In Conversation: Unboxing Handle with Care

Alexander Devriendt (b. 1977) is a Belgian theatre maker and artistic director of the Ghent-based collective Ontroerend Goed. Since co-founding the company in 2001, he has created often interactive performances that question how we as individuals position ourselves in the world today, exploring themes such as power, democracy, capitalism, ecology, empathy, and collective responsibility.

His early work with Ontroerend Goed includes the personal trilogy The Smile Off Your Face, Internal, and A Game of You, as well as the celebrated teenage play Once And For All We're Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up And Listen. More recent productions include Fight Night, £¥€$, Funeral, Are we not drawn onward to new erA, Thanks for Being Here, Handle with Care, and SUMMIT. His work has received several international awards, and is frequently performed all over the world.

Devriendt teaches masterclasses in drama at the Koninklijk Conservatorium Antwerpen in Belgium, the Toneelacademie Maastricht in the Netherlands, as well as the Zurich University of the Arts in Switzerland.

The Belgian theatre performance group Ontroerend Goed (a punning name, roughly translated as “Feel Estate”) produces self-devised work grounded in the here and now, inviting its audiences to participate as well as observe.

Whether it is performing backwards, turning spectators into voters who eliminate actors, guiding strangers through a labyrinth of mirrors and avatars to meet themselves, or placing the audience at the controls of the financial system, the company has made it its trademark to be unpredictable in content and form.

It first emerged on the international scene in 2007 with The Smile Off Your Face, a one-on-one show in which the audience is tied to a wheelchair and then blindfolded. Its hit show Once and For All is an uncompromising celebration of raw teenage energy on stage. Since then, the company has won numerous prizes across Europe and has hit New York, Sydney, and London to critical acclaim.

Ontroerend Goed tours worldwide and creates remakes of its productions in other languages: Russian, French, Mandarin, Cantonese and Kazakh, among others.

Ontroerend Goed delivers intense experiences built in the reality of theatre. Convinced that life goes on during a performance, the group fabricates possible realities that question how we as individuals position ourselves in the world today. Led by artistic director Alexander Devriendt, the collective is convinced that every idea deserves its own brand of artistic expression, and cherishes a sense of ownership from every single contributor to their work, from actors to light designers, scenographers to conceptual thinkers.