Nachtwacht

Nachtwacht is no ordinary performance.

It is a three-and-a-half-hour interdisciplinary farewell rave: acting, dance and live music merge into a raw, physical experience that pulls you into a family at its breaking point. An evening about growing old, mortality, and the desperate attempt to break free from the roles imposed on us.

The evening slides into night. A heartbeat weakens, falters, then swells into an unstoppable beat. Music pulls the audience into a ritual movement towards the unknown. What is old fades away. What follows is an ecstatic release, one final outburst, just before the first light exposes everything.

At the centre is 'Mr.', a man in the final months of his life. Around him: family, ghosts, memories. As he prepares for the end, his children wrestle with a new era, balancing loyalty, longing, and the need to choose for themselves who they want to be.

With a sharp yet loving eye, Nachtwacht weaves together humour and melancholy. The performance holds up a mirror to us, looking both critically and empathetically at the Dutch care system, and at what we expect from one another, and what we often don't dare to give.

The title refers to Rembrandt's Nachtwacht (Night Watch): gatekeepers of a bygone era, but also the emergence of patterns of power that continue to shape us today. At the same time, the night here is literal: the vigil around a deathbed. A place where a family, despite everything, comes together for one last ritual.

And it is precisely there, at the end of the night, that something can break open.
A moment of liberation.
A chance to choose again who you are.

With a cast of 27 musicians, dancers and actors, Nachtwacht is a grand production about the small, personal moments we all recognise.