Gerben Vaillant - On almost every page

You dream about an empty room in a country house. In a room next to you, you hear someone walking. You don't know why, but you know who it is. You want to go there. Through a door, you enter another room, which is also empty, just like all the rooms after it. A flight of stairs up, a flight of stairs down. Everything empty. (Footsteps somewhere.) You walk until you’re back where you started and you discover it’s an endless loop of empty rooms.

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You wake up and get dressed as quietly as possible. You go outside and leave the key behind.

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That's where you begin. 

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In this physical and visual performance, Gerben Vaillant, in collaboration with director Fleur van den Berg and performers Charlotte Gillain and Felix Schellekens, brings different fascinations together. Artist Ben Willekens's lonely paintings of empty rooms, a failing relationship, the fringe art of pantomime, and the endless parade of people walking out the door after a bad one-night stand. A performance as sexy as it is lonely, in which we feel the endless interchangeability of people and things, and the performers simultaneously have everything and nothing to lose.

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"...everything you could hope for from theatre, and then some." Het Parool  

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Gerben Vaillant (born 1994) creates interdisciplinary performances. During his studies in the Mime School at the Amsterdam University of the Arts (AHK), he developed a fascination with creating performances that centre the distance between humanity and reality: the space where humanity fails to be (part of) a whole. Equally sensitive and radical, he works with different forms – text, dance, image, philosophy, trash, it can become anything anytime – but his work is by nature atmospheric and sometimes confusing. Gerben created The Other Everything (2022), A sense of an ending (2023), and on almost every page. In spring 2025, Gerben will be working on a new performance at Frascati Productions with Fleur van den Berg: on smoke and airconditioning. 

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concept and direction Gerben Vaillant | collaboration and final direction Fleur van den Berg | play Gerben Vaillant, Charlotte Gillain, Felix Schellekens and Timon Persoon | music Timon Persoon | lighting design advice Paulina Prokop | thanks to the City of Amsterdam, Amsterdam Fund for the Arts, Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, Fonds 21, Performing Arts Fund NL, YAA