.) in theatre, film, literature, music and visual art projects. 

Arias’s productions blur the boundaries between reality and fiction. As Etchells writes in Re-enacting Life (2019) ”Sitting in the theatre, wandering a site-specific location or watching a film, we are inculcated into others’ narratives wound into their complexities, joys and disappointments. At the same time, we are also invited and at times confronted, in an extraordinary and acute way, to reflect on the contingencies and fragilities of our own stories, individual and collective, as well as on our shifting, unresolved relation to the precarious and dangerous machinery that is social and political history.” 

Her theatre performances and films has been presented at all the important festivals and theatres in the World.

Her second feature film, Reas (2024), premiered at the 74th Forum of the Berlinale Film Festival and got the Best Documentary Award at the Luxemburg Film Festival. In 2024, she won the prestigious International Ibsen Award.

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Director: Lola Arias
Starring: Yoseli Marlene Arias, Ignacio Amador Rodriguez, Estefanía del Lujan Hardcastle, Noelia Luciana Perez, Paulita Verónica Asturayme, Carla Romina Canteros
Produced by A Gema Films, Sutor Kolonko, Mira Film production

LIIS VARES, TAAVET JANSEN

I Have Been Mixing It Up:
A Poetic Exploration of Thought in Virtual and Physical Space
/EST/

The work that is co-created with the audience this time is the third part of the poetic cycle of mixed reality by Taavet Jansen and Liis Vares, where the line between virtual and physical, visible and invisible is at once thin but clear. Just like in its predecessors “Held in Human: Blossom Blade Inside You” and “Still Moving”, words and meanings can be touched and shared with each other, thoughts and imaginations can be passed through and captured in a choreographic space, but unlike before, the virtual field of meaning and experience can be created by yourself. Over the course of three days, we build up our collective story, our dream and our reality, to be recorded in digital cultural history and body memory.

The mental roots of the work lie in apartment no 34, Gustav Adoff Street, Rakvere, that served as a refuge for Vares in 2020 - 2022. It was there that the first collaborations “The Reader” and “Where Are You?” combining digital and physical space by the artist duo were born.

Sveta Grigorjeva:

You certainly shouldn’t fear this novel experience-experience. First of all - the VR glasses also allow you to see what is happening in parallel “real life”. The virtual reality part is set inside within the good old conventional reality, quietly creating a small dislocation of perceptions that goes along with the experience of multiple reality: you are at once both here and there, both in the real and virtual world, reading not just with your eyes but with your hands and your whole body. In other words: perhaps the question of what is “real” becomes somewhat redundant here.

Duration: 20 min
Language: English or Estonian

Performances:
Fri, July 3 at 12.00–18.00 in Ukuaru muusikamaja (BUY TICKET, ticket sale starts at 15th of April at 12.00)
Sat, July 4 at 12.00–18.00 in Ukuaru muusikamaja (BUY TICKET, ticket sale starts at 15th of April at 12.00)
Sun, July 5 at 12.00–18.00 in Ukuaru muusikamaja (BUY TICKET, ticket sale starts at 15th of April at 12.00)

This is an installation intended for one person at a time. We recommend arriving at least 5 minutes before your scheduled time!

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Liis Vares is a local. A body diplomat working between performing and visual arts, she navigates embodied experience, spatial relations, and the shifting conditions of presence in physical, online, and extended reality (XR) environments. At the centre of her practice is the contemporary body: How does it feel to live in a body? What does it mean to be in a body? Alongside her artistic work, Vares is a guest lecturer in inclusive dance and theatre practices and in performance art at the University of Tartu Viljandi Culture Academy and the Estonian Academy of Arts.

Taavet Jansen is an artist-researcher exploring how digital and physical spaces can be interconnected. With a background in choreography and video art, he is now increasingly engaged in web-based art and the development of mixed-reality environments.

In recent years, his main research and artistic project, Held in Human, created in close collaboration with Liis Vares, has examined the artistic potential of hybrid spaces. Taavet also works as a lecturer at the University of Tartu Viljandi Culture Academy, where he teaches creative coding and visual theatre. He is currently completing his PhD at the Estonian Academy of Arts, where his research focuses on creating a sense of aliveness and presence in streamed performance.

***

Authors: Liis Vares, Taavet Jansen
XR solution and implementation by Norbert Pape
Sound Design: Mihkel Tomberg
Project Manager: Annika Üprus
Supported by: Estonian Academy of Arts, Dortmund Academy of Theatre and Digitality, vares.digital

KRISTINA NIKOLOVA
In the Hell with Ivo
/BUL-USA/

Bulgarian queer artist Ivo Dimchev captivates audiences worldwide with his electrifying art shows, which blend singing and songwriting, theatre, dance, and visual art.

Despite being HIV-positive, Ivo responded to the Covid lockdowns by performing a series of no less than 400 free, intimate concerts in people’s homes. But for an artist who challenges societal norms surrounding sexuality, identity, and power, Bulgaria is too small, homophobic, and conservative. Ivo leaves in search of artistic fulfillment to New York, where his raw physicality takes even experimental-theatre audiences out of their comfort zones.

In a world that resists his radical individuality, facing isolation, and paying the emotional cost of artistic freedom, Ivo transforms personal vulnerability and collective hardship into impactful art and activism, in a celebration of authentic and uncompromising self-expression.

Winner: Special Jury Award Documentary – Sarajevo Film Festival 2025

Director: Kristina Nikolova
Produced by A LunaClipse Media and Magic Shop production

Runtime: 78 mins
Language: English, Bulgarian
Subtitles: Estonian, English

Screening times:
Thu, 2.07 at 21 in Rakvere Rakvere Theatre Cinema (BUY TICKET, ticket sale starts at 15th of April at 12.00)
Fri, 3.07 at 17 in Rakvere Rakvere Theatre Cinema (the film will be followed by a conversation with the film's director Kristina Nikolova and Ivo Dimchev.) (BUY TICKET, ticket sale starts at 15th of April at 12.00)

Jonas&Lander
Coin Operated
/PRT/

Coin Operated comes as a performance/installation directed to unconventional spaces, where the dialogue with the public is direct and the continuity of the performance depends on the dynamics of that same dialogue. The mutation between installation and performance occurs through an audience that is invited to introduce €1 coins into the slot of two horses where Jonas and Lander are sitting in asphyxiating immobility. From that moment, when the connection between horse and coin takes place, the installation ends to give way to performance. With this work, Jonas&Lander intend a new approach to the spectator, in which it starts to take an active role in the consequence and dynamics of the action, celebrating an unexpected dialogue with each presentation.

“Coin Operated” appears on the artistic journey of Jonas&Lander by the invitation of BoCA - Biennial of Contemporary Arts.

Duration: 35 minutes
Language: without words
Age Classification: 6+
NB! We recommend that visitors bring 1-euro coins to the performance.

Performances:
Sat, 4.07 at 19.00 in Riigigümnaasium (BUY TICKET, ticket sale starts at 15th of April at 12.00)
Sun, 5.07 at 16.30 in Riigigümnaasium (BUY TICKET, ticket sale starts at 15th of April at 12.00)

***

Jonas&Lander, a duo of Portuguese choreographers, have contributed to each other's imaginary since 2011 when they began their collaboration. They stood out with Cascas d'OvO, a work that took them to several national and international stages. Since then, and until 2017, they have also created and presented Matilda Carlota, Arrastão and Adorabilis. 

They were distinguished as "Aerowaves Priority Company" in 2014 and 2017. In 2019, they premiere Lento e Largo, a show coproduced by Rede 5 Sentidos, Teatro do Bairro Alto and Teatro Freiburg (Germany), nominated by SPA for Best Choreography of 2019, and Coin Operated, in coproduction with BoCA - Biennial of Contemporary Arts. In 2021, Jonas&Lander propose to rescue the lost dances of Fado, in a hybrid show between music and dance, Bate Fado, which premiered at the DDD Festival, and has been a national and international success, having been nominated by the newspapers Expresso and Público as the best dance show of the year. Coin Operated was presented also at the Avignon Festival in 2025.

***

Artistic Direction, Choreography, Interpretation: Jonas Lopes and Lander Patrick
Technical Support and Interpretation: Joana Mário
Sound Design: Lander Patrick
Costume Design: Jonas Lopes
Production House: Associação Cultural Sinistra
Administration and Management: Patrícia Duarte
Production: Sara Alexandra
Booking: Inês Le Gué
Coproduction: BoCA - Biennial of Contemporary Arts
Artistic Residency Support: O Espaço do Tempo, National Coach Museum

IVO DIMCHEV
Solo Concert
/BUL/

Ivo Dimchev is a theatre maker, choreographer, visual artist, singer-songwriter and queer activist from Bulgaria. His work blends performance, dance, theatre, music and visual media. His live concerts fuse vast musicality, a powerful voice and dark poetic lyricism. He remains provocative and with a stage presence between rock star and prima donna, Dimchev captivates audiences and moves even the coldest of hearts.

Ivo Dimchev has been presented in Estonian several times, including the Baltoscandal festival in 2018 and 2024. A documentary film „In The Hell With Ivo“ is included in this year's programme following artist talk with Ivo and the film-maker Kristina Nikolova on July 3.

Duration: 60 min
Language: English

Performance:
Sat, 4.07 at 00 in Rakvere Theatre’s Small Hall (BUY TICKET, ticket sale starts at 15th of April at 12.00)

EISA JOCSON & VENURI PERERA
Magic Maids
/PHL-LKA/

Interweaving ritual performance, pageantry, and possession, “Magic Maids” is an encounter with two brooming figures engaged in the act of sweeping. The broom, a domestic cleaning tool and the vehicle of the witch, becomes an instrument for sweeping out into the open the patriarchal wounding of the feminine during the European witch-hunts and its complex deep entanglements with enduring extraction and exploitation of women’s labour in today’s global chain of migrant care and domestic work. The broom extends their bodies, an axis that transforms oppression into monstrous feminist resistance.

Eisa Jocson and Venuri Perera are from the Philippines and Sri Lanka, countries known for their significant export of domestic workers. Their collaboration began in 2022 when they noticed the absence of women at Basel Museum of Pharmaceutical History in Switzerland. This observation sparked a deep dive into the historical persecution of witches in Europe and discovered that the last woman to be executed for witchcraft in 1782 Europe, was a Swiss housemaid named Anna Göldi.

Both female figures, “the witch” and “the maid”, are part of the same matrix – powerful and powerless, feared and revered, used, accused and discarded. The tropes are not mere hearsay and history but deeply rooted in today’s psyche. Jocson and Perera have heard, read and listened to horror stories of migrant domestic workers from the so-called Global South, the echoes of which now haunt their bodies.

Within “Magic Maids”, sweeping transforms into a profound act of bodily inquiry, into questions of representation, political subjecthood, gendered labour, and histories of violence. Jocson and Perera channel practices of incantation and intention, using their brooming bodies to traverse interconnected territories—physical, conceptual, emotional, and transnational.The artist's ongoing practice of creating together seeks to sweep out and unsettle oppressive power structures.

“Magic Maids” invites audiences to reflect on the in/visibility of working bodies, the resilience of female solidarity, and the enduring scars of historical injustices that shape contemporary labour practices. The brooming duo dances to rewild the domesticated feminine, performing a ritual of disobedience that dismantles the dominant narrative we live in.

Duration: 1 h 30 min, without interval
Language: English
Subtitles: Estonian
Note on sensory stimuli: use of ginger, salt, turmeric and chilli powder

Performances:
Wed, 1.07 at 21.00 in Rahu hall (BUY TICKET, ticket sale starts at 15th of April at 12.00)
Thu, 2.07 at 19.00 in Rahu hall (BUY TICKET, ticket sale starts at 15th of April at 12.00)

***

Eisa Jocson is an interdisciplinary artist based in La Union, Philippines. Trained as a visual artist with a background in ballet, she came to contemporary dance through pole dancing. In her works, she explores body politics in the service and entertainment industry as seen through the socioeconomic lens of the Philippines. She studies how the body moves and what conditions make it move – be it social mobility or movement out of the Philippines through migrant work. In her creations, from ‘Death of the Pole Dancer’ to ‘Macho Dancer’ to ‘Host’ to ‘Princess’ to ‘Superwoman Band’ and ‘Manila Zoo’ – capital is the driving force of movement pushing the indentured body into ‘developed’ geographies. She regularly presents her pieces at renowned theatres and international festivals in Asia and Europe, such as Tanz im August, TPAM Yokohama, Zürcher Theaterspektakel and Frankfurter
Positionen. She is a recipient of the 2018 Cultural Centre of the Philippines 13 Artists Award, the Hugo Boss Asia Art Award 2019, the SeMa-HANA Award 2021 and the Tabori Award International 2023.

Venuri Perera is a choreographer, performance artist, curator and educator from Colombo, Sri Lanka. Exploring the power dynamics of visibility and opacity, she attempts to destabilise how we perceive the ‘other.’ Her solo and collaborative creations deal with violent nationalism, patriarchy, immigration, colonial heritage and class and were invited to festivals/biennales/symposia across Europe, South and East Asia, Middle East and Africa since 2008. She has closely collaborated with choreographers Geumhyung Jeong (SK) (Theatre Spektakel / Monsoon Australia), Natsuko Tezuka (JP) (Kyoto Experiment / SIFA Singapore). Venuri conceived and curated the projects of the Colombo Dance Platform (2015-2020, Goethe-Institut) and is committed to continue creating support networks for the independent dance scene in Sri Lanka. A graduate of DAS Theatre, she is currently based in Amsterdam.

***

Concept, Creation, Dramaturgy, Performance: Eisa Jocson, Venuri Perera
Sound Design: Soraya Bonaventure
Light Design: Ariana Battaglia
Artistic Advice: Rasa Alksnyte, Tang Fu Kuen
Text Advice: Ruhanie Perera
Spiritual Advice: Nenet Ocson Babaylan-Vaigaland
Creative Presence: Arco Renz
Dramaturgical support: Anna Wagner, Alexandra Hennig
Production Advice: Sandro Lunin
Producer: Katja Armknecht, Anne Kleiner
Production Management: Greta Katharina Klein
Technical Production & Touring: Yap Seok Hui

"Magic Maids" by Eisa Jocson and Venuri Perera is a production of Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm, in co-production with Frascati Producties (supported by Ammodo), Tanzquartier Wien, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, SPRING Performing Arts Festival, Festival Theaterformen, DDD - Festival Dias da Dança, Kampnagel, Arsenic - Centre d’art scénique contemporain, La briqueterie CDCN du Val-de-Marne, Points Communs - nouvelle scène nationale Cergy-Pontoise / Val d’Oise, Maillon, Théâtre de Strasbourg – Scène européenne and Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay. Funded as part of the Alliance of International Production Houses by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media and the Hessian Ministry of Science and Research, Art and Culture.

This project was supported with residences by Kaserne Basel, Puón Institute Philippines, Goethe-Institut Sri Lanka, Dance Nucleus in collaboration with Studio Plesungan as part of ARTEFACT Creative Residency, and Colomboscope Contemporary Art Festival 2024.

With gratitude to the wonderful wise working women who generously shared their knowledge and stories with us.

COURTNEY MAY ROBERTSON
HUNTER – OFF RECORD!!!
/SCO-NLD/

HUNTER – OFF RECORD!!! is the underground offspring of Courtney May Robertson’s award winning theater production HUNTER.

HUNTER is an interdisciplinary performance that critically examines pervasive misogynistic roles assigned to women in three key ‘Body Genres’ in Film: Pornography, Horror and Melodrama. Together with her hyper-realistic life-sized doppelgänger in doll form, Courtney May Robertson weaves a tapestry of images in which the grotesque, (sexual) perversion and emotional excess become triumphant symbols for bodily autonomy and empowerment. In this alternative universe, self-destruction is embraced as a cathartic act of self-preservation.

OFF RECORD!!! is an eclectic space where performance, installation, ritual, and experience truly merge, an ambiance that juxtaposes the aesthetics of a BDSM dungeon with the emotional resonance of an emo girl’s bedroom.

Sad. Horny. Angry. Shamelessly.

OFF RECORD!!! offers audiences a unique, visceral and intimate experience; to witness Courtney’s intricate private preparations, rituals, and aftercare with her silicone doppelgänger from up close.

Duration: 60 min
Language: without words
Age restriction: the show is not recommended for people under 18 years old.
Strobe lights are used in the production.

Performances:
Thu, 2.07 at 23.00 in Hõõg (BUY TICKET, ticket sale starts at 15th of April at 12.00)
Fri, 3.07 at 23.00 in Hõõg (BUY TICKET, ticket sale starts at 15th of April at 12.00)

***

Courtney May Robertson, born in Scotland, is a performer and interdisciplinary maker based in Rotterdam. Courtney graduated from The Scottish School of Contemporary Dance in 2013 with a Bachelor of Arts - First Class Honours in Contemporary Dance Performance. Upon graduating she joined Club Guy & Roni’s Poetic Disasters Club in Groningen. Courtney has worked with a number of renowned choreographers across the Netherlands and wider Europe over the last decade.

Since 2017 Courtney has performed in multiple works of Belgian choreographer Jan Martens. In 2021 Courtney began working with Austrian choreographer Florentina Holzinger. First on Festzug, a parade for the opening of the Wiener Festwochen with musician SOAP&SKIN, and later on a large-scale theatre performance, A Divine Comedy, which premiered at Ruhrtriennale in August 2021. Courtney has also performed in works of Connor Schumacher, Maxime Dreesen and soon with Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe.

Alongside working successfully as a performer, Courtney began experimenting with creating her own work in 2015. Between 2015-2019 her small-scale / DIY produced performances were shown at various underground venues in the Netherlands. In 2019 her work entered a theatre for the first time with ‘SUB’; a research project in collaboration with Tharim Cornelisse. Since then she has created three solo works which quickly propelled her to the title of NRC’s ‘Rising Star in Dance 2025’.

Her critically acclaimed work HUNTER was awarded the ‘VSCD Mime / Performance Prize 2024’ at the Netherlands Theater Festival, listed in NRC’s ‘The 10 Best Dance Performance of 2024’ and labeled ‘Critics Choice’ in Theaterkrant.

***

Concept, Direction, & Performance: Courtney May Robertson
Puppet Design: Ronald Schinkelshoek
Wig Design: Zoe Morgan
Sound Design: Puck Schot (Acidic Male)
Dramaturgy: Lara van Lookeren
Chandelier: Manuel Boutreur
Discomfort Devices: BNDSN
Technical Production: Stefan Prokop
With thanks to: Yoko Haveman, Charles Pas

BASEL ZARAA
Dear Laila
/PS-UK/

“Dear Laila, you are five now and have started to ask me where I grew up, and why we can’t go there. This is me trying to give you an answer.“

The seeds of Dear Laila were planted when Basel’s five-year-old daughter began to ask him about his home growing up. Unable to take her there, he decided he would try to bring the place to her, by creating a model of his childhood home in Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus.

Dear Laila shares the Palestinian experience of displacement and resistance through the story of one family, exploring how war and exile are experienced through the everyday, the domestic, and the public space. An intimate, interactive installation experienced by one audience member at a time, Dear Laila uses the retelling of memories and tactile details to bring this now destroyed place to life.

Duration: 20 min
Language: English/Estonian
Age restriction: this installation is not recommended for children who are younger than 11 years.

Performances:
Thu, 2.07 at 13.00–22.00 at House in Rakvere (BUY TICKET, ticket sale starts at 15th of April at 12.00)
Fri, 3.07 at 13.00–22.00 at House in Rakvere (BUY TICKET, ticket sale starts at 15th of April at 12.00)
Thu, 4.07 at 13.00–22.00 at House in Rakvere (BUY TICKET, ticket sale starts at 15th of April at 12.00)
Fri, 5.07 at 13.00–17.00 at House in Rakvere (BUY TICKET, ticket sale starts at 15th of April at 12.00)

This is an installation intended for one person at a time. We recommend arriving at least 5 minutes before your scheduled time!

***

Basel Zaraa is a UK-based Palestinian artist whose work uses the senses to bring audiences closer to experiences of exile and war, and who creates art in order to face, express and understand the trauma that his community lives with. 

His current installation, ‘What Will We Do Without Exile?’ is an immersive, multi-sensory installation that creates a lush world within a refugee tent, inviting audiences to imagine life beyond occupation and war. Since 2022 he has also been touring ‘Dear Laila’, an intimate, a one-person-at-a-time installation centred around the recreation of a destroyed family home, which received the ZKB Audience Award 2023. His previous work includes ‘As Far As My Fingertips Take Me’, a collaboration with Tania El Khoury, which was awarded Outstanding Production at the Bessie Awards in 2019. 

His work has been shown at over 50 venues and festivals across five continents. 

***

Author: Basel Zaraa
Commissioned by Good Chance Theatre.
With support from Arts Council England.
Translator and script editor: Emily Churchill Zaraa
Sound engineer: Pete Churchill

AMELIE DUCHOW
LOGOS MATER (AV performance)
/GER-ITA/

Amelie Duchow, a German audiovisual artist, investigates the experimental relationship between sound, space, and visual perception. Her conceptual approach unfolds as an interplay of subtle, multilayered microsounds and intensive electronic structures transmuting into immersive visual articulations that challenge perceptual boundaries.

How does a language sound beyond the meaning of its words?
How much does the sound of a language influence us?
How does the sound of a language resonate with us?

The sound composition of LOGOS MATER is inspired by phonetic and acoustic elements that explore the essence of the world’s languages. To this end, Amelie Duchow invites people worldwide to participate in the project through a web platform where they can record their voices. The artist analyzes and transforms these vocal contributions, giving rise to a creative process of sound alteration. https://www.extrasync.net/logosmater/index.html 

Each sound in the composition derives directly from these contributions, giving the project a unique and constantly evolving identity. Thus, each live performance of LOGOS MATER incorporates the latest recordings received, establishing a global connection through the language of sound.

LOGOS MATER‘s composition transcends words and seeks to connect people through a universal language: sound. It attempts to communicate beyond cultural and geographical boundaries, establishing a unique and ephemeral dialogue that unites us, if only for an instant. 

The performance invites the audience to reflect on the significance of languages in shaping our individual and collective identities and on the fact that humanity today is facing a massive extinction: languages are disappearing at an unprecedented pace as over 40% of the world’s approximate 7000 languages are at risk of disappearing.

The project has been recognized as one of the winners of the open call for raster media for soundtrack Europe 2025.

Duration: 60 min
Language: without words

Performance:
Fri, 3.07 at 21.30 in Rakvere Theatre’s Big Hall (BUY TICKET, ticket sale starts at 15th of April at 12.00)

***

Amelie Duchow is a member of Female Pressure, a transnational database and network of women working in electronic music and visual arts.

Her debut album, TONSTICH, was released on Sync, an audiovisual platform and label she co-runs with media artist Marco Monfardini. Together, they created the SCHNITT project, which operates in the transitional space between electronic music, digital art, and technology. Their audiovisual performances and installations have been showcased worldwide in museums and festivals such as L.E.V Festival (Spain), Mutek Montreal (Canada), Elektra Festival (Canada), e-Phil (Germany), Biennale Némo (France), Act Festival (South Korea), and Sonica Festival (United Kingdom).

Amelie Duchow, along with Gianluca Sibaldi and Marco Monfardini, forms EXTRAsync, an interdisciplinary platform dedicated to audiovisual research and the development of multimedia projects, software, and audio/video devices.

***

Audio/video performance artist: Amelie Duchow
Concept and music: Amelie Duchow and Marco Monfardini
Computer system and programming: Gianluca Sibaldi
Production: sync | EXTRAsync

MILO RAU
LA LETTRE
/SUI-FRA/

Milo Rau's production for the first time in Estonia!

Swiss director and playwright Milo Rau's "LA LETTRE" premiered at the Avignon Festival in 2025. The production intertwines personal stories with theater history and social issues. On stage are two actors – Arne De Tremerie and Olga Mouak – who talk about their family roots, childhood and journey to theater. Their stories combine the personal and historical dimensions and become a kind of reflection on what shapes a person's life and the path of an artist.

Milo Rau plays with the idea that a young artist is defined as much by his roles as by his family history, and in this scenic reflection explores the experiences that subtly alter the course of our lives: generational conflicts, political events, love and death. Light and humorous, LA LETTRE presents itself as a manifesto for what popular theatre can be today. From the story of Joan of Arc to Chekhov’s The Seagull, the performance unfolds on multiple levels, in a constant shift between art and life. Even the dead return to the stage thanks to recorded voices.

Milo Rau's work has only been seen at the Baltoscandal Festival and in Estonia in general in 2022, when his film "The New Gospel" was scheduled.

Duration: 75 min
Language: French
Subtitles: Estonian/English

Performances:
Wed, 1.07 at 19.00 in Big Hall (BUY TICKET)
Thu, 2.07 at 15.30 in Big Hall (BUY TICKET)

***

Milo Rau, born 1977 in Bern, is the artistic director of the Vienna Festival (Wiener Festwochen) | Free Republic of Vienna. Critics call him the "most influential" (Die Zeit), "most interesting" (De Standaard), "most controversial" (La Repubblica), "most scandalous" (New York Times) or "most ambitious" (The Guardian) artist of our time. The director and author has published over 50 plays, films, books and actions. His theatre productions have been shown at all major international festivals, including the Berlin Theatertreffen, the Festival d'Avignon, the Venice Biennale, the Vienna Festival and the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, and have been touring in over 30 countries worldwide. From 2018 to 2024 Milo Rau was Artistic Director of NTGent (Belgium).

***

“With La Lettre, Milo Rau is led to a modest form, which proves to be a true little lesson in theater, as moving as it is enjoyable, intertwining reality and imagination with simplicity and mastery.”
– Fabienne Darge, Le Monde

 “Rau seeks catharsis from ancient tragedy. And although this play is lighthearted and funny, it does not escape the dictum that the author has imposed on himself for years: ‘It is not enough to represent the world. You have to change it.’ It is up to us to dare to face pain. To represent it. To offer it. As Arne and Olga do before the audience. A kind of mystical gift.”
– Fabienne Pascaud, Télérama

***

Director: Milo Rau
Text: Milo Rau And The Ensemble
Performance: Arne De Tremerie, Olga Mouak and the voices of Isabelle Huppert, Anne Alvaro, Jocelyne Monier and Marijke Pinoy

Dramaturgy: Giacomo Bisordi
Stage, Sound, Light, Costumes, Props: Milo Rau, Giacomo Bisordi
Costume & Props Assistant: Julie Louvain
Production: Festival D’avignon

International Touring Team
Technical direction and lights: Sylvain Faye
Sound Sören Schwedler
Assistant Director and Subtitle Operator: Giacomo Bisordi, Edward Fortes
Tourmanagement Mascha Euchner-Martinez

Co-Productions: Éclat – Centre national des arts de la rue et de l’espace public (Aurillac), Théâtre de la Manufacture – Centre dramatique national Nancy Lorraine, Théâtre Silvia Monfort (Pariis), Théâtre public de Montreuil – Centre dramatique national, Théâtre du Champ au Roy – Scène conventionnée d’intérêt national Art & Création (Guingamp), Le Canal Théâtre de Redon Agglomération – Scène conventionnée d’intérêt national, CCAS Activités sociales de l’énergie, Scène 55 – Scène conventionnée d’intérêt national Art & Création (Mougins), Théâtre Durance – Scène nationale (Château-Arnoux-Saint-Auban), La Soufflerie – Scène conventionnée de Rezé

Thanks: Odeon – Theatre De L’europe (Paris), Stephane Braunschweig and The Ensemble Of The Seagull, Les Plateaux Sauvages (Paris), La Commune – Centre Dramatique National D’aubervilliers

JULIA MASLI
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
/EST-UK/
 

the blurb is

hahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahaha hihihi hahahahahahahaha hoho hahahhahahaha hehe hahahahahahahahahaha
 

Quotes and critical acclaim:

“Transcendent.”
— The New York Times

“Genius.”
★★★★★ — The Guardian

“A strange and beautiful masterpiece.”
★★★★★ — The Telegraph

“Sublime.” 
★★★★★ — Time Out

Duration: 90 min
Language: English

The show is in English, largely improvised, and completely different every night because it is based on audience participation.

Performances:
Sat, 4.07 at 22.00 in Peace Hall (sold out)
Sun, 5.07 at 18.00 in Peace Hall (BUY TICKET)

***

JULIA MASLI  is an award-winning clown from Estonia, based in London. All she wants to do is solve people’s problems and eventually win the Nobel Prize, presented to those who have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. But this plan keeps going wrong as she continually wins prizes for comedy. Her show ‘ha ha ha ha ha ha ha’ was nominated for Edinburgh's top prize of Best Comedy Show, the SKY Arts Best Comedy Award, the Most Outstanding Show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, two Helen Hayes Awards, and declared number one comedy show of the year by The Guardian—despite her serious intentions. The performances at the Baltoscandal festival are Julia's first in Estonia.

KIM NOBLE was a critically acclaimed artist and performer from London. He used to be quite good at stuff like theatre. He got an award. And he does some directing. The New York Times described him as “Annoying.” He participated in the Baltoscandal Festival in 2022 with his production “Lullaby for Scavengers”. He also performed his production “You’re Not Alone” at Kanuti Gildi SAAL in 2023. At this year’s Baltoscandal festival, he is also the dramaturg of Maike Londi’s production “My Mother’s Wealth, One Story and Three Ballads”. He is re-writing a book and recently had to move back into his mum’s flat due to financial difficulties.  www.mrkimnoble.com

***

Creator and Performer: Julia Masli
Director: Kim Noble
Sound Designer and Composer: Alessio Festuccia
Live Sound Designer: Sebastián Hernández
Co-Lighting Designer: Jennifer Fok/E-hui
Original Lighting Design by: Lily Woodford
Live Lighting Designer: Sarah Chapin
Costume designers: Alice Wedge, Annika Thiems, David Curtis-Ring
Associate Producer, Production Manager, & Stage Manager: Sarah Chapin
Consulting Producers: Maria Manuela Goyanes, David C. Frederick & Sophia Lynn
Originating Producer: Impatient Productions

Generous support for the ha ha ha ha ha ha ha tour provided by David C. Frederick & Sophia Lynn.