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Thanks for Being Here

 
Alec Martin Review by Alec Martin 3 Published: 18 Aug 2025 Zoo Southside Show Dates: 12 Aug 2025-24 Aug 2025

Ontroerend Goed’s latest arrives at ZOO Southside with a disarming premise: make your audience the subject of your theatre. Turn the lens of your drama – literally – onto the people who traditionally consume it, and turn them into the source of the performance instead. It makes for a tasteful, low-pressure, audience-centred experiment with its heart in the right place.

A considered, well-made experience that is easier to admire and enjoy than it is to love

Directed by Alexander Devriendt and performed by Karolien De Bleser, Charlotte De Bruyne, Patricia Kargbo and Leonore Spee, Thanks for Being Here trains a roaming camera on the crowd and folds the live feed into the action. Recorded messages from earlier audiences are woven through, and the quartet guides a few gentle, low-stakes moments the whole room can share. You can keep your head down if you wish; the piece doesn’t strong-arm anyone.

The execution is tasteful and tidy. The video reads as portraiture rather than surveillance, and the performers handle the room with care – soft cues, clean timing, no smugness. There is a quietly lovely sequence where fragments from past audiences seem to stitch us to other nights; another finds feeling in a slow pan that becomes a group portrait. The show’s heart is unmistakably in the right place: it is trying to honour the act of gathering, and there is a fine communal spirit throughout.

That said, the balance between creativity and novelty is not always right. The central conceit – “the audience is the artwork” – is clever, but the machinery around it can feel like neat packaging for a fairly slim idea. What begins as a generous invitation could, for some, slide towards gimmick: thoughtful window-dressing on a concept that doesn’t quite evolve.

The piece does raise the etiquette of filming without scolding, and it nudges a room of strangers towards a brief sense of belonging. I admired that restraint. I also missed a stronger emotional arc. The closing gesture is tasteful and unforced, but I left thinking more about the polish of the method than the charge of the encounter.

There is enough craft here to recommend, especially if you are curious about audience-centred work and allergic to being put on the spot. But the performance never fully escapes its own frame. It lands as a considered, well-made experience that is easier to admire and enjoy than it is to love.

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The Blurb:

Step into a world where the boundaries between audience and performers dissolve. Eight-time Fringe First-winning theatre company Ontroerend Goed transforms traditional theatre into an experience that playfully shifts perspectives through video. Despite its interactive nature, you're free to simply observe as the performers navigate the space. This isn't about putting you on the spot – it's about recognising that without you, there is no theatre. Thanks for Being Here isn't just a show – it's a celebration of your presence. 'Radically hopeful' **** (DeMorgen.be).