AAN DE START VAN DE BRUG

"Sublime acting. The new generation has arrived and it is here to stay." That is what Belgian leading newspaper De Standaard wrote about Gruis / aan de twijfel (2023). The play, based on the oeuvre of Willem Frederik Hermans, bombarded collective Werktoneel as press and peoples favorite.

Describing major social phenomena starting from hyper-personal stories is what Werktoneel does best. Jesse Vandamme, Louise Bergez, Joeri Happel, Lucie Plasschaert and Lucas van der Vegt do it like no other. Whether it is madness and fear (Solipsists), climate and capital (Giants), love and marriage (Scenes), or success and failure (Gruis / to the doubt). In Aan de start van de brug [At the Start of the Bridge], they approach the ultimate human phenomenon: the dormant awareness of our mortality.

The show is an exploration of how people deal with that awareness, and the inventive - sometimes absurd - ways they come up with to avoid, and even overcome, death. Trying to outsmart their existential fear of death, the characters dive into a tunnel of cryonism, Silicon Valley ideologies and longevity research. The outcome of their perverse experiments is highly uncertain. As guinea pigs, they are at the start of a bridge that most likely leads nowhere.