VOX brings music from bygone eras back to a contemporary life. Using classical song as a starting point, it creates visual music theatre performances using objects and puppets. With an equal dialogue between the two disciplines and the playful layering of music and images, VOX offers accessible performances that can reach and captivate a wide audience.
Poor Thing, A musical ode to melancholy
Everything passes. Is that sad? Yes. Nothing but? No. Poor Thing reveals that there is a lot more to mortality than just sorrow.
When three musical funeral directors stumble upon a cabinet filled with the belongings of an anonymous deceased woman, they decide to follow her traces and try to reconstruct her forgotten life.
As wistful 17th-century lute songs sound, the closet unfolds into a ceremony of still lifes. Lovingly and with a touch of humor, the funeral directors tell stories of times gone by. Little by little, the veil is lifted of the beauty that hides behind the transience of life.
Don’t expect any doom and gloom from VOX Muziektheater. Instead, get ready for a performance full of soul-stirring songs and imaginative theatre about everyday situations that anyone can relate to. Poor Thing is an ode to melancholy, and so it is an all-encompassing embrace of life.
“Linde is a singer and visual artist who combines early music and enchanting theatre in fabulous ways, together with Martine and David.”
Tobias Kokkelmans, dramaturg O. Festival for Opera. Music. Theatre. (Operadagen Rotterdam)
“The atmosphere is in the details. When Linde strips off her eyelashes and make-up in a still life framed by the cabinet, the emotion cuts right to the bone.”
Karel Van Ransbeeck, theatre group De Spiegel (Antwerp)
Credits
Concept: Linde Schinkel, David Mackor, Martine van Ditzhuyzen
Soprano: Linde Schinkel, Lute: David Mackor
Performance: Linde Schinkel, Martine van Ditzhuyzen
Artistic coaching: Mirthe Dokter
Final direction: Hans Thissen
Set design: Tamar Stalenhoef
Cupboard: Wout Rockx