Date
Thursday January 23, 2020 from 3:00 PM to 5:00 PMLocation
de Blauwe ZaalSynopsis
Suzanne De Jong is a talented second-year graduate student. When her promotor returns from sabbatical she’s delighted. The internationally renowned Professor Loek Roden is amusing, approachable and inspirational. But during a conference in Berlin Suzanne encounters a darker side of the famous academic. And when the great man doesn’t get his way the consequences for her become catastrophic. Where can she turn for help?
Actors: Suzanne Spliethoff, Loek van den Wijngaard and Elske Rollema
Writer and director: Tony Maples
Harassment in academia is of all times, but it has been made urgent by the #MeToo and Time’s Up movement. Many of us think academia will provide a safe, sensible and intellectual environment in which #MeToo behaviour is absent. Fortunately, it often is but evidently it sometimes isn’t. Through the play, Het Acteursgenootschap seeks to create awareness of harassment in academia – which tends to impact young researchers or support staff in particular – while also exploring individual and institutional ways to address these issues and create a safe working environment.
Het Acteursgenootschap (The Actors’ Society NL) is a young theatre company with a focus on the community of science and academia.
Their latest production is #MeTooAcademia - The Learning Curve. In response to a shocking series of articles in the magazine ScienceGuide, the Dutch Network of Women Professors (LNVH) commissioned Het Acteursgenootschap to produce a number of sketches for their Spring Symposium. The theme: sexual intimidation and abuse of power in the university context. The heated responses in the discussion which followed led to a revised and expanded version commissioned by the Erasmus University Rotterdam.
The Learning Curve is a 40-minute play based on documented accounts from Dutch universities. At times humorous, at times bleak, it’s an uncomfortable mirror designed to provoke discussion and a search for solutions among academic stakeholders at all levels.
For more information: http://www.hetacteursgenootschap.nl
