The winner of the BNG Theatre Prize 2025, the prize for emerging theatre talent in the Netherlands.

You're nineteen, just moved up, just started a new study programme, and suddenly you're scared. At first you hope it's an MDMA-dip, but then... then you stay scared. Afraid of mirrors, afraid of eyes, afraid of people on the street shouting things. You freak out when you hear a loud noise. You check that the voices you hear through the open window are not voices in your head... At 25, you sit down and try to grasp the past years.

In BANG, Hanneke van der Paardt pulls her life apart and makes an attempt to put the whole mess back together. BANG is about those bizarre years when you have just left your parents, but haven't really arrived anywhere else. About how fear can get us rock hard during those years and about what on earth to do then.

Hanneke van der Paardt

Hanneke van der Paardt is an actor, writer and creator of linguistic, transparent and razor-sharp theatre. Her texts always have autobiographical tendencies. They provoke thought and expose their emotional world by constantly questioning, undermining and laughing at themselves.

Besides her work in theatre, she writes for the Theaterkrant, plays in films and is one of the faces of Club LEES, VPRO's online reading club.

Credits

Concept, text and acting: Hanneke van der Paardt
Direction: Gillis Biesheuvel
Set and lighting design: Maarten van Otterdijk
Technique: Kim Zeevalk and Mathijs (I don't know his surname)
Image and poster/flyer design: Marc Elisabeth
Teaser: Marte Bosma
Scene photos: Joachim Dette

Thanks to: Lizzy Timmers, Max Wind, Remy Meeuwsen and Jasper van der Pijl

In co-production with: Theaterhaus Jena and Theater aan de Rijn and co-sponsored by: Janivo Foundation, Amarte Fund Foundation, Amsterdam Fund for the Performing Arts

Hanneke van der Paardt BANG