Preamble to the 2026–2027 season
For this 2026–27 season, we wanted to create a space for dialogue around our programme.
We went to meet four women whose words are rooted in their practices, their research and their commitments. Four perspectives grounded in reality, in dialogue with the narratives that guide our season.
Through these unique voices that question the world, we affirm the importance of telling a complex reality in a multifaceted way.
Let yourself be carried away by these lively and insightful opinion pieces, written by Rachel Brahy, sociologist, researcher and lecturer at the University of Liège, Laure de Hesselle, journalist at Imagine Magazine, Céline Nieuwenhuys, General Secretary of the Federation of Social Services, and Nathalie Zaccaï-Reyners, Senior Research Fellow at the Belgian National Research Fund (FNRS).
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Rachel Brahy
Sociologist, researcher and lecturer at the University of Liège
Between outcry and modesty, this season therefore explores the delicate nature of authenticity. To nurture our desires, sometimes wild and invisible, to give shape and brilliance to our incredible human stories, and to bring forth the fictions of tomorrow. Those yet to be invented, those that may allow us to express new utopias, new destinies, and to alter the destructive course of a world that no longer corresponds to the beings we intrinsically are.
A delicate authenticity?
In my view, this desirable attitude can be defined as the virtue by which an individual expresses, with sincerity and commitment – but also subtly and delicately – what they are at their core.
It varies significantly depending on the contexts in which it is put to the test.
It can, however, be cultivated at all times.
The theatre is a good place for this: it offers a wonderful space to practise
To test its strength from within.
To explore its contours.
To shift its legacies.
Living, free and connected beings.
Profound and lucid voices, the banners of a collective yet to be built.
This modest contribution is part of the effort to preserve these ways of being in the world.
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Strength.
It is the strength of the ephemeral that allows the cry: the clear cry, which pierces the ice and cuts through the heavens.
Gentleness.
It is gentleness that allows for blossoming: the unfolding through a necessary and embraced tenderness, the acceptance of being and becoming who one is, vulnerable, renouncing the need to perform.
Silence.
It is silence that composes and closes the infinite mystery of existence, that opens the wave to allow for nuance, to skim the rage and the ego.
Joy.
It is joy that seizes bodies and hearts, that awakens the eyes, sketches new suns, gives the confidence and energy to step out of the shadows and away from predation, when these monsters descend upon us.
Change.
It is change, impermanence, mutation, instability that unravels clichés, shifts the norm, breaks the hold. To change without ceasing to change, to swap one’s self for another, to sing in an unknown voice: chagter *!
Surrender.
In the face of horror, it is surrender that curbs fear; it is the step back, the void illuminating the absurd. The breath released, before the next step.
Presence.
Presence is conscious attentiveness to oneself, to the world and to the entities that inhabit it. It is the assurance of being attentive: open to the determination to resonate.
*Chagter is a neologism coined for the occasion by combining the verbs ‘changer’ and ‘chanter’, with a modification – removing the N – designed to produce a sound similar to ‘chatter, tchatter’.
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Laure de Hesselle
Journalist at Imagine Magazine
Out there, our sense of powerlessness seems to grow endlessly. Force appears to be imposing itself, through drones and budget cuts, oil and biodiversity gone up in smoke.
Outside, fear lurks, making us vote for the boots and forget our humanity.
We all share vulnerability – we, all living things: animals, plants, fungi, bacteria… we are sensitive, threatened. And connected.
This fragility can be a starting point. A fragility to be claimed?
We want to be mindful!
Refusing to get used to the unacceptable.
Refusing to spread extinction and indifference.
To resist.
Building a world from there.
In the theatre, we can experiment, transcend, play, dress up, mock the powerful, those who chase after gold whilst turning up the heat.
Let our anger run wild. Let the tears flow from laughter or sorrow.
And then, from those emotions, forge bonds, form alliances, stand shoulder to shoulder and embrace one another to imagine.
To reorder our priorities: to care for the birds and the earthworms, to demand and deliver justice, to rediscover joy if it has been lost, to resist fear and to declare solidarity.
Harness the power of our connections, of our interdependence.
The new imaginaries we need to build—those of a world radically different from the capitalist, predatory, biocidal, colonialist, patriarchal one in which we currently live—already exist.
On stage and elsewhere, we’re building huts, blowing up concrete, living a life of happy simplicity. Dystopia isn’t inevitable. It is time to secede, to stop letting ourselves be captivated by the rich and the powerful. Their brutality seeks to make us feel powerless. We are not. Let’s switch off the engines, listen to one another, hear one another. The seeds will sprout.
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Nathalie Zaccaï-Reyners
General Secretary of the Federation of Social Services
An essential and unique form of social interaction
Where, then, can we spend some time in the company of strangers in worlds that are truly within our reach? Where, then, can we explore the action as it unfolds without having to participate, without having to take a stance from the outset? Where, then, can we resonate in shared presence in the depths of our innermost selves without being exposed?
The performing arts certainly offer a form of social interaction unlike any other.
To go to a dedicated space to watch performances is to take a seat freely amongst an audience, with no other purpose than to give one’s full and undivided attention to what is unfolding on stage.
To allow oneself to be fully immersed for that given time in this act of reception is to give oneself the opportunity to explore sensations, to rekindle curiosity, to sharpen one’s perceptions, to question the wealth of possibilities, to examine what we hold dear… and all this in the shared presence of others, in the sharing of a common present.
In this sense, the performing arts are an invaluable form of playful, public laboratory addressing very serious issues, capable of leaving a lasting experiential mark. In principle, this age-old practice is undoubtedly one of the most valuable for the vitality of our social worlds.
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Céline Nieuwenhuys
Senior Research Fellow at the Belgian National Research Fund (FNRS)
There are places where we never say that the future is inevitable.
Places where perspectives open up unexpectedly, where our usual barriers are joyfully broken down. There, we are shaken to the core. Not by tremors that narrow paths or erect walls, but by tremors that reveal new landscapes, where our breath finds space again, where our hearts seem to be soothed once more, where something deep within us finally finds peace.
Places where those who shout or whisper that the world is twisted gather. So we are not mad.
There are places where we play at inventing worlds like children running — a mad dash, the dash of all possibilities. A dash towards the imagination, a way of loosening our chests, of releasing anger, that anger we must sometimes contain to remain available to others.
From constantly mopping up the world’s mess, tears well up in the corners of our eyes. Here, we find the space to weep together over this outrage. A place where fiction is not an escape but a confrontation. A reality that stands before us. A clarity that finally breathes.
Le Varia is one of those rare places where words and silences unfold without interruption. Like the stories of lives in struggle that we gather with care each day.
A place where we seriously explore the impossible. Where we shape other realities with the conviction that dreaming is already a form of resistance.
In a world where crises – social, environmental, democratic – follow one another and intertwine, these islands of collective respite are precious. A moment of pause at the heart of our urgency: to save what can still be saved. It is dark, the body relaxes and our fighting spirit turns to gentleness.
In a world where everything is quantified, assessed and pigeonholed, the performing arts encourage us to think about the world from the perspective of what lies beyond the boundaries. The periphery becomes the centre. Doubts are no longer hidden. We dance on our own terms. The rules of the game turn the world right side up: hand in hand, we try, we feel our way, and we make mistakes too. But we always walk away with a precious little thread to pull on to continue our journey.
I don’t have all the answers — nobody does.
I only hope that we find the courage to be amazed by what is and to remain clear-eyed in the face of the world’s fragility.
May that clarity set us in motion.
May fiction help us to put into words the inexpressible and renew our desire to care for the world.
May poetry awaken our desire to carry on, to persevere despite everything, to transform ourselves without denying who we are, to dream precisely when the world tries to dissuade us.
To remain faithful to beating hearts and the fragile beauty of connections. To recognise the immensity that lies within each of us, so that we may relearn how to live with otherness. So that, together, we may have the courage to set the world right when it keeps turning us upside down.
Such gentle, joyful collective havens—which renew our emotions with sincerity and clarity—are becoming all too rare. Here, we nurture our connections to the world to help us keep resisting.