A Year Without Summer
What happens when the creation becomes the monster?
It is 2025. We live in a year without summer. In a jump-scare reality that feels like an apocalyptic vision of our world thrown into darkness and stripped of certainty: Where survival becomes ritual and despair dances hand in hand with ecstasy. Nederlands
In 1816, the original “year without summer“, Mount Tambora erupts in Indonesia, ashes fill the sky, the sun disappears, crops fail, and the world hungers. That same year, 18-year-old Mary stays by Lake Geneva with other poets, where storm and darkness inspire them to tell ghost stories. Mary imagines Frankenstein, a genius of science, who forces nature to bend to his will and ends up in destruction with his monster assembled from corpses‘ parts.
Florentina Holzinger and cast explore the stories we tell about our environment, bodies, health, decay and identities: The 21st century pursuit of longevity, medical promises to the perils of unchecked technological growth in a world shaped by AI, robotics, and bioengineering. A Year without Summer appropriates this attempt to improve nature to the point of perversion and plays off the promise of eternal life against the certainty of death.
But what happens when the creation becomes the monster?
When creation becomes (like) us?
Venue
Whether you’re an expat, an international student or a native Dutchman with a love of foreign theatre: we have good news! Theater Rotterdam puts on performances for non-Dutch speakers right in the centre of Rotterdam. Our program includes a lot of (dance) performances as well as plays in English, with subtitles or without any speech.
We are Theater Rotterdam. We make and show boundless theatre, and give new makers the space to develop. By shining light on everyone’s story, we bring people closer together.
Throughout the year we create special experiences: from tear-jerker to amaze. At home in Rotterdam and on tour through the Netherlands and Europe. We connect and inspire. Sometimes quirky, sometimes imperfect, always unexpected.
Here the familiar mixes with the unknown, let go of expectations and embrace differences. Experience a world full of surprising shows and encounters. An environment where we are curious and see and discover with an open mind. This way we always keep moving.
With us, you can be who you are. We challenge you to hold up a mirror and to listen to yourself and the other. Celebrate and fail together, we are touched and made to think. And while we do that, we come alive.
