Biography
Emke Idema (Maastricht Academy of Dramatic Arts/DAS Theatre) has created a great deal of interactive theatre in the form of games played by the audience. STRANGER (2012), RULE (2014), and FOREST (2020) all toured the Netherlands and Europe for years. For her work, Emke won the Dioraphte Stimuleringsprijs (2013) and the Joop Mulderplak (2019). All her performances address the question of how to relate to one another and to existing social, societal, and narrative structures, as well as the question of how things can be ‘different’. By having the audience play together in a playful manner, embodied experiences with great impact emerge.
In 2022, she developed the School of Unlived Worlds, in which a group of audience members comes together for several days to explore their relationship with the landscape through embodied interventions. In addition, she collaborates as a director, dramaturg, and writer with other makers (including Strijbos&vanRijswijk, King Sisters, Lindertje Mans/Firma Mes, and Rita Hoofwijk/SoAP). She also writes poetry and essays.
Marie Groothof trained as a mime performer and maker. With her collective Schwalbe (2008–2020), she created uncompromising physical performances such as Spaar ze (2008), Schwalbe speelt vals (2012), and Schwalbe speelt een tijd (2016), which toured both in the Netherlands and internationally. Within their work, the physical was pushed to the extreme, and they sought authenticity and the unexpected. Schwalbe won the BNG New Theatre Makers Prize (Schwalbe zoekt massa, 2013) and was nominated multiple times for the Mime Prize. In 2020, she published the text Tot de wereld weer goed hangt (Toneelbibliotheek) and wrote a theatre text for NYX by Karlijn Hamer (2025).
Driven by a curiosity to bring their areas of expertise together (interactive work, mime, and language), Groothof and Idema are now developing The Big Turning.
In residentie The big Turning
26.05.2026 – 05.06.2026
Welkom op het plein
of eigenlijk sta je nog aan de rand, misschien zoals je vroeger
aan de rand van het zwembad stond
‘Plein’ is verwant aan het Engelse woord ‘plain’
‘gewoon’ of ‘eenvoudig’
terwijl ‘plein’ in het Frans ‘vol’ of ‘compleet’ betekent
‘piano’ – ‘zacht’
‘plano’ – ‘vlak’
‘plenty’ – ‘overvloed’
Welkom aan de rand van deze eenvoudige, platte, zachte, vlakke overvloed
Imagine standing on a square in your city and never moving from your spot. That from now on you would only turn around your axis, like a Sufi dancer. That you would no longer hold onto anything with your gaze, but let the square flow right through you, like music.
The Big Turning is an exploration of a different way of perceiving. The work brings you into a new relationship with the central square in your city. It is a poetic philosophical radio play that makes you part of a collective movement. It is a gentle protest against a hurried, goal-oriented, polarized way of being.
Marie Groothof and Emke Idema bring together their expertise from interactive theater, mime, and literature to develop a new form that questions public space: a form of immersive theater from which you look at your surroundings.