We are deeply honoured: SONGOFSONGS has been nominated for the inaugural Designers’ Award at the Dutch Theater Festival 2025!

With SONGOFSONGS, Boogaerdt/VanderSchoot brings an ecological orgy to the stage – a musical video installation where pixels, paint, and live bodies merge into a vibrant stream of imagery. In this work, content, method, and form are completely intertwined.

For this erotic creation myth, the artistic team explored a form of ecological storytelling: not linear, but circular – where conversation takes precedence over monologue, and relationships matter more than individual voices. SONGOFSONGS celebrates the multi-organism (a being composed of many beings) and suggests that it is precisely in this interconnectedness that the essence of being human resides.

Co-creation lies at the heart of the production. Every maker is a co-author; no image was created by a single individual. The team worked across their studio, a green key set, and the rehearsal space, where the full technical setup was present throughout. In carefully facilitated group sessions, each contributor entered from their own discipline. Together they created 2D and 3D visuals, sculptures, objects, and embodied compositions that coalesced into one immersive sensory experience.

That is why we are so proud of this nomination, because it recognises not a single designer, but the entire artistic team. It affirms a way of working that is collaborative at its core, and that mirrors the themes explored in the piece itself.

The jury describes SONGOFSONGS as “a compelling and overwhelmingly designed performance, in which content, form, and approach merge seamlessly into a sensory experience that is felt physically.”

Read the full jury report here

Nominated team:
OTION (musical composition), Rodrik Biersteker (video), Lotte Goos (paint, fabric, and costume design), Julian Maiwald (light and installation design), Suzan Boogaerdt (concept and realization), Bianca van der Schoot (concept and direction)

Designers’ Award exhibition opening:
September 4 at 16:30 at Internationaal Theater Amsterdam