For seven hundred years, the south of Spain was part of a prosperous Moorish kingdom, in which Muslims, Jews and Christians lived together. The arts flourished, science flourished. In 1492, this came to an end, when Catholic Spain conquered the last Moorish city: Granada. What followed was a long process of persecution and expulsion of […]

Jan Janszoon – pirate of the world is a four-part documentary series by the NTR (National Dutch Broadcasting Company) about the crazy life of Jan Janszoon, a fearless Haarlem privateer from the 17th century who is causing a furore in North Africa. The story is so bizarre you’ll think it’s made up. But it all […]

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.

Hotel Modern and director Guy Cassiers, together with 11 actors from the ITA (International Theatre Amsterdam) ensemble, create the world of Primeval and Other Times: in models and live on several video screens, life in the village and the surrounding nature is created. The whole is a tableau vivant of epic proportions that does justice to […]

In a green screen studio, full of models, puppets, tree bark and cardboard doctors, Hotel Modern depicts very personal stories in which being born doesn’t just go without saying and life cannot be predicted. Arlène Hoornweg’s family history inspired her to create an magical-realistic story about the power of motherly love. In it, a mother […]

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.

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.

In the year that the violent colonization of the Moluccan island of Banda took place exactly 400 years ago – also known as ‘the massacre of Banda’, Hotel Modern and IJsbeerINC present their coproduction Peter Pepper for schools and theaters.

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.

Hotel Modern presents Private Domain, a set of three intimate and immersive online performances, one by each member of the group. Private Domain was performed online, exclusively on Saturday 24 April 2021 via the website of Nineties Productions.

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.

Staatsoper Stuttgart, one of the leading German opera houses, invited three renowned artistic teams to stage the three acts of Richard Wagner’s The Valkyrie. Hotel Modern was asked to design the first act. Herman Helle, Pauline Kalker and Arlène Hoornweg situate their part of this mythical love drama in the apocalyptic world of a civilization […]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.