04-07-2025

Koen van Seuren on Revenge of the Extras
Portretfoto maker Koen van Seuren van Het Zuidelijk Toneel, voorover gebogen poserend tegen een okergele achtergrond.

Over the next four years, Het Zuidelijk Toneel will be working with a permanent group of idiosyncratic creators: from established names to brand-new talent. Each and every one of them is idiosyncratic, untamed, and anything but run-of-the-mill. And they wholeheartedly embrace our love of fiction, ensemble spirit, and radically sustainable choices. Under the leadership of artistic director Sarah Moeremans and with resident dramaturg Joachim Robbrecht as her sharp sidekick, they create theater that delightfully colors outside the lines. In this section, you will get to know them through their performances. Who are they, what do they create, and why?

This is already the third edition of Meet the Creator, and this time we are talking to the director of our Short Summer Show: Koen van Seuren. Koen has been associated with Het Zuidelijk Toneel for some time as Sarah Moeremans' assistant director. This year, he created the festival performance Revenge of the Extras, a sci-fi satire about those who are never at the top of the call sheet.

Koen van Seuren is not the kind of director who takes you on a journey through psychological drama. His work is grotesque, humorous, multi-layered, and nothing less than theatrical fireworks. In his latest performance, Revenge of the Extras, the extras take center stage; but not to restore their moral honor. No, they are sucked into an absurd spectacle where even the revolution has become a performance.

Hey Koen! What is a typical 'Koen' performance?

“Adjectives to describe my work are: humorous, hysterical, megalomaniacal; philosophically charged. My characters are not people in the psychological sense of the word; they are carriers of ideas, embodied ideologies. I don't make theater about who we are, but about what we believe, what we are stuck in, and how we lose ourselves in it.”

You have been collaborating with Het Zuidelijk Toneel for a while, including with Sarah and in previous Short Summer Shows. What does this collaboration mean to you, and what makes it such a good match?

“The first performance I saw by Sarah was a revelation for me. When I first saw her work, it even inspired me to go to drama school. It was larger than life, hilarious, and at the same time very philosophical and intellectually stimulating. That balance between humor and depth has also become very important in my own work. Since I graduated, Sarah has been my sparring partner, co-director, and partner in crime. So I could say that without Sarah, I might have done something completely different with my life.”

Een mysterieuze figuur met een spookachtig, groen gezicht staat in een miste omgeving met kleurrijke lichten op de achtergrond.
Revenge of the Extras
In Revenge of the Extras, you give the extra—normally in the background—the leading role. What attracted you to this perspective? What does that say about your view of power, visibility, and theater? How do acting, performance, and “authenticity” relate to each other in this performance? What fascinates you about the phenomenon of “the supporting role”? And what can we expect as an audience?

"I have a radically different view of the concept of ‘personal’. For me, a character is never purely an individual, but is constructed from the environment in which they operate. The society in which we live shapes us into capitalist subjects. Revenge of the Extras is not about being an extra, or even about the film world. In the play called life, 99.9 percent of people play a supporting role. And yet we all dream of playing the lead in the latest blockbuster. We live in a society where everyone presents themselves as a creator, curates their personality, and displays their taste. The performance shows how the system shapes us into people who desire, and how that desire is precisely what keeps the system running.

We are all trapped in our own creative rat race, with hopes for the infinite, an escape from the everyday. And then bam, after six seconds in the shot, you get shot in the face by laser beams. That absurdity, that irony, was my starting point for this performance.

Not to honor the supporting role, or to make a moral statement about “the extra.” In Revenge of the Extras, we become part of the spectacle of the blockbuster, seamlessly blending film and reality, rebellion and action movie. It is a world in which even the revolution has been entertained into performance. An exciting blockbuster that stages resistance and at the same time channels our anger. We don't long for change, we long for airtime during the revolution. And in the meantime, the camera keeps rolling."

What do you hope the audience feels or thinks as they leave the theater?

“I think it's important to draw the audience into the story. With a plot that works, with humor, tragedy, generous acting, and references to popular culture. They should feel like they're experiencing something lighthearted, and only later, when they leave or talk about it afterwards, should the realization sink in: wait a minute, this was about something. I think that delayed thinking is essential. I call it subliminal philosophy."

Twee acteurs op een podium, één in kostuum met een groen hoofd voor zich op de tafel, de ander met een telefoon in de hand.
Revenge of the Extras
What does the title Revenge of the Extras mean to you personally?

“The title is tongue-in-cheek, of course. It immediately conjures up images of a cheesy 1980s sci-fi blockbuster: something between Revenge of the Nerds and Star Wars. That's exactly the genre I'm playing with. Science fiction pretends to look ahead, but in reality it recycles the ideology of the present: oppression, technocracy, individualistic heroism. I find it fascinating that our vision of the future is often so dystopian—perhaps because we no longer dare to dream outside the logic of this system. In a sense, when we watch sci-fi, we are not looking ahead, but at the fetishism of our time: a world in which technology does not liberate, but takes over, in which revolution is staged as spectacle. That paradox, that entertainment and resistance coincide, is at the heart of my performance."

Are there specific situations or traits from the performance where you recognize yourself?

“The characters you create as a writer are always parts of yourself. So the characters all represent aspects of my personal experience. As a writer, there's no getting around that. Sometimes I'm an accommodating Dave who doesn't dare to stand up for himself, then again I'm a Laila who thinks she has figured out the world in its entirety and finds everyone corrupt. Sometimes, when I'm stressed, I'm briefly a Melle who is blunt with the people around him. The reality of theater-making is not necessarily very romantic. We all remain failed people, with dreams that don't come true and good intentions that lead to bad things.”

Thank you, Koen, for a glimpse into your creative process!

Revenge of the Extras is the Short Summer Show of Het Zuidelijk Toneel and will be performed at De Parade in Rotterdam, The Hague, and Amsterdam. After that, the performance will also be shown at Theaterfestival Boulevard in Den Bosch. Come by and immerse yourself in the world of the extra!

Check the performance schedule