Trigger warning: a campy display of violent thoughts with radicalized hyper pop
Elise Bauwens en Chanou Mekenkamp
Location: Podium Mozaïek, Studio
Dates:
- GENRE: Documentary theatre, Multimedia performance
- THEME: Dystopia / Utopia, History Re-told, The female voice
- LANGUAGE: Dutch
- Trigger warning: this performance mentions terrorism and acts of violence
- Toilet for wheelchair users: yes, Wheelchair accessible: yes
duration of the performance: 45 min
ULRIKE and the oppression of the west
A fiery solo about ideals, struggle and the system that envelops everything it touches.
Get carried away by ULRIKE and the oppression of the west – a powerful and topical performance that seamlessly interweaves theater and film. In this energetic solo, the creators take you on a personal and political quest: what does it mean to be a “leftist” in a world where ideals clash with reality?
We feel paralyzed, cynical, and stuck in bureaucratic webs. But who is the perpetrator here, and who is the victim? And what happens when your beliefs turn into conservatism?
You are the rock you throw at the barricade
You are the barricade
Your fist lands on your own face
This performance is a visual and musical manifesto – raw, poetic, and confrontational.
Biography
Elise Bauwens graduated as an actor from the Conservatory of Antwerp in 2022. After which they further developed as a writer and audiovisual artist in Antwerp and Berlin. Elise is on the editorial board of Kluger Hans and was most recently on ‘Dans dichter dans’ and ‘Theater aan zee’ with their own work.
Chanou graduated as an actor from the Conservatory of Antwerp in 2025. She did her internship at theater company Froe Froe where she was able to develop as a puppeteer. She also played, as a second internship, in DE SITCOM, a play from the Belgium theatre collective DE HOE.
Together, Elise and Chanou form a collective of which ULRIKE and the Wind of the West is their first production. They share a common fascination with the systems in which they live. Whether it is social structures, institutional frameworks or cultural patterns-they investigate how these systems function, where frictions arise and what possibilities there are for change, with the necessary dose of humor.
