De Nwe Tijd & DE HOE - This is water

How do you lead a meaningful life? That was the starting point of the speech ‘This is Water’ by David Foster Wallace. De Amerikaanse writer read the text in 2005 at the graduation ceremony of a prestigious college for an audience of students on the threshold of adult life. He did so sweating. You would for less, because how on earth do you give young people advice if you don't know it all yourself? Twenty-two years later, the members of De Nwe Tijd and DE HOE are on average exactly the same age as Wallace was when he gave his speech. In the second part of the trilogy they are making around his oeuvre and persona, they are now thinking together about that same question: how do you lead a meaningful life? What does that mean, a meaningful life, anno 2027? How can you pass on to a younger generation what you only dare to describe for yourself with much hesitation as ‘wisdom’? ‘Dit is water’ is a generous performance with and about good advice and about the (im)possibility of following it. “Dit is water was more than a conversation about good advice: it became a reflection on what playing and acting is and brings about, in the players themselves and in the audience. (…) ‘Dit is water’ grew into a theater experience hors catégorie. It provides a lot of lived-in life wisdom.” (Pzazz) By and with Ans Van den Eede, Elvis de Launay, Freek Vielen, Suzanne Grotenhuis, Willem de Wolf and Wannes Gyselinck Productie De Nwe Tijd and DE HOE