Welkom to season 26-27 at NTGent

Not everything disappears as soon as it is over. Like the shimmer of a rainbow trout — only visible in a flash, it leaves traces all the same. Theatre understands this process better than anyone. What appears on stage disappears irrevocably, but in the act of looking, your act of looking, seeds take root. Transience becomes meaningful. Briefly, beauty flares between us… and like a bouquet of flowers, the colours and beauty are all the more intense because we know they will soon be gone.

Nobody understands the power of the vulnerable better than the melancholic: someone who accepts that everything is imperfect, but that this very imperfection makes things more predisposed to beauty and goodness. Someone who is deeply moved by flowers, by a children’s song, an unexpectedly gentle gesture.

Our hectic world needs more melancholics. People who don’t aim to be happy all the time but submit to gentle sorrow. Not blinded by the euphoria or illusion of neoliberal society, the melancholic is capable of active hope — continuing to work towards a better world without descending into cynicism.

This season, our programme unfolds along this artistic line. Lara Staal, Ferenc Balcaen, Wunderbaum, Yves Degryse / BERLIN , Barbara Raes / Beyond the Spoken and Studio Julian Hetzel create new productions based on a shared sensitivity to melancholy as an act of resistance.

Dear audience, join us in not giving up hope.

Welcome to the 26-27 season, 

The NTGent team