De Vader

Name: De Vader — Marieke&Sophia
Start: 2027-03-14T20:30:00+01:00
Location: Schouwburg Kortrijk

Marieke&Sophia

From Strindberg’s 'The Father' to a world without men

Sun 14 Mar ’27 20:30

Theater
CUBO

14 Mar ’27

20:30

14 Mar ’27

20:30

Schouwburg Kortrijk, Kortrijk

Schouwburg - zaal UTOOP

Tickets

In a playful, physical language, Marieke Schraepen and Sophia Bauer turn August Strindberg’s bourgeois drama 'The Father' (1887) completely on its head. With their (delightfully perverse) female imagination, they seize the play’s violent worldview and transform it from within.

Strindberg’s 'The Father' is the starting point - but only to be dismantled. In the original plot, Adolf, the patriarch and military man of the house, spirals into crisis when his wife suggests he may not be the real father of their child. What remains of the patriarch when he loses control over his own flesh and blood? By the end, Strindberg’s hero dies in a straitjacket: mentally broken, defeated. Wife and daughter stand triumphantly over the ruins.

Together with Anna Franziska Jäger and Rodrigo Batista, Marieke Schraepen and Sophia Bauer rewrite this patriarchal legacy. They take Strindberg’s fear of male obsolescence as their point of departure: What might a world without men look like? From a love‑hate relationship with the original, they reveal fluid, alternative forms of (male) authority.

Their inspirations range from feminist performance art to pornographic clichés from the 1960s–1980s. Alongside the skeleton of the original text, they place Strindberg’s theoretical pamphlets and diary fragments - translating them into contemporary forms: video diaries, deepfakes, bodily rituals. They inflate the protagonist’s self‑obsession and situate it within a broader societal trend. Can we still reverse our collective inward retreat — into the self, the private sphere, the interior - and build a bridge back to the other?

With their playful, physical language, Marieke & Sophia flip Strindberg’s paranoid male script upside down. Their (perverse) female imagination takes over Adolf’s violent worldview and transforms it from within.

In collaboration with kunstencentrum BUDA.

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Credits

Concept: Marieke&Sophia. Spel: Rodrigo Batista, Anna Franziska Jäger, Marieke Schraepen & Sophia Bauer. Dramaturgie: Bauke Lievens. Eindregie: Geert Belpaeme. Scenografie: Eva Demulder. Kostuum: Alexandra Panou. Lichtontwerp: Jan Maertens. Geluidsdramaturgie: Jonas Baeke .