A sense of an ending

Gerben Vaillant / Frascati Producties
Thu 6 Apr ’23 - Sat 15 Apr ’23
A physical production about our fascination with holy apparitions.
Thu 6 Apr ’23
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Sat 15 Apr ’23

A penetrating tone can be heard all over the world. No one knows why or where it comes from, but everyone calmly drops everything, breathes out and looks up. 

A woman drops her heavy shopping bags in front of the supermarket – tinned goods roll along the street. At a service station, a man allows petrol to run over his shoes at the pump, then sinks to his knees on the wet concrete. In a shadowy school playground, a smoking teenage girl starts a heathen ritual, and lightning strikes. This is followed by a procession of everyone and everything – just get away from here. On to a new world, although no one yet knows what kind of world this will be.  

A sense of an ending is a visual, physical production that departs from a fascination for holy apparitions; for prophecies and for those moments when we are unable to place things that are great, or strange. Together with five performers and sound-designer Timon Persoon, Gerben Vaillant portrays a world that ends peacefully and ‘with a sigh’. The performers seem to follow a call, a mysterious order that gives them direction, into the unknown. What happens next is a seemingly endless parade. They dance, hang around, hesitate, or keep on walking. Is this an opportunity for redemption, or will there be a new start?

About Gerben Vaillant

Gerben Vaillant (1994) is an interdisciplinary performance artist. During his studies of mime (at AHK Amsterdam University of the Arts), he developed a fascination for making productions centred around the distance between man and reality: where people do not manage to be (part of) a whole. Sensitive and radical in equal measure, he works with a range of forms: text, dance, image, philosophy, trash – it’s always open-ended, frequently atmospheric, and sometimes confusing. He hopes eventually to contribute to a representation of reality in a way makes it suit us better. 

Gerben often works with composer and sound-designer Timon Persoon. This intensive collaboration ensures that music and images drive one another to greater heights. Together, they create an almost cinematographic universe, which expands further with each production. They also link their individual productions and pieces of music. 


Gerben presented his study Things when they're gone at Beginnings in 2021; in 2022 he expanded this into the Frascati production The Other Everything. 

performed by Annabel Koele, Hidde Aans-Verkade, Tim van Dongen, Anou Maarsingh, Gustav Marcus Lauesen music Timon Persoon scenography Thomas Maas dramaturgy Francesca Lazzeri special thanks to ICK Amsterdam, Festival Cement, AHK Mime-opleiding Amsterdam, Marijn de Langen