Three favorites from ArtEZ at Café Theater Festival

In Utrecht, Arnhem and Rotterdam, cafés were transformed into stages for emerging makers over the past month. Intimate spaces where little can be done with lighting, sound or scenography. As a result, makers rely on the core of their craft: direct connection with the audience. The festival presents a mix of disciplines, ranging from dance and circus to performance, spoken word and interdisciplinary crossovers.

Utrecht and Rotterdam

Thirty-six makers performed across three cities. In each city, one audience favorite was selected. This year, Merel Nuruwe and Noah Rengart stood out with their performance Binnen, but barely. In their work, they take the audience through a transformation from two broken robots into ‘proper’ human beings.
Merel and Noah are third-year students of the Bachelor Dance Artist.

'Merel and Noah delivered a performance executed to near perfection,' says Luc de Groen-Schram, artistic director of CTF.

In Rotterdam, cabaret duo SCHAFT, Koen van der Molen and Mees Markus, was named audience favorite. At the School of Acting, Koen and Mees created their graduation performance SCHAFT. As a duo, they now presented SCANTARE, taking the audience into their world through an absurd, bold and musical performance.

The audience in Arnhem was captivated by music theatre collective BLOS. Jip Verwegen, Mees Smits and Soleis Reichardt performed their piece STEM at Café Nescio. A radically honest, painfully comic and razor-sharp performance that shed light on extreme hatred, threats and intimidation directed at women in politics.

Mini festival

In Maastricht and Harderwijk, several cafés will host performances during ‘CTF Mini’ On 16 April, SCANTARE will be performed three times at Café Servaas in Maastricht, and on 7 April three times at De Boterlap in Harderwijk.