Author Marjolijn van Heemstra (1981) is fascinated by the limitations that face humans – their mortality, their limited senses and language, their mental loneliness – and their attempts to get beyond these limitations. For example, in Het Meer she and Keez Duyves (of, among other things, PIPS:lab) went in search of the ‘more’ that - according to a popular saying - supposedly exists between heaven and earth. This turned into a lecture performance, a theatrical form which, in this and later shows, she became increasingly adept at:

‘She tells a personal story, sometimes with historic asides, and then beautiful, easily comprehensible ruminations. The form is somewhat akin to that of Laura van Dolron, who seems to be lecturing more than engaging in theatre in her stand-up philosophy shows. But where Van Dolron concentrates on ethics and morals, Van Heemstra is more occupied with mystical conundrums.’
(Simon van den Berg about Het Meer www.simber.nl)

To Van Heemstra the theatre is the place to overcome your boundaries, not in the least those between yourself and the other:

‘People are creatures which are entirely determined by their environment […] Yet you can never step out of your body, we are all individuals. We are simultaneously liquid and solid. […] A show that starts with a venue full of individuals, all caught up in their own thoughts. [….] Perhaps, at the end of the evening everyone may have briefly thought along the same lines. I think that is valuable.’
(Marjolijn van Heemstra in Volume 11)

In her recent theatre work, Van Heemstra increasingly explicitly links her philosophical deliberations to current political and societal themes. In 2009, at the invitation of the Goethe Instituut at Frascati she wrote the text 2012 (directed by Julie van den Berghe), occasioned by the twentieth anniversary of the Berlin wall coming down. She outlined a surrealist game show suspiciously similar to the boundless world of 1989: a world without certainty or direction for determining what is of value. For the project Tegen de tijd (2010) she and writer Hannah van Wieringen engaged in conversation with old age pensioners about the final boundary of human existence: death.

Alongside writing for theatre and autonomous theatre work at Frascati (and formerly the Gasthuis), Van Heemstra has, in recent years, developed into a multi-faceted, socially committed author. She writes columns and reports for, among other publications, the newspapers Trouw and NRC Next, and – together with Hanina Ajarai – co-authored a collection of interviews with Moroccan mothers in the Netherlands entitled Land van werk en honing. Her first collection of poetry Als Mozes had doorgevraagd was published in 2010, both in print and read aloud online (www.marjolijnvanheemstra.nl).

For her new show at Frascati, Family’81 (expected in the spring of 2011), Van Heemstra contacted three exact peers of hers, on three different continents to see which memories of the 1990s they all share. This performance also promises to be a dynamic lecture performance; an evening of limitless thought.

Productions and texts developed at Frascati

Expected: Family’81 (text and performance 2011)
Tegen de tijd (text and performance, together with Hannah van Wieringen 2010)
2012 (text, directed by Julie van den Berghe 2009)
Ondervlakte (text and performance, together with Roald van Oosten 2009)
Het Dierenrijk: een show (text and acting, research presentation together with Jochem Stavenuiter 2009)
Het Meer (text and performance, developed in cooperation with Keez Duyves 2008-2009)
Blauwe Maan (text, written during Gastschrijvers # 5 2007-2008)
Onderzeeër (text and performance 2007)
Noach Junior (text, written during Gastschrijvers # 4 2006-2007)
Astronaut (text and performance 2005)

A selection of her other texts

Als Mozes had doorgevraagd (Thomas Rap 2010)
Babel (show Giselle Vegter 2008)
Echte liefde (show Urban Myth 2008)
Land van werk en honing (interviews with Moroccan mothers in the Netherlands, written with Hanina Ajarai 2006)
Hyalotunidase, puinruimen (show Rauwster 2006)
Bom (show Theater Omega 2005)
To die for (show Hetveem theater 2004/2006)


© Marjolijn Van Heemstra