Hotel Modern & Arthur Sauer turn their gaze to the rise of ‘our’ East Indies. Our Empire provides stories about the early history of the Netherlands and Indonesia. A vast scale model of the Indonesian archipelago fills the stage. We see paddy fields, rainforests, mosques, villages and cities. This island kingdom in miniature is populated […]

An enormous scale model based on Auschwitz-Birkenau fills the stage. Overcrowded barracks, a railway track, a gateway with the words “Arbeit Macht Frei”.  Thousands of 3-inch tall handmade puppets represent the prisoners and their executioners. Three actors bring the camp to life, using miniature cameras to film the events. The audience becomes witness to a […]

Hotel Modern & Arthur Sauer perform The Great War. 1914-1918. Many millions of soldiers wrote letters to their loved ones from the trenches. Millions died in the fire and the mud. Millions came home with stories that could not be told, or could not be heard – just like after any war.

Symmetries is a production of the Netherlands Wind Ensemble, in collaboration with Duda Paiva Company, ISH Dance Collective, Mor Shani and Hotel Modern. On stage a spectacular and imaginative fusion of dance, music and filmed images takes place. The Netherlands Wind Ensemble invited Hotel Modern and a number of choreographers for a special collaboration.

Seaplane Mothership is an apocalyptic review featuring old books, short films, scenes from After The Bomb, pop art science fiction, gnomes and poets.

In Shrimp Tales, Hotel Modern attempts to portray the fascinating plague that calls itself Humanity. We observe people as if they belonged to an exotic species with unique characteristics. They play sports, practice science, strive, live, make love and loose their mind.

City Now is an ambitious attempt to portray a metropolis – a city kept in motion with the help of actors, souvenirs, bread rolls, and a spectaculair set constructed out of refrigerator boxes. We zoom through streets, squares, walls and rooms to reach deep into the inhabitants’ innermost thoughts.

A museum built of cardboard rises from the stage, and on display are all the things that humanity produces: anything from toilet brushes to jars of peanut butter and from soldiers helmets to fragments of human bones. Three performers are making frantic efforts to categorise and group objects from this huge mound of stuff.

Moses in Egypt was co-produced by the Bregenz Festival and Opera Cologne. Stage director Lotte de Beer invited Hotel Modern to contribute to her staging of Rossini’s opera Moses in Egypt, an opera version of the biblical tale of Moses and the Exodus from Egypt.

This coproduction of Hotel Modern and the Netherlands Wind Ensemble depicts the rise and fall of an insect empire, inspired by Wagner’s ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen’. In this powerful and poetic reimagining of Wagner’s violent world of treachery, power struggles and strangled love, spectacular lifelike insects marionettes take the roles of gods, goddesses and giants.

Snail Trails offers a surrealistic view of a day and a night in the life of an elderly and somewhat confused woman. She spends her days snipping pictures from magazines and watering her plants.

In a tunnel deep underground Hotel Modern is working on a new production. Gas masks, Indonesian antiques, ladies gowns, glue guns, miniature cameras and a bucket were recently passed down through a hatch. The sounds of a cyclone often escape the tunnel entrance. An empty vial of homesickness is lying under a bush.

Following productions that took world wars as their theme, Hotel Modern turns their attention to two more cheerful subjects: sex and curiosity. Rococo is a declaration of love to fantasy and the power of imagination. What happens when lust and curiosity are given free rein?

Hotel Modern brings a universe on stage in which a stormy marriage between death and life can be experienced. Using miniature film sets, cameras, puppets, large animals, theatre actors and a composer, Hotel Modern recounts true and invented tales of human fragility.

Quietly, in the hustle and bustle of a town, a woman lives in a shop window. She reads, makes soup, combs her hair. But between the pages of her book she finds ominous notes. The broth swarms with shrimp. Or does it? How fascinating, the hair growing out of her nose. Her socks are filled […]