MUSIC THEATRE | NOV 2021
De Megalomaan (The Megalomaniac) is Dutch music theatre about a young person’s inability to cope with the loss of dreams. I wrote and staged it as a storytelling event, where the audience joins actors and musicians on stage and all theatricality is deconstructed to the bare minimum, to enable collected imagination.
The show is a mixture of storytelling, sound design and music. A nod to how stories were told by troubadours or grandparents, and an outstretched hand to the audience’s own imagination. For music, we hear a viola, a flute and a vibraphone, which in Weronika Ast’s composition tackle the story using leitmotifs, combined with my own sound design of more industrial tones.
In writing of this story, I delved into the clashing of childlike dreams with the harshness of the adult world. Incorporating the overflow of first encounters when someone is coming of age – finances, housing, loss of innocence, of dreams and death.
Performers and musicians Maggie Symonds, Luka Kluskens,
Cor Langerak, Meike Brouwers, Noë Verschelde, Colin Crandal
Sound designer, writer, director, producer Cecilia Thoden van Velzen
Composer Weronika Ast