Het Geluid - About Het Geluid

From an old cement factory at the St. Pietersberg in Maastricht, overviewing the river Meuse, Het Geluid has been making music theater since four years. Next to a home, this spot alongside the river also carries a symbolic meaning. Still located in the Netherlands, but only five minutes from the Walloon border, Het Geluid operates from the border area between the Netherlands, Flanders, Wallonia and Germany. As theater makers we also move between areas; between languages, disciplines and spheres of influence. Between music and theater, between small and big stories, the abstract and the concrete, between tradition and innovation. An Interdisciplinary approach always forms the foundation of the various productions by Het Geluid.

Het Geluid creates and produces all its music theater under own management. The in-house approach to production of theater has given us a distinct artistic signature. Through collaborations, contemporary themes, and innovative settings and texts, the theater company has become a spider in the web of the music theater landscape of the Netherlands and the community in and around Maastricht. Het Geluid connects the chip shop to the living room and the opera house to the institute for architecture. Our locally developed work often finds its way to international networks.

Het Geluid has played in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Israel, the Palestinian Territories and South Africa, often in collaboration with various Dutch embassies.

In an engaged and committed way, Het Geluid finds artistic and business partners, including the Dutch National Touring Opera (permanent partner), Theater aan het Vrijthof (artist-in-residence), the Veenfabriek, iArts Maastricht/Hogeschool Zuyd, La Monnaie (Brussels), European Opera Days, Castrum Peregrini, NaiM/Bureau Europa, Amnesty International and the Goethe-Institut.

Het Geluid is always actively looking for relationships between the partners it works with, as well as contemporary social themes for its productions. With the performance Malta at NaiM/Bureau Europa, we connected an architectural firm in crisis to the issues surrounding refugees in Malta. In collaboration with the Dutch National Touring Opera, Het Geluid created Wesendonck-Lieder Heute. This play about love and romance toured alongside the big production Tristan und Isolde. With the Veenfabriek, Het Geluid realized Gedeelde Kamers; a music theater production about remembering and forgetting, presented in various living rooms across the Netherlands. HR: a burned out Opera told the story of burned out employees. And with Headphone Oratorium we presented a contemporary Passion during the Passiontide in several silence and prayer rooms in hospitals.

In addition to large and small theater halls, our productions have been presented at various other locations, including art galleries, living rooms, parks, lecture halls, hospitals, nursing homes and schools. Places with particular histories and narratives. Places that engage our audience in special ways. These locations lead to unexpected encounters between different generations and people with different backgrounds.

We always use music. This can be medieval religious music, contemporary composed noise, or anything in between. We are part of a generation that can jump from Mozart to Britney Spears, from Coldplay to Bach and from Radiohead to Messiaen without effort. All this music is constantly at our fingertips.

Innovative music theater is not about throwing away the old, but about rearranging, making new combinations. Innovative music theater is about generating new meanings.

Het Geluid creates theater texts by using interviews. The language is close to the skin, recognizable and raw. To generate sound means giving people a voice. People whose voice we normally do not hear in the theater.

The productions by Het Geluid are portraits of people and cultural reflections at the same time. In the pieces we produce, we invite our audience to reflect on the community in which we live. Through the stories of people we examine society. Making theater is our humanistic activity. We live in a world where we are constantly bombarded with images, sounds and meanings, where the plurality of information sometimes makes it difficult to give meaning. Therefore, our mission has always been:

"Right through the constant flow of images, sounds and impulses.
Right through the often superficial delusions of the day in search of real reflection.
Right through all the noise in search of a meaningful sound."