After the popular Seefhoek Series project, Thomas Verstraeten is working with composer Heleen Van Haegenborgh on a new metropolitan project, Symphony for one hundred citizens and a traffic light, made in coproduction with DE SINGEL, Toneelhuis and De Warande. The project has two parts: a music theatre show and a video installation. This time, instead of a single district, Verstraeten is focusing on the entire city.

With Symphony for one hundred citizens and a traffic light, Heleen and Thomas are creating a large-scale urban symphony of daily urban sounds. They are working with one hundred city dwellers from all corners of Antwerp, each of whom plays their own ‘instrument’. On stage there are no violins, woodwinds or drums, but cars with rumbling engines, a sunny outdoor café with clinking glasses, barking dogs, a wheeled suitcase bumping over the cobblestones, a singing street guitarist, a road worker using a drill, a clock striking 12, chirping birds…. Taken together, all of these instruments on the stage of the Blauwe Zaal in DE SINGEL form a sculptural collage of the city.