Before the Story Starts

Name: Before the Story Starts — URLAND
Start: 2026-10-14T20:15:00+02:00
Location: Theater aan het Spui

URLAND

Wed 14 Oct 20:15

Performance

Wed 14 Oct 2026

20:15

Wed 14 Oct 2026

20:15

Theater aan het Spui, Den Haag

Hall 2

From Sun 17 May 2026 12:00

Before the Story Starts is an experimental, immersive one-man performance that takes place on the threshold just before a story - perhaps the story - begins.

This is not the start of the story, we haven’t started yet.
This is not the beginning.

What do you need to know? Before we start?
We don’t know why.

We can guess, but we don’t know. We never will.
We can choose. And be satisfied with an answer. But we never know.

The elusive Why.

Inspired by The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Being John Malkovich, and the philosophy of Alan Watts, master storyteller Thomas Dudkiewicz travels through the subconscious of the universe in search of answers.

The story that is not yet a story unfolds in a surreal structure, filled with cryptic hosts, whimsical guides, and philosophical dead ends.

As he encounters his alter ego(s), he begins to unravel the story of why: why does he tell stories? How does meaning arise? And what happens when we are confronted with the possibility that there may be no answer at all?

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About URLAND

URLAND, an innovative performance collective from Rotterdam, consists of Geräuschmacher Jimi Zoet, Bildermacher Marijn Alexander de Jong, Geschichtenmacher Thomas Dudkiewicz and a close-knit group of artistic comrades. URLAND creates eclectic, interdisciplinary performances that clash styles, forms and themes - where image culture meets world literature, data meets dada, and digital oracles collide with philosophy.

URLAND focuses on the fundamental: telling and theatricalizing existential stories that make the elusiveness of the contemporary world tangible.