A Research in Progress by Sunni Lamin Barrow and Elsemarijn Hijweege

This is a research. Not yet a performance. Not yet finished. Not even fully formed, it’s still discovering itself….

“You’ve Been Needing Sadness” is an ongoing research project exploring the reconfiguration of spoken word poetry into theater. I am developing a distinct genre (spoken word theater) where the raw emotionality of spoken word meets the formal structures of contemporary soundscapes, opera, ritual, and theatrical histrionics.

This work is still taking shape.

On August 1nd, I will share a 25 minute excerpt from the research, followed by an open conversation with the audience around the theme of grief.

I invite the audience to bring along an object, a text, or a small souvenir, something that holds a memory now distant. Together, we will reflect on the many forms of grief we carry. Thereby centering the personal, we seek to touch the universal.

This is an invitation to sit together in union of our grieves, not as something to be resolved, but something to be recognized, shared, and transformed.

Love and Light,

Sunni

www.sunnilaminbarrow.com/

Four artist, four residencies, four new stories in the making. This summer, our venue becomes a workspace and a base for artists who challenge boundaries and explore innovative performing arts. From poetry to queerness and puppetry to magic: take a look into the work-in-progress of tomorrow’s performing arts.

From July 21st to August 2nd, we welcome the first artist-in-resident:

Sunni Lamin Barrow

Sunni Lamin Barrow (b. 1998) is a multi-award winning literary artist, performing curator, and critical practitioner from The Gambia, currently based in the Netherlands. Blending poetry, performance, and curation, Sunni explores themes of love, loneliness, grief, displacement, queerness, joy, blackness, global citizenship, ritualistic gestures and reimagined kinship.

You’ve been Needing Sadness