The State of the Playwright

Delivered by invitation and on the occasion of Shakespeare is Dead Leuven, June 9, 2026

Annet Bremen delivered this state of the union of the world of playwriting in OPEK Leuven, during the festival Shakespeare is dead, the Dutch-Flemish festival that showcases contemporary playwriting and the author.

Annet Bremen

special 02.06.2026

Seppuku – Angélica Liddell

The cult of the paradoxical suicides [EN]

In Seppuku: The Funeral of Mishima, or the Pleasure of Dying, Spanish theater artist Angélica Liddell composes a requiem for her muse, the Japanese writer and suicide Yukio Mishima, with whom she shares an obsessive death drive. Perhaps Liddell is lucky, for romantic, self-mythologizing artists like her are gradually becoming a dying breed.

Charlotte De Somviele

review 30.05.2026

Artists’ Entrance: Angélica Liddell

In Artists’ Entrance, we ask artists about their life and work. Today: Angélica Liddell. Born in Figueres, Spain, she is a playwright, director, and performer, known for works like La casa de la fuerza (2009), El año de Ricardo (2005), Liebestod (2021), Vudú (2023), and Dämon. El funeral de Bergman (2024). From May 25 to 27, she can be seen at Kunstenfestivaldesarts with Seppuku. El funeral de Mishima o el placer de morir.

Angélica Liddell

interview 23.05.2026

The Latecomers – Jozef Wouters & Decoratelier

Synecdoche, Molenbeek [EN]

The Latecomers is a heartwarming subterranean descent from a restaurant in Molenbeek to the bottom of the world. Two collective-making projects, Decoratelier and Cassonade, are temporarily located on a heavily polluted terrain in a former galvanisation factory. In a forthcoming future, the warehouse owned by the municipality of Molenbeek will be erased and replaced by a fresh layer of soil for the creation a park. This inevitable fate prompted builders, cooks and other caretakers of both projects to create a clever cross-section in the cycle of urban development: a site-specific revelation of stories contained in matter. How do you make sense of living on the edge of time as the latest and last occupants of a building?

May Abnet

review 22.05.2026

Us – Maria Hassabi

Unmoved? [EN]

For years, New York-based Maria Hassabi has been working at the intersection of choreography and visual art. It is only fitting, then, that her latest creation Us is being presented in the theatre at the BOZAR museum. Are we witnessing a slowly moving image, or a stilled choreography? An analysis of an agonisingly slow viewing experience.

Natalie Gielen

review 21.05.2026

Visies voor het veld: Carolina Mendonça

The future is one day away

In Visies voor het veld, Etcetera asks key figures for their perspectives on the performing arts of tomorrow. What is going well, and what urgently needs to change? What would they do if, tomorrow, they were an all-powerful Minister of Culture, with unlimited resources and powers? This week: choreographer, performer and dramaturge Carolina Mendonça proposes to reconsider spaces of experimentation as a political necessity – to speculate, play and fail, to prepare our bodies for what cannot be imagined yet.

Carolina Mendonça

vision 20.05.2026

YOU CANNOT CAN – Dana Michel

Ambient insecurity

In You Cannot Can, Dana Michel steps onto the slippery floor of a public pool in the centre of Brussels to question all the manoeuvres one performs in life in order to swim in it. Masterfully, Michel (a marketing executive turned football player turned performer) makes herself infinitely disarming, un-intimidating, small and, at the same time, envelops us in her shine to reveal and loosen the ever-present ambient insecurity of today’s interactions.

Ugnė Noreikė

review 13.05.2026