Alexandra Broeder

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Alexandra Broeder

Desolate, autonomous worlds ruled by children

Language: 

Site-specific: (almost) none

Indoor: Dutch (surtitles on request)

Contact: 

Artistic director: Alexandra Broeder

Agencies:

Theaterzaken Via Rudolphi

T +31 (0)20 - 627 75 55

E karin@viarudolphi.nl

I www.viarudolphi.nl

BonteHond

T + 31 (0)36 - 533 63 11

E joop@bontehond.net

I www.bontehond.net

Since 2007, Broeder has become well known for combining her fascination for concepts of childhood and horror movies. She has created site-specific productions of ominous worlds populated only by children. Silent children with a penetrating gaze. These worlds are hidden in the woods (WasteLand, 2007) or in a no man’s land on the outskirts of a city (CandyLand, 2008). In all of her work, the balance of power between adults and children is a central theme. Children are in control and give orders to their adult audience or manipulate them with their ‘child-ness’. And in Nature or Nurture (2010), the audience is sucked into a nightmare as the children confront them with a game of adult rituals and behaviour. Once you have entered these worlds, there is no way back…

Both at home and abroad, Broeder’s performances are praised for the intrusive style of acting from the children and the confrontational and unforgetable experience that the public is offered. Her work is universal, and disturbingly addresses our adult subconsciousness.

‘What Hitchcock could do with Birds, Alexandra Broeder does with children’, wrote the Leeuwarder Courant.

International: 

Broeder’s work is regularly presented at large festivals in the Netherlands such as Oerol, Tweetakt and Over het IJ. Broeder has received several international invitations but because the productions are performed by children they are not always easy to perform abroad. One of the main goals of the company at the moment is to make performing internationally easier and to maintain a repertoire (with WasteLand, Candyland and Nature or Nurture, for example).

There have already been some international activities. In 2007, WasteLand played in Es.Terni in Italy and in the summer of 2009, Broeder worked on site in Spain for six weeks. This was for the MAPA festival, creating a mysterious world with local children (Evacuacio). Last January, she gave a lecture about her work in Barcelona, and the site-specific festival SISMO in Madrid has invited her for its new edition.