Rise of the blue city

Performance
Rise of the Blue City is a musical theater performance on the water of ‘t Oldambtmeer near Blauwe Stad – a water-rich area in eastern Groningen with an illustrious history. The play is set in the distant future (the year 2386) where the gap between rich and poor is wider than ever before, where reed cigars grow to the sky and mutated cows dominate the flooded landscape. In Blue City, which has now become a district of the ever-expanding Randstad, there are three escaped criminals who cannot go any further and certainly cannot go back. They take shelter in the grimmest part of the Netherlands in search of a new place to ground themselves.

Design
Bluecity is a blueprint for a futuristic community that must constantly adapt as a result of a changing climate and new planning ideals. The actors play stereotypes and thus each represent one side of the story. They stand on pontoons that float forward one by one from under a jetty. The setting reinforces the allegorical value of the play with Brechtian tools: the many changes of place, time and characters are clarified by simple bold words taken from indications from the script. In addition to lettering, the pontoons have also been given a characteristic. For example, ‘Huib-Jan’ has an outboard motor, the ‘Krumper on Customized Vehicle’ a smoke machine, ‘the tempting water’ a fountain, ‘the burning construction hut’ an edge of fire, etc. When all pontoons have been floated up, they form a grid. However, this model city soon drifts back into a new (dis)order.