http://www.ontroerendgoed.be/

The theatre performance group Ontroerend Goed began in 1994 as a Ghent-based poets’ collective of young writers whose founding members were Alexander Devriendt, David Bauwens and Joeri Smet. Later joined by Sophie De Somere, they also form the present core.

Ontroerend Goed went in search of the limits of the medium of theatre from the very beginning: poetry performances at unusual locations, interspersed with theatrical images and in conceptual form. Their first breakthrough came with the PORRORtrilogie (2001-2003), which took place far away from the theatre auditorium in the sultry nightclub atmosphere of the Hotsy Totsy bar in Ghent.
The PORRORtrilogie was awarded the STUK Prize in the Young Theatre category at Theater aan Zee, which also immediately led to their first project subsidy.

The freedom to develop their own theatrical form and explore the boundaries of theatre together with the audience has led to numerous experiments. The Smile Off Your Face (2004) placed the spectators alone in a wheelchair, blindfolded, and led them around a sensory circuit in which questions about intimacy, love and happiness sparked their imagination. Following an extensive first tour of Belgium, the Netherlands and Morocco, The Smile was given a second life after receiving awards in Great Britain (Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2007) and Australia (Adelaide Fringe Festival 2008).

In its auditorium-based productions too, Ontroerend Goed have experimented with the reality of the stage, the actor as a constructor of the theatrical event, and rehearsal as the ultimate form. For example, Exsimplicity (2004) represented an excursion into meta-theatre which was further elaborated on and expanded in Killusion (2005) as a far-reaching game with theatrical illusions where the imagination also played a part. The adaptation of non-theatrical formats such as television series, reality shows and self-help groups was clearly visible in Soap (2006), a theatre series in five parts about the urge for self-discovery in a boys’ club.

The austere narrative piece Hard To Get (2007) once again saw Ontroerend Goed playing with the perception of reality by letting three characters each talk separately about their triangular relationship. The audience was split into three groups and each only got to hear two versions. The ‘true facts’ were subjective details in the mind of the spectator.

2007 also saw the premiere of Intern, the second individual performance after The Smile Off Your Face. Five performers built up a meaningful relationship with five spectators in twenty-five minutes through a combination of speed dating and group therapy. Through its direct interaction with the audience, the performance investigated the degree of intimacy and engagement between spectators and performers, transposed into strong theatrical images.

In 2007, director Alexander Devriendt collaborated for the first time with youngsters in the workshops at KOPERGIETERY, where he himself had performed in several productions as a teenager. This led to the creation of Pubers bestaan niet, an explosive performance about the clichés of being an adolescent. Using an extensive system of repetition and variation, the performance showed the experiences of teenagers, including the way adults see them.
With Pubers bestaan niet, Ontroerend Goed discovered a form which united the two groups in an auditorium production. The stage became a playground for theatre codes with the inevitable humour, relative views and the freedom to abandon taboos.

This was followed at the end of 2009 by A Game of You, the third part of the trilogy of individual performances. Once again, the audience was given access only little by little, to a labyrinth where the boundary between self-perception and the perception of others blurs.

In May 2010, a second youth production by Alexander Devriendt, Teenage Riot, will be premiering at KOPERGIETERY. Teenage Riot deals with loneliness and young teenagers’ need for unrestricted experimentation, and casts this urge in a multimedia mould.
At the end of 2010, Ontroerend Goed will be staging A History of Everything in co-production with the Sydney Theatre Company. The production is being created in Sydney with Flemish and Australian actors. In the meantime, work is also being carried out on Audience, in which the audience plays a central role as the creator of images.