this is a farewell letter, stating the finali for you. Let’s start with a prologue.

Talking with Jan Ritsema some years before his death about the theater space of the future, he said that black boxes are passé.

Don’t call it a black grotto of the past, I thought and felt sad thinking of all the beautiful black boxes in the world that were the building stones for the development of contemporary performance and theater. Jan, I said, someone still has to make work for the existing black boxes, and I will be one of them.

I had firmly said goodbye to the proscenium many years ago and was not ready for saying goodbye to the black box. You (the proscenium) are found in many theater houses, not always full-scaled with the arch and the sides boxing in the stage. The variations are numerous in the effort of revealing more in accordance to the trends: no arch – only sides, giant arch, stage spilling far out in front of the arch, audience placed on all sides, on three sides, on two sides…At the same time keeping the raised stage for, I can only guess, an idea of visibility and distance....