DeRonde/Deroo 

A humorous, moving journey full of recognition and alienation—intimate and grand at the same time

In Please don’t make love to me, I’m exhausted, everyone tries to survive by chasing small moments of happiness. A clown in an interrogation room stares ahead with a tragicomic expression—though that might just be due to his smudged makeup. Stubbornly, he keeps folding balloon dogs, while the questions keep coming. A merman drags himself along, panting, craving the last few drops to feel like a fish in water one more time. And two stand-up comedians desperately try to elicit a laugh from an audience that stares back icily.

Clown, merman, and comedians each seek, in their own way, a foothold in a world that is ablaze. The same question echoes constantly: how do you move forward while everything around you is shaking to its foundations?

About DeRonde/Deroo

DeRonde/Deroo, Tom de Ronde (28) and Nick Deroo (36), create cinematic, physical, acrobatic theater. As a viewer, you are immersed in surreal, absurdist dream worlds with their own rules and laws. The body is always their starting point. They constantly explore the (im)possibilities of the body to achieve a poetic and unpredictable expressiveness.

In 2025, DeRonde/Deroo received the Wim Bary Stipendium from the Cultuurfonds, an award for their promising body of work. Their children’s performance *Hou Vast* (7+; 2026) was also received with acclaim: the show received four stars in de Volkskrant and was named Critics’ Choice in de Theaterkrant. Their site-specific performance It really hurts when your head hits the concrete was performed more than 200 times in the Netherlands and abroad and received multiple awards and rave reviews.