International

About BOG.

Based on the conviction that we must search for what binds us as human beings without losing sight of the value of the differences, BOG. makes uncompromising, idiosyncratic, and open theatre for the seeking individual of today. 

BOG. is the collective of theatre makers Judith de Joode, Benjamin Moen, Sanne Vanderbruggen, and Lisa Verbelen, dramaturge Roos Euwe, business manager Anne Baltus, and head of production Mara Aronson.

BOG. makes philosophical, linguistic, musical performances about essential themes from the life of every human being. Since the first performance BOG. an attempt at restructuring life (2013), we have been creating works about everything that human beings try to grasp but that are simply too big to grasp. We explore themes that every individual faces in everyday life: life as a whole, opinion, faith, time, and movement, maturity, existential loneliness, mourning, language, identity.

With each performance, we try to transcend our own perspective, put ourselves in the shoes of others, and offer the audience a broader view of being human. We collect different ideas and experiences partly through the BOG. member database, a group that now comprises three hundred and fifty people. We use their answers to our questions on a certain theme as inspiration for a new work. With our performances, we want to make connections between the general and the specific, the everyday and the exceptional, the personal and the universal human aspect.

BOG. is a collective of makers who often work together: we devise the concepts together, write the text together, create the stage layout together, stand on stage together, and form the organisation together. The collectively created performances form the core of BOG. In addition, the makers within BOG. have their own artistic trajectory in which they develop individually and from which solos, duets, publications, installations, and other works may emerge.

In May 2022, we opened, together with De Warme Winkel the first theatre incubator behind the Sloterdijk station in Amsterdam: De Sloot. A workshop for theatre makers, a full-fledged flat-floor theatre hall, and a smaller hall, three large rehearsal rooms, several work studios, and a large café / restaurant. 

Booking and contact:
anne@bogcollectie.com

The Museum of Silences

by BOG. | Sanne Vanderbruggen

When you look up the word silence in a random dictionary you usually come across a definition that roughly boils down to: the absence of sound.

Then when you look up sound you find nothing about the absence of silence. A lot can be inferred from that. At most, it underscores the assumption that sound is the norm in our lives and silence is only considered a rare and mostly luxury residual. Sound is so ubiquitous in our lives that we have become accustomed to it. It is even sometimes referred to as silence because it is always there and does not otherwise distract us. But how about switching off the hood after three hours of cooking.

How different would our collective experience be if we assumed silence as a stand-alone product rather than the absence of something else. After all, high is neither defined as the absence of low. Just as woman does not mean the absence of man (according to the dictionary that is).

When does the actual absence of a great amount of sound also lead to a sense of silence? And how is the experience of silence related to the expectation of certain sounds? Is the sound of a bird quieter than the sound of a handyman next door even if the number of decibels is the same? What effect does the constant presence of sound have on a person’s mood? As human beings, now that we predominantly live in cities full of noise, are we actually becoming more sensitive or desensitised to silence?

After Sanne, living on the seventh floor just behind the Dam Square, had been confronted with the omnipresence of sound in her life, she became fascinated by the question of what silence is. In 2016, she wrote the theatre text DAM. in which she zooms in on the many different and possible thoughts of people during the annual two minutes of silence as part of the commemorations on Remembrance Day. The polyphonic text makes audible what is experienced, in silence.

She also started seeking nuance differences in different types of silences and made recordings of them. Her collection of audio files now includes a station during a train strike, an empty chapel in a hospital, a dune bowl, the silence in Amsterdam after the elimination of Ajax in the Champions League, Amsterdam during the first lockdown. A desire arose to merge this collection into one work, into an exhibition of silences. A museum of the recorded silences, with silences described, with silences in images and in objects, with unexpected and “live” silences. Silence that sounds louder in a group and silence as an individual experience.

In short: an ode to silence in all its manifestations. As well as an ode to the inexhaustible, sometimes maniacal, moving but above all impossible quest of human beings to grasp silence. To hear silence. Because no matter how hard we listen, no matter how quiet it is, we always end up getting in the way of ourselves. Human beings will always hear their own existence. As long as we accidentally take a breath, accidentally step on that creaking twig again, even when for a moment we mistake the beating of our own heart for true silence. As long as we are here, silence will not be heard.

A museum in the theatre The choice of a museum in the theatre stems from the idea that in a few years’ time silence may no longer exist for the majority of humanity. And just as you can also go to a Natural History Museum to see dinosaur skeletons or a Stone Age fork, you can now go to the museum to visit that other rare unknown “phenomenon” from times gone by: silence.

The Museum of Silence will be a work that merges a theatrical and museum experience. The theatre will form the basis: a physical experience in one space, with a start and end time and a collective concentration. Within this, museum-like situations arise where audiences follow their own course and are addressed individually. At present, there are still different ideas about the interpretation and sequence: possibly the audience, in groups of 10 or 20, starts together on the stand for some scenes and then walks through the exhibition in the same space. Or the audience starts separately and walks through the exhibition with an audio tour, eventually ending up together on the stand, listening to a recording of themselves as they walked through the exhibition, and what it sounds like here and now.

Sales
Because of the ambiguity of the presentation form that will probably balance on the dividing line between theatre and exhibition, a conscious decision was made to first develop the Museum of Silence in the exhibition hall of the Brakke Grond before the sales. This multifunctional space offers the possibility to remove the stand and also set up the hall as an exhibition space.
We bring all the technology we need with us.
Language: English

TWO. IS NOT A SOLO

by BOG. | Lisa Verbelen

I read in a book 
thinking is a form of feeling 
and feeling is a form of thinking
I was so happy to know 
there are not only two ends of the line
not only two ends of the road
that you can be both
that things can be found in between things 

After her solo performances ONE. and ALL., Lisa Verbelen forms a duo in TWO. with celebrated jazz musician Hendrik Lasure. Starting from the theme of opposites and inspired by Taoism and hip-hop, Lisa and Hendrik created a music album. Together with director Suze Milius they have turned the album into a theatrical concert. 

TWO. is an exercise in reestablishing the idea of opposites; to experience what exists in between two extremes. What happens when two people meet. 

Expect a musical and theatrical concert, words and music that make you feel and think, both hard and soft, both dark and light, with smoke and fire, water in the desert, not ugly nor beautiful, all yin and yang, about you and me.

Language: English
We bring all the technology we need with us.

>> Listen to the music album (Soundcloud / Bandcamp / Spotify)<<