click on the imageToneelhuis shares a wonderful part of its history with Lotte van den Berg (1975). Toneelhuis is where she made Begijnenstraat 42 in 2005, a project set in Antwerp prison and involving prisoners and wardens. She also worked with Toneelhuis directing Josse De Pauw’s project Volk (Folk), she revived the site-specific project Het blauwe uur (The Blue Hour, 2005) and she directed another gripping site-specific production, Braakland (Wasteland, 2005) inspired by the work of Coetzee. In 2006 Lotte van den Berg joined Guy Cassiers and his group of six theatre-makers. As part of that new constellation, she made the subtle play Stillen (2006) and the controversial Winterverblijf (Winter Residence, 2007). In the spring of 2007 she led another site-specific project, Gerucht (Rumour). Many of Lotte van den Berg’s productions are about looking, about real-life experiences and, often, about the difficulty of understanding. She turns reality on its head so that we start to see different things, or things start to look different. On January 1st 2009 she founded OMSK, a new theatre company in Dordrecht. Toneelhuis lost no time in inviting her to perform OMSK’s first production, Het verdwalen in kaart (Losing one’s way mapped) in Antwerp in September 2009. OMSK is based in the Netherlands, but projects also take her and her company to other parts of the world. In 2010 it’s Kinshasa. There she will collect material which she will later shape and show in different environments. At the beginning of December 2010, Antwerp will be one of those environments.
