ACuTe – English
With our production Rabbit Hole, De Toneelmakerij is one of the 14 partners of ACuTe, a pioneering and large-scale European project on theatre and new technology. ACuTe investigates the use of new technologies within theater in three categories: new dramaturgy, stage design and audience engagement. Rabbit Hole focuses on how we tell stories in theatre and on how audiences interact with those stories.
Rabbit Hole is a sequel to the 2019 Toneelmakerij production Snowflake. In Rabbit Hole, we continue our investigation into the complex, online lives of our young audience, that we started with Snowflake. The text is again written by Daniel van Klaveren. It is a step into a new dramaturgy that fully integrates live technology into the story world. The performance explores how online dynamics, opposed to the democratic promises of the early Internet, are partly responsible for polarization, social bubbles, conspiracies, radicalization and violence. Dynamics that emerge behind seemingly insignificant mobile screens, where impulsive reactions escalate into ever greater disagreements.
Getting sucked into your phone
Rabbit Hole aims to translate the oppressive feel of the online world into a live experience. The experience of getting sucked into your phone is made tangible in the Deep Space of the Ars Electronica Center. Like a Greek chorus, the audience can mingle in the online world of main character Samy who is socially isolated and lives his life exclusively online. Normally it is required to turn off your phone in the theater. In Rabbit Hole, we give the audience’s smartphone a place in the performance, instead of competing with it.
Partners
Within the ACuTe consortium, de Toneelmakerij works closely with Saxion University of Applied Sciences in Enschede, the Ars Electronica Centre in Linz and the Akademie für Theater und Digitalität in Dortmund. For the interactive part, we also collaborate with the Innovation Lab of Theater Utrecht. The international version of Rabbit Hole is a co-production with the Schäxpir Festival in Linz. The international premiere of Rabbit Hole is on June 17 2023 in the Deep Space of the Ars Electronica Center in Linz. The Dutch version of Rabbit Hole is a co-production with Theater Sonnevanck and had his premiere in March 2024. ACuTe is co-funded by the European Union’s Creative Europe program.
