Agnes Laura Kumpina

When the goddess Venus descends to the messy earth, she only has an eye for him: Adonis. She must be able to get it, right? After all, Venus is the perfect woman: she's smart, powerful, evolved. Hello, she's a goddess; there's literally nothing she can do to become more lovable. But why does that unambitious Adonis have so little interest in her love? 

Shakespeare wrote so sharply in 1593 about something that still seems painfully familiar to us. Venus & Adonis is not a romantic love story, but an accurate dissection of everything we consider love: desire, possessiveness, jealousy, pride, rejection... We see the well-known collision between someone who is completely ready for love. And someone who shuts down. Will Venus learn that what she's looking for isn't actually love at all?  

Director Agnes Kumpina stays close to Shakespeare's original poem Venus & Adonis, his first publication ever, in a new, accessible translation. The epic poem inexorably exposes all the shadows of what we call love: wanting to possess, convincing, enforcing, not being able to bear a “no”. How is it that Venus, the woman who is‘ finished ’, gets so caught up in the search for that ego-love? And how long can she keep trying before it gets humiliating? She tries to seduce Adonis in every way possible, until the moment instinct and drive take over, and she makes a terrible choice.  

But this Venus & Adonis does not end there. Director Agnes Kumpina does believe that there is love without shadow. The train wreck that is the ‘love’ between Venus and Adonis, Kumpina manages to transform into something bigger. Think of this performance as an attempt to bring that real, pure love to the stage.  

Image: Tengbeh Kamara + e.v.a. Studio
With: Shauni Goetz, Roman Derwig

45 minutes before the start, an introduction will be given by Annette Embrechts, dance and theatre journalist for de Volkskrant. You can reserve a seat for this free of charge during the ordering process.