Warriors! Heroes from Suriname and the Caribbean

Spoken word, music, dance and stories by Gershwin Bonevacia, Dean Bowen, Julien Ignacio, Raj Mohan, OTION - Master of Sceneries, and Karin Amatmoekrim

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Information

Date and time Friday 19 January 2024 22:30 tot 23:45 uur
Location Theater aan het Spui - Zaal 1
Price Early bird price until 26 December €25
Regular €30 | All up to 30 years / Ooievaarspas €15
DenHaagPas €27,50

Warriors! is an ode in spoken word, music, dance and stories to people from Suriname and the Caribbean who risked their lives to fight for freedom. Heroes from our colonial past that resisted oppression and a lack of freedom.  Stories that were previously ignored, made invisible or hidden away. Now, more than 150 years after the abolition of slavery, many stories are emerging, but there also remain many stories that must be told about warriors from the past and warriors of the present.

Gershwin Bonevacia, Dean Bowen, Julien Ignacio, Raj Mohan and OTION - Master of Sceneries presented their own work. In a conversation with presenter Shantie Singh, Karin Amatmoekrim talked about the writer Anil Ramdas, about whom she recently published the biography In wat voor land leef ik eigenlijk? (What Kind of Country Do I Live In, Anyway?).

Tip: Shantie Singh also created Her (s)tories, a theatrical ode to women in Hindustani migration history, which was performed on Friday 12 January 2024 at Theater aan het Spui, The Hague.

Line-up

Shantie Singh

(The Netherlands, 1982) is an author, program maker, and moderator. Themes such as identity, diversity, women's rights, and emancipation are often central to her work. Her background is layered and connected to three continents in the countries of India, Suriname, and The Netherlands. She wrote about this in her debut novel Vervoering. This was followed by the novel De kier. In 2024, her non-fiction book Na de komma – Hindostanen en de erfenis van het kolonialisme (After the Comma – Hindustani People and the Legacy of Colonialism) was published, her plea for greater recognition and visibility of the Hindustani story in the Netherlands. This book inspired her theatre production Her (s)tories (2024-2025), an ode to the women from Hindustani migration history. In her De Dolle Kavita Talkshow, Shantie welcomes trailblazers (women, men, or anything in between) with a story that needs to be heard. She is also a member of the feministic writers collective Fixdit.

Go to the website of Shantie Singh
Instagram: @shantie.singh1
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Karin Amatmoekrim

(Suriname, 1976) debuted with Knipperleven (2004), followed by Wanneer wij samen zijn (When We Are Together, 2006), based on the history of her Javanese-Surinamese family. Her novel Het gym (The Gymnasium, 2011) describes Sandra, a Surinamese outsider, holding her own among preppy white girls. De man van veel (The Man of Much, 2013) is based on the life of the Surinamese national hero and writer Anton de Kom, and was followed by her memoir Tenzij de vader (Unless the Father, 2016), a painfully honest report of getting to know her father at age 22. Her PhD thesis on the late author Anil Ramdas (University of Utrecht) was published as the biography In welk land leef ik eigenlijk? (What Kind of Country Do I Actually Live in?, 2023). She regularly publishes stories, columns and opinion pieces.
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Raj Mohan

(Suriname, 1962) published his first volume of poetry, Bapauti/Erfenis (Bapauti/Heritage) in 2008, an elaboration of the songs on his album Kantráki/Contract Labourer. The collection Tihá/Troost (Tihá/Comfort) followed in 2011 with lyrics from his pop album Daayra. The singer, poet and composer -- with parental roots in India, born in Suriname, and living in The Netherlands -- deals with societal themes and with subjects that are taboo within Hindustani and Indian circles. Mohan writes in Sarnámi, the mother tongue of the Hindustani in Suriname and the Netherlands. He is founder and artistic director of musical groups like the Raj Mohan Ensemble, Vistar and Shai'rana, with which he tours at home and abroad. He plays and sings compositions based on his own lyrics and on poems by contemporary Urdu poets in the (lightly) classical tradition of Northern India.
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Dean Bowen

(The Netherlands, 1984) is a poet, performer and events programmer. As evident in his multilingual poetry collection Bokman (2018), his work looks at the relationship of people's identity to society. A strong performance won him the first Van Dale SPOKEN Award. In 2019 and 2020 he was poet laureate of Rotterdam. Ik vond geen spoken in Achtmaal (I Found No Ghosts in Achtmaal, 2020) describes, via diary entries, poems, confessions, and rituals, the search for what remains of a person long after he has died. He has published poems on the online platforms SampleKanon and Hard//Hoofd and in magazines such as nY and Kunsttijdschrift Vlaanderen. He teaches performance literature and poetry at the Creative Writing programme at ArtEZ. Together with Flemish writer and musician Joost Hoekaf, he creates introspective hip hop in the Vudu Cru project. His next collection, Masc:r, will be published in January 2026.

Instagram: @dean_bowen
Instagram: @vudu.cru
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Julien Ignacio

(The Netherlands, 1969) graduated with a degree in Literature and travelled through Asia, Australia, West Africa, the Caribbean (where his roots lie on the isle of Aruba), South America and the Middle East for four years. He publishes theatrical texts, columns and short stories. In 2008 he won the El Hizjra Literature Prize for his stageplay Hotel Atlantis. He is co-founder of the theatre company tgDakota, an editor with the literary magazine Tirade, and sits on the board of the Caribbean Literature Working Group. His debut novel Kus (Kiss, 2018) is a poignant and poetically written father-son story. He collaborated with writer colleague Raoul de Jong to compile Dat wij zongen (That We Sang, 2022), an anthology of Caribbean stories and essays. His second novel Goudjakhals (Golden Jackal, 2023) comprises a chain of historical and sci-fi migrant stories set in Aruba and Curaçao, Beirut and Tehran, Lesbos and Amsterdam.
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OTION - Master of Sceneries

(The Netherlands, 1987) studied musical theatre and contemporary dance at Codarts in Rotterdam. His compositions include music for the Ulrike Quade Company's theatre production De Foetushemel (Foetus Heaven, 2023), the National Theatre's Tijd Zal Ons Leren (Time Will Teach Us, 2023), and for the exhibition Continue This Thread (2023). His band OTION and the Submarines debuted at the 2023 Opera Forward Festival with the show Ripple. His ceremonial performances fuse dance, music, singing, storytelling and the artistic space.
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Gershwin Bonevacia

(The Netherlands, 1992) is a poet, writer and performer. In 2017 he self-published his poetry debut Ik heb een fiets gekocht (I Bought a Bike) and sold more than 6,000 copies "out of his suitcase." As poet laureate of Amsterdam he wrote one poem per month for newspaper publication between 2019 and 2022. Bonevacia managed to make good use of his dyslexia: wrestling with words turned him into an inventive word artist, and a popular guest on cultural programs. In 2021 he translated the children's book Change Sings by U.S. spoken-word artist Amanda Gorman into Dutch and published the poetry collection Toen ik klein was, was ik niet bang (I Wasn't Scared When I Was Young). The latter is an ode to his young fearless self and an attempt to incorporate that person again. In 2023, Bonevacia  appears on stage in Terug naar Prinsenplein (Back to Prinsenplein).
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