19.04.25 – 21.04.25, HOUSEWARMING, masters project by Anna De Graeve and Kes Bakker

Vera and Michael have just renovated their house. To celebrate, they invite their good friend Ferdinand. Proudly, they show him their new interior full of objects that stagger between design and complete nonsense: from an antique Turkish scimitar, to an electric almond peeler.

Vera and Michael are keeping up with the latest trends, their son is doing great at school, their sex life is more exciting than ever.

But they worry about their friend, Ferdinand. He is a writer, but barely publishes. He works in a brewery, does not have an exclusive record collection and does not want children. What begins as a seemingly convivial evening soon degenerates into the couple's desperate search for confirmation of their existence. But in that search, they are mercilessly confronted with the emptiness of their material and bourgeois lives.

HOUSEWARMING is a timeless satire about a couple having a conversation that is not really a conversation at all. We see the dissection of two deeply unhappy people weighed down by the stifling expectations society imposes on them.

A couple who build an identity based on what they own, what they experience, what they wear... But what is such an identity worth if you have no one to prove it all?

For HOUSEWARMING, Kes Bakker, Anna De Graeve and Toon Acke start from Václav Havel's 1975 one-act Vernisáž (EN: ‘The Vernissage’). Triggered by the contemporaneity of the themes and ideas in Havel's critical, humorous work, they add new, self-written texts to the original. By stepping into the shoes of an older generation, the young makers ask themselves whether they themselves want children. Whether they themselves want to be caught up in that bourgeoisie. We see an older generation struggling with who they have become and young makers struggling with who they want to become.

• Based on: Vernisáž (En: The Vernissage) by Václav Havel
• Language: Dutch
• Concept, acting and text adaptation: Anna De Graeve, Kes Bakker and Toon Acke
• Coaching: Willem De Wolf
• Business and dramaturgic advice: Benoît Vanraes
• Theoretical and dramaturgic advice: Kristof Van Baarle
• Scenographic advice: Gilles Polak
• In collaboration with NTGent and KASK & Conservatorium
• With thanks to Matterhorn VZW, de Roovers, tg STAN, Bardia Mohammad, Valerie Desmet, Frederik Le Roy, Arsenaal/Lazarus, LaGeste, Capture Management.