Loods13 has four performances from the end of May Canaries don’t talk back are scheduled. Wortmann took the title name from an article in the newspaper. “It was a lonely, older man,” she reconstructs. “He had no one. Only a canary, but he didn’t talk back. That sentence immediately grabbed me, that should be the title of the theater piece that I immediately.”
Incidentally, she will not stage the new theater production in Assen, Aa en Hunze and Central Drenthe, because loneliness among young people is more prevalent here than elsewhere. “No, this region was now our turn to do something with a ‘special’ target group.” That’s how Wortmann made before At home in Hoogeveen, a documentary with Syrian status holders who talk about their flight and their entry into Dutch society. And in Emmen she made Mother’s love, in which eight single mothers on welfare talk about their troubles in words and music. Loods13 won the Drentse Anjer Prize of 2021 with this production.
Nothing has yet been put on paper for the new theater production in Assen. The twenty young people themselves determine the content of the performance based on their stories about loneliness. “It comes from them,” emphasizes Wortmann. “You really don’t have to be able to do anything else, just feel like it. And if you don’t want to play, you don’t have to. It’s about making a production together. Or you’re working on decor, or making food. Because after every theater performance we eat with the audience. Everything is possible, it’s about participating and making contact.”
Loods13 is also still looking for a location for the play. It must take place in a warehouse somewhere in Assen, but where is still uncertain. “We need a large empty space where we can work for three months, and where a hundred people can fit in. So if anyone knows a good place, please let us know.”