Nkenguégi at Holland Festival

Holland Festival is the largest international performing arts festival of the Netherlands. Every year in June the festival presents theatre, dance, music, musictheatre and opera of international artists at different locations throughout Amsterdam. This year the festival will celebrate it’s 70th birthday. Congolese writer and theaterdirector Dieudonné Niangouna will perform Nkenguégi.

Niangouna returns to the Holland Festival after performing Shéda in 2012. In his new work he combines the European theatre tradition with that of Africa. Nkenguégi deals with the flight from submission. In this struggle theatre is a weapon. Niangouna shows the audience the failure of a political system, the opression of a people and the perilous daily journey by refugees in small boats across the Mediterranean. He questions whether a refugee’s story belongs ina theater. Ten actors and two musicians depict a journey through dreams and nightmares. A world that is unsentimental, musical and driven by a irrepressible desire to live.

Dieudonné Niangouna (Brazzaville, 1976) is a Congolese actor, writer and director. In the early 1990s, he started his career on the streets, outside the ruins of the theatre buildings. It was there that he invented a new, provocative theatrical language. He is now one of the most prominent innovators in African theatre.

The play will be performed the 13th and 14th of June 2017 at the Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam.

www.hollandfestival.nl