2023-2024
About dreams & castles in the air
Experience the personal dreams of an inclusive theatre company. Fifteen players shared their beautiful, abrasive, imaginative but also painful dreams, which form the basis of everyone's castle in the air. A performance where you as a visitor or viewer can freely fantasize about which rooms you want to have in your castle in the air. The audience took a seat in a theatrical lounge setting together with our players, where with circus arts, dance, live music, video projections and a meal, dreams were brought to life and visualized. About a world where there is always room to dream.
Do you still dare to dream?
2022
The film recording of Romeo's & Juliet's .
The performance revolves around the central question: are you allowed to love who you want to love? Challenging themes such as identity, murder, rejection and sexuality are questioned and challenged in a multidisciplinary performance with live music and projections.
Because you're different. You're limited. You're forced to hide because you're not allowed to be in love with someone of your choosing.
Inspired by Paul's performance Romeo's & Juliet's, filmmaker Christiaan van Schermbeek of Moois TV made a serial, in collaboration with Douwe Wilhelm van der Werf
Trailer . /. Part I. / Part II . /. Part III / Part IV . / Part V . / Part VI.
Always Everything Different - 2022
The film takes you into Paul's rehearsal process for the performances 'From J. to Jessica' (2020) and 'I via the other' (2021). As a spectator, you see how a group of over 20 actors and dancers develop stories together about being allowed to be who you are.
Some of them tell you about their own experiences in finding their way in an artistic career and also how, for example, their autism, homosexuality and deafness play a role in this.
When Paul himself speaks, you see how he reflects on his work and on the meaning and responsibility of art in making society more inclusive.
He also talks about his motivations and setbacks in his unusual artistic practice, a practice that should actually be much more normal.
The essence of Paul's theatre work lies in the continuous search for equal artistic collaboration between people with a great variety in gender, cultural background, physical and mental condition and professionalism.
Me Through The Other - 2021
What does your mother tell about you? And about your birth?
What does your father think about the choices you make in life?
How does your sister or brother talk about their relationship with you?
In Ik via de ander, 28 players from Theater Babel Rotterdam show themselves at their most vulnerable. They tell intimate stories about themselves, through the eyes of the other. Director Paul Röttger interviewed a family member of each player about their birth, youth, the life of the player and their mutual bond. Together with writer Erik Ward Geerlings, Paul worked out these interviews into monologues.
In a multidisciplinary setting of dance, circus arts and music, and life-size projections, the players tell their personal story 1 on 1 to the audience. I via the other is an invitation to get closer to yourself, via the story of the other.
From J to Jessica - 2020
een theater-choreografie van Paul Röttger
“2019/2020 - Het verhaal van Jessica, transgender en actrice bij Theater Babel Rotterdam. Zij brengt haar verhaal open en bloot, laat niets onbesproken, toont zich kwetsbaar en gaat geen taboe uit de weg. Haar medespelers laten zich inspireren door haar verhaal.
Ook zij keren zich binnenstebuiten met openhartige, kwetsbare en (on)alledaagse bekentenissen over hun jeugd, over seksualiteit, over wie ze wel en niet willen en kunnen zijn.
Een voorstelling met oude en eigentijdse vocale muziek door een koor van 34 acteurs met en zonder beperking, omgeven door spectaculaire 360 graden projecties.”
Piazza della vita - 2019
a theater choreography by Paul Röttger
“An unabashed look at life.
Birth, love, rejection,
confirmation, death. Without words,
including singing, live music, acrobatics and dance.
A square filled with visitors, two
enormous art objects and no less than
35 players.”
Displaced - 2017
A visual and musical location performance by Paul Röttger.
How do you survive when you have nothing left?
Uprooted and alienated.
Drowning in the crowd.
In an environment you don't know.
Looking for space.
Music, singing, smells, dreams.
They are bright spots.
Art comforts.
More than sixty actors with and without disabilities perform a visual and musical performance in a large factory hall in Rotterdam.
documentary Carel van Hees-Stephan Warmenhoven (fragment)
In collaboration with Carel van Hees and Stephan Warmenhoven, a documentary film about the work of theatre maker Paul Röttger was produced in 2016.
At the start of rehearsals in the spring of 2016, the camera was already rolling to capture the process of making this inclusive theatre production.
Con Amore - 2016
over liefde en het gebrek daaraan
muziek- en bewegingstheater van Paul Röttger
Achttien acteurs, met en zonder een beperking,
spelen een voorstelling zonder woorden.
Over de mogelijkheden en de beperkingen
die de liefde ons in het dagelijks leven oplegt.
Het is ‘de liefde’ waar het in het leven om draait.
En dat is meer dan verliefdheid, passie en lust.
Liefde is onontkoombaar, soms obsessief en geeft ons ook troost.
To Be or Not - trailer - 2015
TO BE OR NOT
an urban theatre safari by Paul Röttger
Who is allowed to be there and who is not?
And who decides that?
To Be Or Not 1 is real life.
Even more.
It brings 'being' into focus.
To Be Or Not 1 is an adventurous urban theatre safari that takes you to the corners of Rotterdam. Theatre and reality meet and seduce each other.
rcth+ documentary - on the way to
In the spring of 2016, interns from the Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, as part of their internship at the Rotterdamscentrumvoortheater, made a mini-documentary about the path that the RCTH has taken on its way to becoming a renewed cultural institution.
direction: Interns Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences: Emile Elsenaar, Lisa McCray, Selina Tady
Wie is er nou gek? - 2014/2015
of ik is een ander
About painful and confronting life stories, of people with a psychiatric background, who can be seen together with professional actors, in a comforting performance full of song and dance and silence.
Director Paul Röttger interviewed (ex) psychiatric clients. Their life stories are played by the clients and players of the rcth.
Wie is er nou gek is a co-production with Pameijer and Bavo Europoort and has been performed more than 60 times since January 2014 and an extension until 2015.
Such an infinite longing for friendship - 2012/2014
such an immeasurable longing for friendship
an evening full of theatre, song and dance
with texts by Rotterdam writers
based on beautiful
gruesome
touching
life stories of homosexual seniors
stories that unfortunately still exist today
be current
even now there are more and more people
who are not allowed to be who they want to be
Mateloos is played by homosexual seniors
from the Pink Salon of Humanitas Bergweg
who together with players from the rotterdamscentrumvoortheater
were seen in a mosaic of desires
that are recognizable to every human being
A Jacqueline in the city
an educational theatre production by the Rotterdam Centre for Theatre in collaboration with the Meld Geweld foundation.
Who has it in them to stand up for someone else?
The Report Violence Foundation will cease to exist. Its message revolved around one's own possibilities in ending the cycle of violence.
As a final action, the foundation asked the RCTH to further develop its ideas and anchor them in the DNA of Rotterdam.
game Diana Coolen
musical theatre performer Tim Hammer
directed by Paul Röttger
text Maria Heiden