The Source of It All: Festival of Flemish drama in Aachen

Theater Aachen is bringing Maurice Maeterlinck’s classic ‘The Blue Bird’ to the stage this season. To celebrate this, there will also be staged readings of three contemporary plays from Flanders: Everyman by Freek Mariën, Mater by Femke van der Steen and Source by Anna Carlier. Read more about the Festival of Flemish drama in Aachen.

During the 2024-25 season, Theater Aachen will stage 'The Blue Bird' by Maurice Maeterlinck, a Belgian Nobel laureate and world-renowned representative of symbolism. The “rediscovery” of this iconic play offers the perfect opportunity to introduce Maeterlinck’s “literary heirs” to the Aachen audience as well as theater professionals from Germany. 

On Saturday, February 15, 2025, Theater Aachen will host readings of three contemporary Flemish plays, supported by Flanders Literature. The reading of Mater by Femke van der Steen is also supported by deAuteurs. 

From 11am to around 4:30pm, the plays Source by Anna Carlier (translated by Christine Bais), Mater by Femke van der Steen (translated by Lisa Mensing), and Everyman by Freek Mariën (translated by Christine Bais) will be presented in short 45-minute readings, followed by a discussion with the author. In the evening, there will be an opportunity to attend a performance of 'The Blue Bird', directed by Helga Lázár, at Theater Aachen. 

The day before, on Friday, February 14, a panel discussion will take place as part of the format Talk of the Town, featuring theatre professionals from Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands. This discussion will explore cross-border collaboration, differences, and commonalities in the theatre cultures of the three countries. 

Friday 14 February 

• 19:00 - 21:30 Stadtgespräch: Grenzgänge. Kultur machen im Dreiländereck 

Saturday 15 February 

• 11:00 – 17:00 The Source of it All: Festival of Flemish drama (Spiegelfoyer) 

• 11:00-12:30 Reading and author discussion: 'Everyman' by Freek Mariën.  

• Coffee break 

• 13:15-14:45 Reading and author discussion: 'Source' by Anna Carlier 

• Coffee break 

• 15:30-17:00 Reading and author discussion: 'Mater' by Femke Van der Steen 

• 20:00-21:30 Performance and after talk 'The Blue Bird' (Kammer) 

Mater

In five stories, eight women navigate through history and the present while imagining an alternative future. They explore both their own fears and society's fears regarding the feminine, the "natural," and the chaotic. 'Mater' is a playful ode to the darkness of women, the hidden, the suppressed, and that which inevitably and hysterically rises to the surface; an ode to change. 

Femke Van der Steen (born 1999) grew up in Friesland and moved to Belgium at the age of thirteen. She is an actress, theater maker, and writer. In 2022, she completed her master's degree in acting at the LUCA School of Arts. She is active in theater, television, and film, developing performances under her own name and in collaboration with Runa Robbroeckx, Tristan Feyten, and Stan Martens in the collective OVERHERE. 'Mater' (2022) was her first play under her own name and was selected for the Theater Aan Zee festival and nominated for the Toneelschrijfprijs 2023, winning the Translation Prize 2023. 

Everyman 

Imagine: your neighbor suddenly discovers a spring on his property. He bottles all the water and slaps a price tag on it. And after a while, no water flows from your tap anymore. You're thirsty – while he splashes around with rubber ducks in his bathtub. 'Everyman' is a play about how strange it is to "own" a dog – or a child. Or an idea. How one can drill a hole in the ground, pump out the water beneath everyone’s feet, and then sell it back to them in plastic bottles. Full of playful, absurd language, the piece questions the rules of our society. 

Freek Mariën (born 1988) is a Belgian writer and theatre maker. He completed his master’s degree at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK) in Ghent and is the artistic director of Het Kwartier. He creates plays for both young people and adults, characterized by strong text, powerful content, and unconventional forms and themes. Mariën has received several awards, including the Dutch-German Children’s and Youth Drama Prize (2012 and 2020), the East Flemish Literature Prize (2014), and the Toneelschrijfprijs for best Dutch-language play (won in 2015, nominated in 2017 and 2019).

Source 

In 'Source', three wild salmon embark on the journey of a lifetime: swimming through the open sea back to their birthplace, over thousands of kilometers filled with danger. Their only goal is to reproduce. Along the way, they engage in witty, humorous dialogues about what it means to be a salmon and what it once meant to be human. On their journey, they encounter a depressed farmed salmon, whom they rescue from a net and take under their wing. This is an animalistic play about human existence, exhaustion, and the desire to let go – about aimless determination and determined aimlessness. 

Anna Carlier, born in 1994 in Brussels, lives in Ghent. In 2017, she graduated in Drama from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent. She writes, acts, and creates theater. In 2016, she founded the theater group Compagnie de Kolifokkers. With her play 'Crown', she won the Dutch-German Children’s and Youth Drama Prize 'Kaas & Kappes' in the same year, and in 2018, the text was longlisted for the German Children’s Theater Prize in its German translation. Her play 'Deerskin' was nominated for the Taalunie Toneelschrijfprijs 2020, the most prestigious prize for theater literature in the Dutch language. In addition to writing for the stage, she also writes poetry, published on her blog Andermans Gedichtengoed. 

The Source of It All: Festival of Flemish drama is a collaboration between Theater Aachen, Flanders Literature and deAuteurs.