Mensen Zeggen Dingen (People Say Things) is a Dutch collective. Things are meaningless if they’re not given words. That’s exactly what these people do. Expressing things, making them discussable, placing exclamation marks or question marks after them with their club show.

Mensen Zeggen Dingen festival summer sneak preview: “Lone Wolves”

Small resistance. Hope. Lone wolves.

The Iranian woman who climbed on a car and waved her hijab. Rosa Parks who sat at the front of the bus. The man in China who stood before four tanks with a plastic bag. Emma Sulkowicz who carried the mattress on which she was raped across Columbia University campus. Colin Kaepernick who took a knee during the national anthem and was never signed again. People who, all alone, made a system falter.

Sinead O’Connor was one of them too. Reviled for her outspoken opinions, mocked by the industry, her career damaged by negative media attention. When she tore up a photo of the pope while singing “War” on SNL, she was dismissed as crazy. But her act was a protest, a statement, a risk she consciously took. Like the protests of less famous lone wolves, it was a moment that became bigger than herself.

This evening is for them. Poets, writers, and spoken word artists bring stories about how something small keeps the fire burning. About lone wolves offering hope. Nikki Dekker, Mees van Rijswijck, Thorn de Vries, Damaris, and Smita take the stage. Alone, but never without an audience.

“The effort is worthwhile, for the effort is always worthwhile.” – Virginia Woolf, last sentence of A Room of One’s Own

This performance will be in Dutch.

During your visit to the Depot, be surprised by performances from Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen’s fringe program on the square and at the entrance!