2025
text and concept: Olivier M. Herter
performance: Luca Bryssinck
music and sound: Boris de Klerk
mix and recording: Camiel Muiser
artistic coach: Birgit Boelens
thanks to: Czeslaw de Wijs
Alexander van der Weide
production: FIRMA GOTT
partners: ‘t Barre Land
Hard//Hoofd
Performing Arts Fund NL
Dutch Foundation for Literature
Amsterdam Fund for the Arts
Premiered at Frascati Amsterdam, Dat het was (And so it happened) is an intimate monologue navigating dissociation, memory, and the aftermath of sexual violence. With great care and precision, the text constructs a fragmented inner space — a psychological architecture of language and silence. Rather than dramatizing trauma, the work offers a poetic encounter with its residue, tracing what remains unspoken.
The form is associative and open-ended, inviting the audience into a shared space of emotional attunement and reflective presence. At the heart of the piece lies a desire to approach vulnerability not through spectacle, but through resonance.
Dat het was responds to a wider cultural movement in which personal and collective trauma — and more broadly speaking mental health — enters public discourse. Yet the piece insists on complexity beyond binaries: victim and perpetrator, silence and speech, narration and poetry.
The performance was developed in collaboration with actor Luca Bryssinck of theatre collective ‘t Barre Land and composer Boris de Klerk, who performs a live soundscape that intensifies the work’s sonic and emotional texture. Together with sound engineer Camiel Muiser, the team also created a contemporary audio version of the text. Text and audio story will soon be published on literary platform Hard//Hoofd.
For the Dutch publication of the text, check: www.firmagott.com.
For the publication of the text and audio story, check: www.hardhoofd.com.