Name: Transformations
Start: 2024-02-07T00:00:00.000Z
End: 2024-02-11T00:00:00.000Z
Location: Amare

Organization

Conductor

Sam Weller

Stage director

Rennik-Jan Neggers

Costume designer

Sanne Oostervink

Set designer

Lighting designer

Jasper Nijholt

Dramaturge

Tom de Ronde

Singer

Thalia Cook-Hansen

Singer 1

Elisa Maayeshi

Samantha Faina

Singer 2

Hannah Gries

Femke Hulsman

Singer 3

Rommie Rochell

Stefanie Bruggeling

Singer 4

Sterre Decru

Henrik Enger Holm

Singer 5

Marcelo Alexandre

Singer 6

Jack Roberts

Wessel Wirken

Singer 7

Fabian Homburg

Singer 8

Dutch National Opera Academy

Orchestra

Ensemble from the Conservatorium van Amsterdam & The Royal Conservatoire The Hague

Ilmari Leisma

Cyprien Crabbé

Jaap van der Wel

English

Transformations

The Hague

Netherlands

Amare

Conservatoriumzaal

Public

Opera

Dutch

Approved

Transformations promises an evening with “small comic masterpieces: grotesque, erotic, sly, and playful”. Poet Anne Sexton, self-proclaimed ‘mother of the insane’, transformed Grimm fairy tales into her own poetic language. Sexton’s sharp and dark sense of humour places these fairy tales in the light of her mental state and her social context, without losing the sinister rawness of the Grimm tales. Conrad Susa set Transformations to music, giving the fairy tales a new theatricality. This production places the piece in an intimate and dynamic chamber setting, where the audience can come closer, both physically and intellectually. The spectators will be taken from one fairy tale to another, where metaphors and similes let phantasies and associations roam free.

In the plot, Anne Sexton appears as the Tale-Teller of Transformations. She is the mother of the insane, and she wants to tell them a few stories. She wants to share some odd tales from Brothers Grimm that she transformed herself: The Golden Key, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The White Snake, Iron Hans, Rumpelstiltskin, Rapunzel, Godfather Death, The Wonderful Musician, Hansel and Gretel, and Briar Rose. Before she can tell the tales, she wants to present a clinical case introducing each one of them. In short prologues she describes cases with their symptoms, which transform and modernise the fairy tales that follow.

The prologues and the fairy tales become more and more intertwined, up to the point where it is impossible to consider them separately. Does Anne live in a fantasy? Or are the fantasies her reality?

Transformations by Susa, Wed 07 Feb 2024, From (2024/2024), Directed by Rennik-Jan Neggers,, Conductor Sam Weller, Amare, The Hague, Netherlands

Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

Cast

Crew

Ensemble

Programme, About & Synopsis

Photos

Further reading

Performance Dates & Venues

Venues