Shelfish

Biography

ShELFISH produces and presents the work of playwright Veerle Van Overloop. Besides Veerle, the core of ShELFISH consists of perfomer Olympia Kotopoulos, dramaturge Judith Blankenberg, marketer Karlijn Vermeij and business manager Frits Selie.

ShELFISH makes socially engaged, multidisciplinary, documentary theater.
Together with visitors, ShELFISH allows a shared space and time for reflection on the complex and difficult sides of our existence.
About uncomfortable, confrontational, intimate, moving and inevitable questions that come straight from the heart of society.

ShELFISH focuses on the stories that are in danger of being lost and fall between the lines of the dominant narratives.

Based on the conviction that theater is the place to discover what you don’t yet know or don’t want to know, ShELFISH questions societal rules and the behavior that follows them. With an explosively growing world population and the impact of technological developments on governance and politics, the danger of dehumanization looms. The great challenge for the future is to keep an eye on nuance and not get sucked into the penchant for simplification. ShELFISH explicitly relates to what is happening in the world. With the aim of inducing empathy and compassion, two important elements in the pursuit of solidarity and shared responsibility. As an artistic act of resistance to displacement and alienation.

Van Overloop made her directorial debut with The Jungle is our House (2016), a production by Club Guy & Roni. A year later, she founded her own production structure ShELFISH. In August 2018, her second project One Million People and Me premiered at Noorderzon Performing Arts Festival Groningen. In 2019, she created the documentary performance What Lies Beneath. That same year, she also began extensive field research in youth care in preparation for her newest production Life & Times, which will premiere in 2022.