A people-pleasing soft activist decides to confront the emotion he fears most: for the first time in his life, he wants to become angry.
Mees van Rijswijk is often described as “sweet,” “calm,” and “enthusiastic” — an “everybody’s friend,” “a nice guy, but actually genuinely nice.” Someone once even called him “harmless.” And that’s where things went wrong. Because of course, nobody takes you seriously like that. Since then, Mees has had one wish: he wants to become furious.
A soft activist decides to stop denying his own anger. He asks angry people for advice: partly to learn from them, partly to discover whether there’s something in their anger that connects them. Maybe world peace begins in a mosh pit, or in the meeting of a knuckle and a jaw. AAAARGH is a musical spoken word performance about a raw and uneasy search for anger. It is not a manual, not therapy, not a safe space. It’s not even a word. AAAARGH is a radical attempt to remain gentle precisely through fierce resistance.
During the Oerol Festival, an initial try-out version of AAAARGH will be presented, after which Mees will perform the show throughout the summer at Theaterfestival de Parade.
About Mees
Mees van Rijswijk (1999) is a spoken word artist, theatre maker, and (former?) soft activist from Leeuwarden. He takes being human with a grain of salt and prefers to describe things exactly as they are, using as few syllables as possible. Mees has won several awards for his spoken word pieces, performs all across the Netherlands, and enjoys solving sudoku puzzles along the way.
This show is part of the Explore the North Hub. During the Oerol Festival, Explore the North presents work across the island by artists connected to its production house. Explore the North is a production house and festival based at Podium Explore in Leeuwarden.
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