Bart Van Nuffelen (b. 1973) is a writer and co-artistic director of Martha!tentatief, a small and versatile urban theatre company specializing in true stories about ‘ordinary’ people and their relation to the often-incomprehensible reality of their urban surroundings. The stories are the result of a period of intensive research, for which Martha!tentatief works with a dynamic and diverse network of urban organizations and academic partners. But above all, the company ventures into the city with dedication and enthusiasm, in search of the people behind the trends, the reality ehind appearances, the extraordinary stories of ordinary people.
In 2010, Bart Van Nuffelen pointed the way for this urban focus with the project Revue van het Ontembare Leven, a series of shows about life in the city. For one of them, he lived among homeless people on a public square for six months and made De Vernissage together with them. Another show, Polen op Zondag, was based on interviews with migrant workers in a park. 13 ½ bid farewell to 13 deceased city dwellers in the cavernous hall of a railway station.
Together with his mate (and Martha!tentatief cofounder) Johan Petit, Van Nuffelen gave the theatrical lecture De Ontembare Stad to some 4000 of Antwerp’s civil servants. In collaboration with a network of urban partners, they brought all of the city’s nationalities together on the Bourla stage for 175+, the moving and unforgettable crown of a first series of shows about the city.
For the children’s production Dounia B, Bart Van Nuffelen once again worked with countless partners, schools and specialists to search for ‘children between different languages’. They put together a varied urban team of people who had never worked in theatre before; together, they made a marvellous children’s show that won awards at home and abroad. Fact is, authentic stories for today can no longer be told and written by a single artist; the city itself must do the telling.
In 2020, in the wake of a hotly publicized bank robbery, Bart Van Nuffelen set out to discover the history and essence of Antwerp diamond district and Jewish quarter. This resulted in late 2022 in the podcast series De Kunst van het verdwijnen, a coproduction between Martha!tentatief and VRT MAX. Since its launch, the episodes have been heard over two million times. The podcast was awarded ‘Best Story’ at De Standaard’s podcast festival; not only that, Bart Van Nuffelen and co-author Lucas Derycke can now call themselves ‘Master Storytellers 2022’, having also received an award for the best narrative journalism in the Netherlands and Flanders.
For three years, starting in 2023, Bart Van Nuffelen and Martha!tentatief are training their gaze on Deurne-Noord, a stretch of raw urban territory bisected by a desolate road. Their first artistic project in Deurne-Noord was Honderd (2024), a portrait of a road to nowhere.
The second Deurne-Noord project, Fatilou M, for young people 12+, premiered on 18 April at het Paleis. Following upon Dinska Bronska and Dounia B., Fatilou M is the third part of a theatre triptych about young people growing up in the city. This show is an account of two years of working in and with the Spectrum School in Deurne.
Martha!tentatief translates the constantly changing city and world into ‘new stories about the present’. The company tells extraordinary and stories about ordinary people in a rapidly changing society, and believes in the connective and healing power of storytelling. All projects are the result of meeting and working together with other theatre makers and urban
and artistic partners, and every story is based on research. In collaboration with academics and specialists, the company ventures into the city in search of the people behind the trends, the reality behind appearances, looking for relevant and authentic stories. Martha!tentatief
always tries to reach the largest, broadest and most diverse possible audience.
The production Honderd (2024) was created within the scope of the European project UNLOCK THE CITY!
