Wildpark (8+)

“Honestly, I don’t think it’s that big a deal. I mean, no, it wasn’t super clever of me, okay, I admit it, but it teeks toetoetengo. That’s English. Means every story has two sides. So it all depends on how you look at it. Yes! I did something bad, but just to be clear, OK, I didn’t do it for nothing. No, action reaction. I mean, it’s dead easy to make me the bogeyman now. But who actually started it?”

Something has happened. Anne has done something bad. Now her friend is in hospital and Anne’s mum says she has to say sorry. Being a team with your bestie is, of course, the coolest thing there is. Until the other person lets you down. Or you feel betrayed. Or the other way round. Until you grow apart. Until you end up directly opposed, because your bestie suddenly turns out to be different from you and suddenly turns out to think very differently about things. Until one day you get so angry that you do something you can’t undo. Not on purpose, it just happens. 

‘Anne, 11 jaar, zegt toch sórry’ is about friendship, but also about how easily we form a picture of someone, and how hard it is when that picture no longer fits. How small cracks can grow into a chasm. How you sometimes end up on opposite sides without quite knowing why.

In the preparatory conversations we had with children, every single one of them turned out to find friendship complicated. Their lives are constantly about who gets chosen, invited, affirmed, acknowledged and validated. Who belongs, who gets listened to? They are forever preoccupied with who is doing what with whom.

They feel strong with a friend at their side and vulnerable when they don’t have one. A vulnerability that above all must not be shown. But it remains a precarious balance.

Anne, 11 jaar, zegt toch sórry is a show taken straight from life, about polarisation on a micro level. About clashes, misunderstandings and the moments when you no longer know how to find your way back to each other. About friendship and about saying sorry, and how that is actually pretty hard.

Following the successful ‘Anne, 10 jaar, wil graag opgehaald worden’ and ‘Anne, 12 jaar, wordt een groot succes’ this is the third part of the Anne trilogy, created by Annemiek Nienhuis and performed by Anne van der Steen