Mission
Ultima Thule is a figure theatre company from Ghent that aims at exploring the boundaries of formal and visual theatre with every new show.
Ultima Thule is a name from antiquity denoting the extreme north. The earth was considered a flat disc from which one could fall down, Thule was the final island before that would happen. The name refers to a fabulous land, an ultimate border, to the courage to engage in experiment, to expand your own boundaries.
With Ultima Thule, in the way that founding father Joris Joseph describes it in his poem 'Ultima', we go till the known unknown that's to be discovered, and beyond. We explore the boundaries of formal and visual theatre.
Sven Ronsijn about Ultima Thule
Ultima Thule is a figure theatre company from Ghent, that aims at exploring the boundaries of formal and visual theatre with every new show.
Within theatre, figure theatre is in itself a multimedia discipline. Figures, objects, materials, text, music, video and movement: all of them are applied to tell a story and touch an audience. Since our foundation in 1994, text has always been the medium from which we departed, the so-called motor. Since 2017, text, music as well as image are given equal chances in the storytelling. This stems from the belief that there shouldn’t be one leading medium. During the working process, the material is filtered organically, and it becomes clear which medium has the most narrative power to convey a scene within the story. In this way, we produce a musical, visual show one time, then again a textual show loaded with images.
Ultima Thule is a theatre company which works for young people, whether it be toddlers, teenagers or adolescents. But we also assume that every show should tell a valuable story for adults too. Our shows are challenging and broadly accessible for young and old.
Installations
Beside our indoor theatre shows, we also create outdoor productions. These are installations that can be performed in other locations than a theatre hall, like the street, the park, a school, etc. We believe that, now and then, we need to eliminate the threshold of the theater space. Our installations aim at connecting people. They bring people together, regardless of age, origine or gender, and let them reflect on the shared world in which we live.
"Now, Ronsijn seems to have set his own course with The Stream. While De Wulf created narrative theatre with figures, Ronsijn creates pure figure theatre. (…) Everything points at a shift towards post-dramatic theatre, in which the absolute dominion of the text as primary producer of meaning is challenged by visual arts, dance and music."
Workshops
With our workshops, we want an audience from the age of 7 to get closely acquainted with giving life to materials. We offer different kinds of workshops, from creating puppets, over playing with puppets to shadow theatre.
Interested in the workshops we offer? Contact us at info@ultime-thule.be .
