300 el × 50 el × 30 el

A village that is gripped by the fear of an imminent flood. What happens inside the houses is captured by a live camera crew and revealed on a large screen. Theatre and film are spectacularly interwoven. With a number of prominent guest actors, sixty extras and an entire village on stage 300 el x 50 el x 30 el is an experience, a trip.

300 el x 50 el x 30 el was created by Stef Aerts, Joé Agemans, Bart Hollanders, Matteo Simoni, Thomas Verstraeten, and Marie Vinck. The production features set design by FC Bergman and Matthijs Kuyer, camera direction by Thomas Verstraeten, and costume design by Judith Van Herck. Music: “That Little Bit of Hurt in Our Eyes,” Written and Composed by Gregory Frateur, Hannes d’Hoine and Tijs Delbeke.

Performers include Stef Aerts, Joé Agemans, Matteo Simoni, Thomas Verstraeten, and Marie Vinck. With guest artists Gert Portael, Herwig Ilegems, Shana Van Looveren, Evelien Bosmans, Ramona Verkerk, Arne Focketeyn, Oscar Van Rompay, Ruud Gielens, Gregory Frateur, Mattis Devoldere Contesse, Karen Vanparys, Yorrith de Bakker, and Jeroen Perceval.

Local ensemble performers include Raulbel Agraz, Bradley Ahlstrom, Oscar Aragon, Briana Archer, Mattie Barber-Bockelman, Jamie Belton, Billy Berger-Bailey, Layla Bird, Alli Bradley, Maggie Brill, Savannah Bruno, Kelly Buwalda, Malcolm Callender, Sofie Christensen, Matilda Luz Concha Pearson, Bianca Cosentino, Molly Coyne, Jada Crawford, Michael Crowe, Patrick Dunning, Bianca Falco, Stephen Franco, Peter Ganovsky, David Guzman, Charlotte Hacke, Robert Hooghkirk, Dante Hussein, Aitana Jordan, Maki Kitahara, Gabriel Kocis, Jacob Louchheim, Jules Lyons, Tamar MacKay, Manami Maxted, Jesse McLaughlin, Nishat Mirza, Cheryl Moch, Maggie Molloy, David Neustadt, Madeleine Newman, Natalie Ng, Brian Onieal, Krishna Patel, Kristina Pecorelli, Vianca Perez, Jean-Michel Repellin, Isa Rosenbloom, Miranda Runyon, Emma Shafer, ia Solis, Mariluz Tavarez, Paris Thatos, Tree Thompson, Monica Toro Lisciandro, Talisa Velazquez, Tyler Warren, Phoenix Wolf, and Zara Zeidman.

Live animals provided by Dawn Animal Agency cared for by Jersey Shore Doves.

FC Bergman was founded in 2008 by six actors / theatre-makers / artists: Stef Aerts, Joé Agemans, Bart Hollanders, Matteo Simoni, Thomas Verstraeten and Marie Vinck. FC Bergman has been a permanent Toneelhuis theatre-maker since 2013. In a short time, this group of makers has developed a highly unique theatrical idiom, which apart from being anarchistic and slightly chaotic, is essentially visual and poetic. Their productions often give centre stage to the floundering, ever-striving human. The most recent and impressive production in that series, JR, literally and figuratively takes this theme to the next level. Simoni and Hollanders have since left the core team and now work on an adhoc basis with FC Bergman.

In 2009 FC Bergman won the Young Theatre Prize at Theater Aan Zee with its adaptation of Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming. With Walking along the Champs-Elysées with a tortoise so as to have a better look at the world, but it is difficult to drink tea on an ice floe if everyone is drunk FC Bergman was short-listed for the Dutch Theatre Festival (2010). In 2011 FC Bergman created 300 el x 50 el x 30 el at Toneelhuis, a production still on the repertoire. Terminator Trilogy, created in 2012, was again a site specific work that toured internationally. Back in Toneelhuis (where FC Bergman is a collective in residence) they created an impressive music theatre project, Van den vos (December 2013), together with Liesa van der Aa, Muziektheater Transparant and Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop (DE). In 2015 FC Bergman made a site-specific show Het land Nod (The Land Of Nod): “In this atmospheric, scriptless production FC Bergman measures up to the greats: the mystical naturalism of Romeo Castellucci, the disconsolate absurdism of Christoph Marthaler, and the dancing dynamics of Pina Bausch. And all that gives Het land Nod visual grandeur” – Wouter Hillaert in De Standaard ***, May 9th 2015. The show was invited to participate in 2016 in the Festival of Avignon (FR) and the Zürcher Theater Spektakel (CH). Het Land Nod remains on the repertoire (and after Spain, France and Poland is now also going to Russia and Italy.

In March 2018, FC Bergman completed JR. This site-specific project based on the eponymous cult novel by William Gaddis has since been acclaimed as the major theatre event of 2018. Through an ingenious interweaving of film and theatre, powerful acting with strong dialogues and astounding scenography, FC Bergman has taken Gaddis’s work to another level. At the same time, the company has remained true to itself, in the course of the show painting a picture of a world in which man fights against the windmills of his existence in vain.

In the 2019-2020 season, FC Bergman collaborated on Freud, an ITA production, by making an adaptation of Sartre’s original script. What’s more, Stef Aerts, Marie Vinck and Matteo Simoni played the roles of a number of characters in Freud, including the lead role, performed by Stef Aerts.

For the 2020-2021 season, FC Bergman created The Sheep Song, a wordless performance about a creature that is no longer content with its lot. It feels it is capable of more, is destined to lead a more glorious life than that of its fellows. The show is remaining on the repertoire in the 2021-2022 season. 

For that same season, Stef Aerts and Marie Vinck are adapting and directing Thomas Mann’s novel De toverberg (The Magic Mountain) at ITA in Amsterdam (April 2022). FC Bergman will round off the 2021-2022 season by participating in Lonely Hearts Club Band, a collective project that brings all of the Toneelhuis makers together on the Bourla stage, in June 2022. 

The members of FC Bergman are individually involved in various other theatre productions, TV projects and films or create exhibitions, performances, installations and videos under their own names. For instance, Thomas Verstraeten and Benjamin Verdonck worked together to create the project 7 x 7, in which they chose seven places in the city, traveling between them with seven installations for seven days.

In the 2022-2023 season FC Bergman will continue touring their critically acclaimed show The Sheep Song in Switzerland, Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and other countries around the globe (to be announced).

In February 2023, FC Bergman will stage their second opera: Il ritorno d' Ulisse in patria by Monteverdi at the Grand Théatre de Genève in Switzerland.

Their next creation for Toneelhuis in Belgium will be a site specific video installation in a castle close to Brussels, where the location itself will play a major role: 

Gaasbeek is an unusual castle: it looks like a fifteenth-century fortress, but in reality it dates from the late nineteenth century. The last resident was a remarkable figure: she lived there alone, dressed as a medieval page and organised parties and photo shoots like that. The building and its occupant are both an anachronism. It’s a theme that has fascinated us for a while: why do people retreat from society, place themselves outside of time (in this case, in an idealised past)? Searching for a greater truth by way of a lie, by way of drama: we find that very symptomatic of our times. 

—FC Bergman