01.05.26 – 03.05.26, Exiled salvation, master project by Mischa Pakravesh

Cruel as only women can be, that's how they are. They look you in the eye and stab you in the chest with a smile.

The performance takes its cue from Lysistrata, the Greek comedy in which women withhold sex to force an end to war. It foregrounds the intimate entanglement of private desire and public power.

Drawing on this starting point, third-year students from KASK & Conservatorium collaborate with actors from Het Scheldeoffensief, guided by Ika Schwander and Sophia Bauer. Together, they ask what resonance such a gesture might have today. Bringing their different bodies, biographies and perspectives into the space, they shape a bold, hybrid piece of theatre. Sharing the stage as a collective, they probe the shifting dynamics between intimacy, power and resistance in the present day.

Four characters – or are they elements? – find themselves inside a game of which they don’t really know the rules. Nonetheless, they play along. They tremble, jerk, rock their way through vaguely familiar situations and scripts.

“Through the use of reality as a looping moment, the piece reflects the absurdity of a repeated present without progress. It appeals by looping. Repeat, repeat, progress! The body becomes the limitation.” – Coach

“Fragile and bizarre, mixing artificial detachments, the organic machine becomes a mirror in which obsessions emerge.” – Jim

“The characters, manipulating situations, act as characters.” – Rock

“Many characters are corporate stock phrases. With stock phrases the glimmers of differentiation win.Playing with mixing what’s alive and what isn’t. What strikes most upon first viewing is the quality of the gestures highlighted through breathing. The work is arguably scripted.” – Tie

Credits:

• Guided by: Nathan Ooms
• By and with: Giel Luyten, Arnaud Muco, Pepijn Vermeulen & Anton Rys
• Thanks to: Anna Franziska jäger, Simon De Winne, Bardia Mohammad, Danspunt, Trefpunt, KASK Drama.

"All trans/it long" is an internal transformation that erupts from a festive improvisation. The shared moment stems from a transmission of "Commonstro".

Credits:

• Conception: Milø Slayers
• Performers: Fatou Kâ, Manon Van Ranst, Lena Van Speybrouck, Sainabou Johm and Aniesha Akoua N. Tchimou
• Special thanks: Yasen Vasilev, Anastasia Antoniadi, Chiheb Slaoui, Kim Ramiandrisoa
• Supported by: Stad Gent

“Als God niet bestaat, blijft toch altijd de vraag bestaan wie dan wél het menselijke bedrijf bestiert, alsmede de gehele op deze aarde bestaande orde.”

When Woland and his grotesque entourage, including a giant talking cat and an eccentric witch, descend on atheistic 1930s Moscow, the city is turned upside down. While Moscow's literary elite panics, a story unfolds that transcends the boundaries of time, reality and humanity.

The Master is imprisoned for his novel about Pontius Pilate, and his beloved does everything in her power to save him and his novel.

Pontius Pilate and Jesus meet before Jesus' execution. Will Pilate intervene, and how long will his conscience haunt him?

In The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov presents an eclectic parade of characters who reject all authority and all forms of control, especially that of reason. Dialogues from The Master and Margarita is an adaptation and selection from Bulgakov's novel, directed by Timeau De Keyser and Hans Mortelmans in collaboration with third-year students from KASK Drama.

As has become customary¹ : buckle up, pour yourself a good glass of vodka, bring your Communist Manifesto and your Bible, sit back and enjoy this magical, biblical, Russian adventure.

Dutch spoken.

Credits

• Cast: Mathisse De Sutter, Lotus Friede, Winand Keymis, Anouk Lacroix, Bjarne Liveyns, Giel Luyten, Mina Maréchal, Anton Rys, Pepijn Vermeulen and Frieda Vranken
• Coaching/Direction: Timeau De Keyser and Hans Mortelmans
• Text: The Master and Margarita (1940), Mikhail Bulgakov, translated to Dutch by Marko Fondse and Aai Prins, selected and adapted by Timeau De Keyser and Hans Mortelmans
• Poster image: Bjarne Liveyns
• Image of tram: Van den Bossche, P. 2011, Gent tram to Moscou
• Thanks to: KASK Drama, Minard, Simon De Winne, Bardia Mohammad

¹ See De Kersentuin

During the Drama Festival, drama master’s students present their graduation work. Offbeat and classical drama, crossovers, performances and multidisciplinary work can be seen at de Kazematten, CAMPO, Minard and Arsenaalsite. The Drama Festival runs from 14 to 21 June 2025.

With ik denk dat het ouder heet, collectief modderspot (Mira Cole, Winter De Cock, Robbe Embrechts, Hanna Mensink & Seppe Somers) presents a theatre performance about parenthood.

In this youth performance (10+), the group creates an absurd world in which five characters try to build the ‘ideal’ parent together. By playing out different scenarios and ideas, they discover what they really expect from a parent – and whether the perfect parent actually exists.

In an ever-changing scenography, the characters re-enact memories they long for. They seek parental intimacy with each other. They give shape to each other's wishes and losses. Gradually, they discover how they themselves have become parents – for themselves, for each other, even for their own parents. They fill the void, see how it constantly reforms, and find parenthood in unexpected things: in the light, the wind, the cracks in the sofa, the dust swirling up from the vacuum cleaner.

With this performance, we want to offer a safety net. A place for thoughts, a touch, comfort and a laugh – for everyone who is growing up or has grown up without a parent figure.

Credits:

• makers & players: Mira Cole, Winter De Cock, Robbe Embrechts, Hanna Mensink, Seppe Somers
• guidance: Jan Steen, Freek Vielen, Gina Beuk
• lighting design and technics: Ramses Mensink
• scenography: Elena De Lie
• poster: Stella Brouwers
• image: Alies Torfs
• thanks to: Sumalin Gijsbrechts, Kristof Van Baarle, Bardia Mohammad, Frederik Le Roy, Madonna Lenaerts, Simon De Winne, kunstencentrum CAMPO, hetpaleis.
  

In BOTOX (NO EMOTIONS), actors reveal their deepest vulnerability — or are they just really good at acting? Sadness is carefully staged and chewed over, authentic acting is stripped down to the bone. There is laughter, sometimes intentional, sometimes because someone stumbles over an emotional metaphor in the form of a wooden stool. You watch, you cry, you wonder if you should even be here, you google ‘can I leave a performance art piece while it's still dark?

What happens to the sincerity of emotions when they are observed? It is a search for what is real, and whether we can ever fully reveal it.

Credits

• by and with: Lander Merckx, Melanie Barelds, Noa Van Dongen, Domien Huybrechts, Tist De Maeyer
• image: Emma Ostyn
• thanks to: Bauke Lievens, Simon De Winne, Madonna Lenaert, Mieja Hollevoet, Carolina Maciel de França, Bardia Mohammad, Flore van den Eynde, onze klas.

MEET THE ARTISTS

Katarzyna Kozyra (1992), a blond and provocative multidisciplinary artist known for her raw and challenging portrayal of marginalized bodies. She believes in giving a voice to the silenced, using her art to amplify those often overlooked. Born in Poland, raised in Amsterdam, and discovering her Jewish roots later in life, she embodies a complex, multifaceted cultural identity that fuels her fearless and electrifying art.

Banasha Suleimankheil (1993), a feminist performance artist in exile. Born in Afghanistan but raised in the Netherlands, she grapples with a profound identity crisis. Her art can be described as self-referential, as it solely exposes her personal experience of female suffering. She confronts the male gaze by presenting her body on her own terms, transforming her vagina into both a weapon and a canvas.

In the major retrospective exhibition “My Nemesis”, Katarzyna Kozyra dives into the relationship with her best friend and life-long enemy Banasha Suleimankheil. She looks back at this turbulent but very meaningful friendship to portray a decade of exchange between two strong-willed women trapped in a female artist’s body. Their lives were a constant competition but also the driving force behind their oeuvre. Who was the most traumatised artist? The most fuckable? The true feminist activist? With a hunger for success bordering on madness they exploited their beauty, sexuality, ethnicity, traumas, and just like Barbara Kruger, turned their bodies into a battleground.

Content warning: verbal violence, sexual violence, bodily abjections and suicide.

Credits

• Van & met: Manizja Kouhestani en Fiene Zasada
• Eindregie: Abigail Gypens
• Scenografie: Emma Onghena
• Muziek: Jan de Tremerie
• Mentoren: Luanda Casella & Frederik Le Roy
• Affiche: Lars Duchateau
• Met dank aan: Martha Balthazar, Bardia Mohammad, Simon de Winne, Jan Steen, Astrid Vansteenkiste , KASK DRAMA, CAMPO Victoria, LaGeste, De Kazematten, kunstencentrum BUDA, Minard, NTGent.

In Entre-deux, Roos and Cyrille take you on an honest, raw and sometimes painfully recognisable journey. A journey through their relationship, their doubts, their desires. They put themselves and each other under a magnifying glass.

Amidst the ruins of what once was, they search for what could still be. They speak as lovers, as strangers, as players in each other's lives. They take on the roles of friend, actress, director, mother, doctor, lovers, victor, student. Each identity slides over the other like a layer, until it is no longer clear where play ends and truth begins. In a landscape of roles and masks, they try to find each other again. With nothing but words, silences and the courage to expose themselves.

Entre-deux is not a linear story. It is a compilation of monologues and dialogues from existing plays, including Neoptolemos by Koos Terpstra, Scenes from a Marriage by Ingmar Bergman, and films such as Marriage Story by Noah Baumbach and Persona by Ingmar Bergman. 

It is an attempt. A search. For each other. For themselves. For connection. For a place where they can start over – or perhaps just let go. About the elusive nature of human relationships, about everything that needs to be said – and what is perhaps better left unsaid. About what it means to be together.

‘I understand, I understand why you're silent...’ – a sentence that lingers in the air, just like the silence between two people who want to say everything but don't know how.

Entre-deux – Between what was and what could still be.

Credits

• By and with: Roos De Graeve & Cyrille Ribel
• Image: Helena Bruynooghe
• With thanks to: Simon De Winne, Bauke Lievens, Mieja Hollevoet, Carolina Maciel de França, Madonna Lenaert, Bardia Mohammad.
  

RETROGRADE returns to the place where the image of femininity was born and discovers that it is mud, not a rib. From here, the search begins for what the word femininity carries within it and how it resonates in our own bodies. In search of roots, three players dig into texts from long ago where male voices form female bodies. They allow themselves to be flooded by advertising images and pop songs while trying to peel away the layers of illusion. What makes them identify as women? How do Shakespeare and Britney Spears influence their womanhood? What if Salome dances only for herself? The space reflects their search and invites the audience to compose their own story. 

Credits

• by and with: Lena Dirckx, Mischa Pakravesh and Marte Lambaerts
• performing work: Lena Dirckx; Mischa Pakravesh and Marte Lambaerts
• sound: Mischa Pakravesh
• texts by Shakespeare, Euripides, Maeterlinck, Oscar Wilde, Lena Dirckx and Marte Lambaerts
• poster: Marte Lambaerts with image by Helena Bruynooghe
• costumes: Marte Lambaerts and her grandmother
• with thanks to: Bardia Mohammad, Bauke Lievens, Mieja Hollevoet, Simon De Winne, Carolina Maciel de França, Liene Aerts, Thomas Peeters and Bérengère Bodin