On the Couch: Aafke Romeijn as Katadreuffe

Psychiatrist Damiaan Denys invited musician, journalist and writer Aafke Romeijn onto his couch. She impersonated Jacob Willem Katadreuffe from F. Borderwijk's Karakter.

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Information

Date and time Saturday 19 January 2019 20:00 tot 20:40 uur
Location Theater aan het Spui - Zaal 2

A fictional character visits the shrink! Psychiatrist Damiaan Denys invited musician, journalist and writer Aafke Romeijn onto his couch. As Jacob Willem Katadreuffe, the protagonist from F. Bordewijk's Karakter (1938), she reflected on desires, motives and life questions. What if I had eternal life? As a character, do I not already enjoy eternal life? And what is actually the meaning of life? Can one shape life, is everything possible if you will it?

Damiaan Denys

(1965) is a prominent psychiatrist, neuroscientist, writer and theatre actor. Born in Flanders, he works and lives in The Netherlands. He studied philosophy and medicine in Belgium, graduated in psychiatry from Utrecht University, and worked as head of anxiety disorders of UMC Utrecht. He is a professor at the University of Amsterdam and department head of psychiatry at AMC Amsterdam. Denys developed Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS), a method to master compulsive thoughts. In his book Angstparadox (Anxiety Paradox, 2016) he states: "If there is a single word that holds the essence of the world in which we live now, of what guides us and of what holds us back, it is anxiety." Denys writes and acts in theatre monologues, among them Van angst naar vrijheid (From Anxiety to Freedom, 2016), which is "about the sense and nonsense of our contemporary culture of anxiety".
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Aafke Romeijn

(Netherlands, 1986) is a successful musician, author and journalist. She debuted as a novelist with Concept M (2018). This well-received sci-fi novel takes place in the Netherlands in 2020. A young woman makes sense in a surprising way of her condition of colourlessness, a chronic disease that has grown to epidemic proportions in Europe. She radicalizes and ends up in an organization that carries out attacks. Romeijn has performed as a pop-music artist at festivals such as Lowlands and Noorderslag. With her beats, razor-sharp lyrics and analog synthesizers, she's the uncrowned queen of Dutch-language electropop. Her album M, the soundtrack to her novel and her first self-produced record, was released in 2019, followed in 2020 by her debut poetry collection Leegstand (Vacancy). In 2021 she released the album Godzilla and published 7B, another sci-fi novel set in the year 2040 in Groningen, where military personnel train in a huge complex for a war over natural resources.
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