Since last year, all acting awards presented at the ‘Oscars’ for Dutch theatre have been called Theo d’Ors. They are awarded for best leading role, best supporting role and most groundbreaking performance. The Theo d’Or for the most groundbreaking theatre performance went to the entire ensemble of [meeuw], a show produced by Toneelhuis, Olympique Dramatique and theater arsenaal with a cast of both deaf and hearing actors. They perform the show together almost entirely in Flemish Sign Language.

From the jury report:
“Utter dedication and openness radiate from the stage to result in the sensitive, musical and intelligent ensemble playing that they present. Their [meeuw] is explicitly about the desire to make oneself understood by the other person. And the game of hearing, not hearing each other, of comprehending, not comprehending, of desire and impossibility, is perfected down to the last detail. Never maudlin or saccharine, always sharp, full of emotion and vitality. The production is based on Anton Chekhov’s classic play The Seagull, which is the perfect vehicle for this, and in the jury’s opinion it is a dramaturgical tour de force. The manner in which the ensemble combines form and content here is exceptional.
“The jury is impressed by how unemphatically liberating the group of actors is, for hearing people as well as for the deaf, and sees them as an example for how things could be, also beyond the stage: strengthening and uplifting one another. Celebrating differences, not cancelling them out, but allowing them to exist in a flexible and respectful way."

The actors hope others will follow suit. “Plagiarize and copy it,” they urged during the Gala, “so that productions like this will soon no longer be nominated for groundbreaking achievements, but for being self-evident and perfectly normal.”

[meeuw] can still be seen in Utrecht, Namen, Valence, Roeselare, Zaventem and at the Bourla in Antwerp.