Platform 0090 / production

III ANNIHILATION

a metamorphosis

A biologist joins an expedition into Area X: a forbidden zone where nature has reclaimed the land and previous expeditions ended in disappearance, madness, or suicide.

She is the only one who returns.

In quarantine, she is interrogated by an anonymous authority attempting to reconstruct what happened. But what returns from Area X no longer aligns with who was sent in.

“If I don’t have real answers, it is because we still don’t know what questions to ask. Our instruments are useless, our methodology broken, our motivations selfish.” - Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer

Thomas Ryckewaert and performer Ika Schwander adapt Jeff VanderMeer’s cult novel Annihilation for the stage — a universe where horror, science fiction, and ecology converge. Field journal fragments, interrogation, scientific observations, and flashbacks form a labyrinth in which the boundary between observer and observed begins to leak.

Annihilation is climate fiction for the stage. 

A performance about the moment when nature looks back.

Direction Thomas Ryckewaert Adaptation & performance Ika Schwander, Thomas Ryckewaert Dramaturgy Kristof Van Baarle Scenography Erki De Vries Light Luc Schaltin Sound Marijn Ottenhof Video Kurt D’Haeseleer Costume Andrea Kränzlin Production Platform 0090