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Marieke&Sophia (BE/DE)

De Vader

Theatre
Schouwburg – UTOOP

in collaboration with Schouwburg Kortrijk

CUBO
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Using a playful, physical language, Marieke Schraepen and Sophia Bauer turn August Strindberg’s bourgeois drama De Vader (1887) on its head. With their (perverse) feminine imagination, they take over this violent worldview and transform it from within.

De Vader is based on the play of the same name by August Strindberg (1887). In the original plot, Adolf, the head of the household and a career soldier, finds himself in a deep crisis after his wife suggests that he may not be the real father of their child. What is the patriarch worth if he has no power over his own flesh and blood? At the end of the play, Strindberg’s hero dies in a straitjacket, mentally ill and broken. Wife and daughter are left behind, triumphant.

Together with Anna Franziska Jäger and Rodrigo Batista, Marieke Schraepen and Sophia Bauer are rewriting the patriarchal legacy of De Vader. They take Strindberg’s fear of obsolescence as their starting point: what would a world without men look like? Through a love-hate relationship, they reveal fluid, alternative forms of (male) authority.

They draw inspiration from feminist performance art and pornographic clichés from the 1960s to the 1980s. Alongside the framework of the original text, they incorporate Strindberg’s theoretical pamphlets and diary extracts. They translate these into contemporary forms: video diaries, deepfakes, bodily rituals. They amplify the protagonist’s self-obsession and situate it within a broader social trend. Can we still reverse our collective flight inwards – towards our ‘self’, our privacy, our private sphere – and build a bridge to the other?

With their playful, physical language, Marieke & Sophia turn Strindberg’s paranoid male script on its head. Their (perverse) female fantasy takes over Adolf’s violent worldview and transforms it from within.

Marie Schraepen and Sophia Bauer together form the artistic duo Marieke&Sophia.

Marie Schraepen (BE) is an actress and theatre maker. In her master performance Guilty of Love, she explored the cultural obsession with sexual violence together with Sophia Bauer and Mats Vandroogenbroeck. Guilty of Love could be seen at Theater Aan Zee ‘22, among others, and was revived at KVS in 2024.

Marie has also previously appeared in the work of others. She played Lola in A Lola (2021) by Yayha Terryn at Compagnie Cecilia. That same year, she starred in Giants (2021) by Werktoneel and in 2022 she was briefly seen as Sonia in Fun Loving Humans by Simon D’Huyvetter & Kopergietery.

She is also active as a theatre teacher. She gives workshops to children at Larf, Wildgroei and Einstein Atheneum. She writes about theatre and occasionally publishes at Rekto:Verso. She also worked as coordinator for the third bachelor and master of KASK drama.

Sophia Bauer (DE) is an actress and theatre maker. After earning a bachelor’s degree in textile design, she studied drama at KASK School of Arts in Ghent and applied theatre studies at the Justus-Liebig-Universität in Giessen, Germany. In her graduation performance Guilty of Love, she explored the eroticisation of sexual violence in our collective imagination together with Marie Schraepen and Mats Vandroogenbroeck.

Sophia had her first professional experience as an actress in De Dieren (2020), directed by Geert Belpaeme. She then appeared as a performer in Myriam Van Imschoot & HYOID’s Newpolyphonies (2020). In 2021, she starred in Giants by Werktoneel and performed the role of Albertinette in Operette by Timeau De Keyser & Tibaldus. Furthermore, Sophia writes and performs songs, for example on De verleiding van het woord in youth theatre Larf. In 2023, Sophia performed the lead role in Up Your Ass by Lieselot Siddiki and Nona Demey-Gallagher.

Outside her art practice, Sophia gained experience in the care sector. As a student, she worked in several rest homes and now works part-time as a supervisor for placed children at Minor N-Dako in Brussels. For Sophia, the movement into the social sector is an important complement to her theatre practice: the need in her artistic work stems from this.

Play dates

Concept: Marieke&Sophia. Spel: Rodrigo Batista, Anna Franziska Jäger, Marieke Schraepen & Sophia Bauer. Dramaturgie: Bauke Lievens. Eindregie: Geert Belpaeme. Scenografie: Eva Demulder. Kostuum: Alexandra Panou. Lichtontwerp: Jan Maertens. Geluidsdramaturgie: Jonas Baeke

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