© Bas de Brouwer

Sea of Silence

Floor Houwink ten Cate / Theater Utrecht / Frascati Producties
Tue 12 Apr ’22 - Tue 10 Oct ’23
A cinematic performance about something that only makes the news in extreme cases: mental and physical violence in (intimate) relationships.
Tue 12 Apr ’22
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Tue 10 Oct ’23

“Silence is the ocean of the unsaid, the unspeakable, the repressed, the erased, the unheard. It surrounds the scattered islands made up of those allowed to speak and of what can be said and who listens. Each of us has his or her own sea of unspoken words.” Rebecca Solnit

Somewhere in a remote town, high on a cliff by the sea, lives a family. Their life is unspectacular, until they close the curtains, and the circus of violence begins. As the sea crashes against the cliff to the rhythm of the tide, the clown manipulates the audience again and again, the acrobat balances on the tightrope and the monster roars as he comes out of his cage. But the sea level is rising, and the wave of oppression and powerlessness is slowly but surely reaching the family's lips.

Sea of ​​Silence is a cinematic family epic about a cycle of mental and physical violence in which the perspective on perpetrator and victimhood constantly tilts.

Director Floor Houwink ten Cate and writer Esther Duysker turn what is normally seen as a private matter - domestic violence - into a public affair. They write an operatic and psychological love story about the loss of autonomy and regaining it. Floor has once again collaborated with opera composer and singer Annelinde Bruijs for Sea of ​​Silence. With Annelinde, she is steadily building a new, socio-political opera form in which she questions the classical views on opera and transforms them into large vulnerable gestures.

  • Premiere Thu April 14th 2022

About Floor Houwink ten Cate

Theater maker Floor Houwink ten Cate (1987) makes documentary-cinematic performances about contemporary icons, unprecedented phenomena and personal questions of conscience. 

concept, direction, scenography Floor Houwink ten Cate text Esther Duysker, Floor Houwink ten Cate composition Annelinde Bruijs play Annelinde Bruijs, Sjaid Foncé, Abke Haring, Benjamin Moen light design Varja Klosse costume Rebekka Wörmann spatial sound design Cesco van der Zwaag dramaturgy Berthe Spoelstra research Lotte Houwink ten Cate scenographic-advice Julian Maiwald image Inés Cuesta production Frascati Production

                            

In ‘Sea of silence’ giet regisseur Floor Houwink ten Cate een verhaal over huiselijk geweld in een vervreemdende vorm. Hierdoor ligt de nadruk op het perspectief van de kinderen, en komt het drama aan als een mokerslag.

★★★★ NRC