At the end of this summer, for the 26e time the Noorderzon Performing Arts Festival Groningen will take place in the Groningen Noorderplantsoen. Every year, the festival introduces visitors to a wide range of performances from worldwide cultures and countries. From Thursday 18 to Sunday 28 August 2016, the park will once again be the stage for the artistic festival.
In 2016 Noorderzon presents a program of European and non-European makers who all tell urgent stories about their own culture and environment in their performances – including stories from Noorderzon visitors. Stories told in an innovative language, rooted in past and present. Noorderzon thus offers a contemporary window on the world† Noorderzon proudly presents the first names from the main program for the next edition of the festival.
– Opening performance: Dead Center | Chekhov's First Play (Ireland/England)
The young company Dead Center comes with Chekhov's First Play to Noorderzon for the first time, to do injustice to a great playwright. Visitors wear headphones throughout the performance, providing bizarre and funny live commentary on what is being played on stage.
– El Conde de Torrefiel | guerrilla (Spain)
Presenting a Spanish collective of writers, musicians, dancers and video artists guerrilla, for which no fewer than 80 voluntary local actors are needed, which Noorderzon will soon be recruiting.
– Matt Staub | 21 – Memories of Growing Up (Switzerland)
When did you turn 21? What happened that year? And did you really feel grown up then? The Swiss artist Mats Staub discussed these questions with a large group of people of all ages. He is collecting eight new portraits of visitors for Noorderzon, the first recordings of which will take place shortly.
- Taoufiq Izzediou/Cie Anania | And Alerte (Morocco)
A solo dance performance based on the natural attraction of the divine or the spiritual in our current societies. During his residency in Groningen in February, Izeddiou further explored his concept and took the first steps towards a performance that you can come and see at Noorderzon 2016.
- Sarah Vanhee/CAMPO | Oblivion (Belgium)
For her latest performance, Oblivion, Sara Vanhee kept track of everything she would otherwise have thrown away, working and living, for a year and makes a performance with it.
- Edit Kaldor | Web of Trust (Hungary/Netherlands)
Edit Kaldors Web of Trust is attempting to set up a new online platform: a 'trust network'. This brings people from all over the world together online and forms a social movement based on respect and equality. Web of Trust is bringing the internet into the theater and offers the opportunity to turn passive dissatisfaction into active involvement.
- Berlin | ZVIZDAL – Holocene [#6] [Chernobyl – so far so close] (Belgium)
The year 1986: about 90 towns around the city of Pripyat are evacuated, the failure of a nuclear test causes the lives of the inhabitants to take a drastic turn. They leave their homes never to return. Pétro and Nadia, a 60-year-old couple born and raised in Zvizdal, refuse to be evacuated. He whistled is a portrait about loneliness, survival, poverty, hope and love between two older people.
- Penny Arcade (United States)
None other than Andy Warhol recruited Penny Arcade, the Queen of Underground Performance, in the 60s after her stand up performances in The Playhouse Of The Ridiculous. Now – in her sixties – she is just as relevant as then. Last year she was very successful at the Edinburgh festival and now she's coming to Groningen for an extremely urgent late-night show.
– Music program first name: Daniel Norgren (Sweden)
Until recently Sweden's best kept musical secret, but the best man himself has changed that over the past few years. As a one-man band he has toured crisscross Europe in recent years. He writes painfully beautiful languid blues songs: battered, battered and full of influences from country, gospel, jazz and rock.
More information and ticket sales
In addition to the main program, Noorderzon offers a wide selection of sub-programs. From a strong international music program, dozens of performances in sea containers to a mini-literature festival. From a playing field full of activities and performances for children to visual art everywhere on the festival site. More names for the program will be announced in the coming weeks and months. Keep the website van Noorderzon Performing Arts Groningen.
Early Bird ticket sales for Noorderzon 2016 start on Monday 20 June via this website and regular ticket sales will also start on Monday 25 July via the website and also via a ticket sales point in the city of Groningen.
Photo: Dead Center – (c) Jose Miguel Jimenez
