Before The Story Starts

Name: Before The Story Starts - Urland
Start: 2026-09-24T20:30:00+02:00
Location: Frascati, Amsterdam

URLAND

Tue 22 Sep ’26 - Thu 24 Sep ’26

An experimental, immersive, one man theatre performance that takes place in the liminal moment before a (or THE) story begins.

Tue 22 Sep ’26

Thu 24 Sep ’26

Tue 22 Sep ’26

20:30

Try-out

Frascati, Amsterdam

Frascati 1

Tickets

Wed 23 Sep ’26

20:30

Première

Frascati, Amsterdam

Frascati 1

Tickets

Thu 24 Sep ’26

20:30

Frascati, Amsterdam

Frascati 1

Tickets

This is not the start of the story, we haven’t started yet.
This is not the beginning.

What do you need to know? Before we start?
We don’t know why.
We can guess, but we don’t know. We never will.
We can choose. And be satisfied with an answer. But we never know.

The elusive Why.

Before the Story Starts is an experimental, immersive, one man theatre performance that takes place in the liminal moment before a (or THE) story begins.

Inspired by 'The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy', 'Being John Malkovich' and 'Alan Watts', master storyteller Thomas Dudkiewicz travels through the subconscious of the universe, in pursuit of answers.

This story that is not yet a story has a surreal structure filled with cryptic hosts, erratic guides, and philosophical dead-ends.

As he meets his alter ego(s) he unravels the story of why, why is it that he tells stories? How is meaning built? And what happens when we confront the terrifying possibility that there may never be a final answer?

Première: wed. 23 sept.
Language: English
Duration: ± 75-90 minutes

Credits

script, concept and performance Thomas Dudkiewicz scenography and light design Marijn Alexander de Jong sound design and creative technology Tomas Loos technical producer Jaap Schledorn technical team Denzo (André Goos) Desmond Veldhuis (at Oerol) production manager Elise de Fooij coach Naomi Velissariou marketing & communication Pien Visser business management Martha van Meegen and Marijn Bellaard business assistant Denise de Hoog production URLAND special thanks to Hendrik Walther, Caro Derkx, Vanja Rukavina en Florian Hellwig. made possible by Gemeente Rotterdam, Fonds Podiumkunsten and Cultuurloket DigitAll.

In the press

"The scenes are effortlessly visualised: a journey at sea, entering new spaces, even an oral pleasure. The narrative requires some surrender at the start, but those who let themselves be carried away end up in an ingenious labyrinth where reality and imagination combine for a mindfuck." ***** NRC

"Brilliantly done." ***** Trouw

"With precise playing and inimitable diction, Dudkiewicz conjures from this abstraction a labyrinthine haunted house, symbolic of his churning artistic mind." **** De Volkskrant

"With nothing but himself and a forest of high-tech audio equipment, Dudkiewicz takes us on a Dantesque descent of a storyteller in search of meaning — not of his story, but of the act of storytelling itself." Theaterkrant

About Urland

URLAND works collectively. URLAND is autonomous. URLAND wants Gesamtkunst. URLAND has no method. URLAND experiments. URLAND is paradoxical. URLAND resides somewhere between artificial and real. URLAND appropriates, quotes and samples. URLAND clashes. URLAND believes in live art in digital times.

URLAND, an innovative performance collective from Rotterdam, consists of Geräuschmacher Jimi Zoet, Bildermacher Marijn Alexander de Jong, Geschichtenmacher Thomas Dudkiewicz and a solid group of fellow combatants. URLAND makes eclectic, interdisciplinary performances that clash between different styles, forms and themes, between visual culture and world literature, data and dada, digital oracles and philosophy. URLAND focuses on the fundamental, on telling and theatricalising existential stories that make the elusiveness of the contemporary palpable.