Thomas Verstraeten

Thomas Verstraeten (born 1986) has been working on the development of a multidisciplinary artistic practice as a theatre maker, actor, opera director and visual artist since 2007. This practice falls into two parts, which develop completely separately from each other.

First of all, along with Stef Aerts, Joé Agemans and Marie Vinck, Thomas Verstraeten is a member of the FC Bergman theatre company, which has been affiliated with Toneelhuis since 2013. So far he has made eight large-scale theatre productions with FC Bergman that have been presented at home and abroad: Wandelen op de Champs-Elysées... (2009); 300 el x 50 el x 30 el (2011); Terminator Trilogie (2012); Van den vos (2013); Het land Nod (2015); JR (2018); The Sheep Song (2021); and Werken en dagen (2024).

Together with FC Bergman, Verstraeten also works internationally as an opera director. In 2018, they made Les Pêcheurs de Perles with Opera Ballet Vlaanderen and Opéra de Lille. In 2023, Il Ritorno D’Ulisse in Patria premiered at the Grand Théâtre de Genève in Switzerland. (Other projects with Opera Ballet Vlaanderen and Deutsche Oper in Berlin are in the pipeline for the future.)

By now, FC Bergman has been affiliated with Antwerp’s Toneelhuis for 12 years, and since 2022 it has also been part of the municipal theatre’s collective artistic leadership. In recognition of years of intense teamwork, FC Bergman received the Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale in June 2023. In September 2025, the new FC Bergman show Guernica Guernica is premiering in coproduction with the Ruhrtriennale.

Apart from his activities with FC Bergman and independently of Toneelhuis, Thomas Verstraeten works on an art practice that navigates the border between performing arts and visual art. These projects are often ambitious, rooted in urban public space, and reveal his intrinsic fascination for the wonderful, messy ways in which people organize their lives. In this work, Verstraeten distils narratives from the bustle and bustle of the city and its dwellers, from its visible and hidden stories and lives. His videos, installations and performances dramatize the ordinary into the extraordinary. He points up what we take for granted and makes the temporary tangible.

Throughout the years, he has presented projects like Pierre Menards paradox, Nocturama (in collaboration with Benjamin Verdonck), The parade of men, women and those who look from a long way off like flies, The fifth season, Familiestraat, Photobooth, 7X7 (in collaboration with Benjamin Verdonck), Zomeracademie in Balen (with Mark Luyten) and Seefhoek Series.

For a number of years now, he has also been busy internationally, working in various European cities with large groups of city dwellers in public spaces. In collaboration with carnival organizations in Lucerne, for instance, he made a project called The fifth season. In 2023, he worked with a group of 80 young people, directing the opera Die Schöpfung for Theater Basel. And in 2024, for the Steirischer Herbst festival in Graz, he made the immersive performance Wanderlust Warenhaus in the Kastner und Öhler department store.

At the moment he is working in Vienna, where he is creating the performance Inselliebe (Love for the Island) for the Wiener Festwochen 2025. It will be a declaration of love to the island in the Danube, an elongated nature reserve and recreational area of 20 kilometres where the people of Vienna reclaim their freedom. It is a place of live and let live, unprecedented creativity and lots of parties. There, Verstraeten is creating a performance consisting of six different tableaux in which he turns everyday life on the island into theatre.

Thomas Verstraeten’s visual work has been represented by the Fred & Ferry Gallery since 2021. He presented his second solo exhibition there in November 2024: a re-examination of his urban project Seefhoek Series in a museum-like setting, in which he showed videos, photos, models and various pieces of the sets for the performances of Seefhoek Series. Verstraeten’s work is represented in various private and public collections. (The video of Familiestraat is for instance in the collection of the Flemish Community.)

In January 2024, documentary-maker Ralph Collier made Aanwinst for VRT Max, a documentary series consisting of seven portraits of seven artists whose work is in the art collection of the Flemish Community. Verstraeten kicked off the series by talking about his love for cities and their inhabitants. Accompanying the documentary was an exhibition of the same name at C-mine (Genk), where the video of Familiestraat was featured as part of the display.

In December 2025, he will create a new metropolitan project: Symphony for one hundred citizens and a traffic light, consisting of a music theatre production and a video installation, that features one hundred citizens from all parts of Antwerp.

Urban projects planned for the future are with Piccolo Teatro (Milan, 2026), Opera Ballet Vlaanderen (Ghent, 2026) and Hessische Staatstheater Wiesbaden (2027).