Jorre Vandenbussche

I am Jorre Vandenbussche (°1975, Belgium). I graduated in 1997 as an actor at the Royal Flemish Conservatory in Antwerp (Dora Van der Groen). Throughout my career I worked as an actor for larger and smaller theatre companies in Flanders-Belgium and Holland, and I made my own theatrework both for youth and adults. I also teach at KASK Drama Gent and LUCA Drama Leuven. In 2015 I co-founded MAELSTROM. 

With MAELSTROM we search for alternative forms of artistic dialogue with our audience. We aim at an intense, long term dialogue. We start with a question we pose our audience, with their answers we make the performance, and after te show we continue the dialogue in different forms. The first performance we set up in this form of co-creation was called 'Brief aan mijn kind' ('Letter to my child')

In every town we played we asked people from all walks of life to write their own letter to their (fictitious) child. If people were not able to write, we went to interview them. We received letters from and/or interviewed prisoners, asylumseekers, people with dementia, sexworkers, people with psychiatric problems, politicians, adolescents, people who lost a child, homeless people, etc. In the performance we confronted the local letters and voices with our own letter.

For our second co-creative show we asked people whether the word 'SOLIDARITY' still meant anything to them. We set up a website were people could leave their comments and suggestions, and we interviewed people. We made a longread with the interviews and our reflections on them. We worked directly toghether with civil organisations, ngo's and people from the whole spectrum of society in Flanders (a.o.Humanity and Inclusion, Broederlijk Delen, Socialistische Mutualiteiten, CM, Beweging.net, ATD Vierde Wereld,...) We organised shows toghether, in their own buildings.