New artistic direction NTGent presents first season

Over the past decades, Ghent city theatre NTGent has built an excellent reputation, even far abroad, as a makers' house and producer of theatre performances. A reputation that the new artistic leadership (Barbara Raes, Melih Gençboyaci and Yves Degryse) will honour during season 24-25. While existing productions like Antigone in the Amazon, ONE SONG, How Goes the World and The Interrogation tour from Finland to Australia, four brand new creations are in the pipeline.

✔ With At the Start of the Bridge, fueled by a novel from the rich oeuvre of American novelist Don DeLillo, the young talents of Werktoneel are creating a follow-up to their previous NTGent production Gruis / aan de Twijfel (October 24) , voted best show of 2023 by leading Belgian newspaper De Standaard.

✔ Portuguese renowned director Tiago Rodrigues, alos leading Festival d'Avignon, will create the sixth part in the prestigious Histoire(s) du Théâtre series at NTGent next season. In No Yogurt for the Dead  (January 25), Rodrigues tries, through a theatre musical, to imagine what his father would have wanted to write in the last days of his life.

✔ In DE GEVANGENIS  (March 25), four ex-convicts make a razor-sharp analysis of our prison system together with housemaker Lara Staal. After DISSIDENT, about Flemish education, and SERDI, about youth care, Staal again gives a voice to the victims of a failing system.

✔ The company BERLIN, house maker at NTGent, celebrates its 20th anniversary with Living Apartment Together  (May 25), a brand new production that ingeniously recounts the extraordinary lives of the residents of an apartment building. Living Apartment Together  is set at dusk, on location in the city. Scenes unfold on a life-size facade projection, showing the poignant beauty of our everyday existence.

NTTENT: OPENING WEEKEND

In early October 2024, the NTTent will rise between the belfry and the cathedral on Ghent's Sint-Baafsplein for four days. In that imposing red tent, the new artistic leadership will introduce itself and NTGent's new DNA to the public, together with the house artists (Lara Staal, Luanda Casella, Milo Rau and BERLIN) and artists in residence (Action Zoo Humain, Miet Warlop, Ontroerend Goed) of the city theatre. More than ever, NTGent is a place where theatre makers are given every opportunity. The famous Manifesto of Ghent by Milo Rau will be transferred to the archive, and new artistic lines will arise: 'Art & Technology' and 'Art, Care & Rituals'.

There will also be celebrations in the tent: in addition to the 125th anniversary of the Schouwburg, we celebrate e the 60th anniversary of NTGent itself, and the 20th of new house maker BERLIN. In September and October, four successful performances from BERLIN's oeuvre are scheduled: The Making of Berlin, True Copy, Zvizdal, and Who gets old...

NEW HOUSE MAKER IS A DIGITAL ONE

In the future, NTGent wants to be not only a buyer of new technologies but also a co-developer. We are proud to announce the creation of the Goose Bumps Tech Lab, a collaboration between NTGent, Winter Circus (a brand new hub for high-tech start-ups in Ghent), theatre makers and developers. "Why should we leave the development of new technologies only to programmers and entrepreneurs?", says Yves Degryse, "Don't we as artists, with our radically different perspective, also have an important role to play?"

During season 24-25, NTGent introduces the new, digital house maker Alva Ishii. A joint artistic project and an example of radical imagination. Not only do we ask the question "What does AI do to us, as humans and as a society?", we also put our money where our mouth is. Alva Ishii is part of the artistic core, giving interviews, participating in debates about her own new position and preparing her first creation I Think I Hear You, a theatrical colloquium with the participation of well-known politicians, scientists and civilians.

Besides a Tech Lab, NTGent will also have a Ritual Lab during the upcoming season. The personal rituals that Barbara Raes has long been developing in her practice Beyond the Spoken will get a scale-up. In spring 2025, there will be the focus programme Rituals for Invisible Voices. In addition, this season NTGent will launch the trajectory for the Great Fire Ritual  that will open season 25-26. "Daring to name, imagine and connect are the gentle guides of transformation, in people's personal lives but also in theatre," Raes says.

EXTENDED DUE TO SUCCESS & GUESTS

The new NTGent season also brings a number of successes from the past seasons back to Ghent, including the five-star performances Medea's Children  (Milo Rau) and Gruis / aan de twijfel  (Werktoneel), as well as Elektra Unbound  (Luanda Casella) and Thanks for Being Here  (Ontroerend Goed).

Finally, NTGent presents an impressive list of guest performances from September 2024 onwards. There is work by international stars such as Trajal Harrell  (Caen Amour) and Forced Entertainment (Signal to Noise), and by renowned Belgian collectives and directors such as FC Bergman, Lisaboa Houbrechts, Olympique Dramatique, Miet Warlop, sKaGen, De Hoe,... A special focus is on the work of young creators, theatre from the Netherlands, and performances from Wallonia.