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Mission of Via Berlin
Via Berlin is an innovative organization that merges art and science to address societal challenges. We develop interactive projects, training programs, and research initiatives that encourage reflection, empathy, and engagement. Through arts-based research and creative interventions, we create space for dialogue and transformation, amplifying diverse voices. Our mission is to enhance the impact of scientific research and contribute to a more just and inclusive society.
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Vision of Via Berlin
Via Berlin believes in the power of imagination and empathy as essential forces for societal change. We envision a world where art and science work together to explore complex issues such as toxic masculinity, polarization, and social inequality.
Through collaboration, active participation, and the exchange of personal stories, we create new insights that lead to lasting impact. Our goal is to provide a platform where diverse perspectives are heard and where participants gain the tools to not only reflect but also take meaningful action in their communities and organizations.
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By creating new music theatre pieces and new social artistic interventions, we are integrating art and science into our projects, training programs, and innovative educational methods, Via Berlin develops groundbreaking solutions to complex challenges. This approach inspires action, stimulates and moves people, challenges existing thought patterns, and invites reflection and concrete change. While science focuses on reason and analysis, art emphasizes imagination, emotion, intuition, and the cultivation of empathy.
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Live Research Interwoven with Art
Besides creating emotional music theatre pieces since 2009, for over seven years, Via Berlin has been pioneering new methods to integrate live scientific research with artistic expression. We embed this approach in theater performances, socio-artistic interventions, and innovative educational programs to enhance the impact of scientific solutions and drive social change at multiple levels.
Our unique working method combines the power of art with the analytical precision of science, bringing forth new perspectives and insights while making them tangible and deeply felt. We train individuals to flexibly shift between different viewpoints. By implementing our projects and training in public spaces, theaters, festivals, and organizations, we create a profound impact on how people perceive themselves, their work, and their environment. The Via Berlin method not only encourages reflection but also actively contributes to social and organizational transformation.
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Arts-Based Research and Education
Via Berlin is committed to developing innovative research and educational methods for scientists and students at vocational schools (MBO), universities of applied sciences (HBO), and research universities. We employ arts-based research and arts-based reflection to introduce students and professionals to research methodologies that extend beyond conventional techniques. This is crucial in situations where standard research methods—such as interviews or observations—are inadequate, for instance, when dealing with trauma, cultural differences, or language barriers.
Additionally, we utilize arts-based presentation to teach researchers how to communicate their findings in a compelling and accessible way to a wider audience, including stakeholders, research participants, and the general public. This approach makes research outcomes more relevant and engaging, fostering deeper reflection, stronger engagement, and more active change.
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Research-Based Art: Art as a Catalyst for Reflection and Change
Beyond our educational and research-focused initiatives, Via Berlin develops research-based art projects that merge pressing social issues, scientific insights, and artistic expression into powerful performances and installations. These projects engage and move audiences in theaters, at festivals, and in public spaces.
Through art, we invite audiences to explore multiple perspectives on complex societal challenges and experience them on an emotional level. Our research-based art projects encourage critical reflection, enhance empathy, and stimulate broader dialogue, ultimately contributing to meaningful social change.
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Changemaking
Our work is centered on changemaking: shifting societal discourse, expanding imagination, and fostering empathy. We create space for new insights and perspectives in public spaces, educational settings, and corporate environments.
Through our training programs, interventions, performances, and projects, we tackle complex societal themes such as segregation, polarization, social cohesion, and inequality. By merging art and science, we provide our partners, students, trainees, and audiences with new tools to engage with these themes. This leads to a deeper, lived understanding and thoughtful, action-driven change.
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Imagination and Empathy as Keys to Success in Business
In addition to our work in public spaces and the social and cultural sectors, Via Berlin also supports businesses and organizations. In an ever-changing world, the ability to adapt to different perspectives is more critical than ever.
We train teams, managers, and employees to enhance their imagination and empathy, essential skills for creative problem-solving and effective collaboration. Our educational programs, workshops, and masterclasses help companies drive meaningful change by equipping employees with the tools to think, respond, and act more flexibly, creatively, and empathetically in dynamic environments.
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A Proven Path to Impact
With over six years of intensive development, Via Berlin has refined a unique method in which art and science reinforce each other. Our work has strengthened the connection between these two worlds, and we now see an opportunity to deepen our impact even further.
Our projects do more than inspire societal reflection—they lead to concrete changes in educational programs, businesses, and organizations. Whether through a training session, intervention, in-depth program, or a live research-infused performance, each project offers new perspectives, trains flexible thinking, enhances empathy, and fosters broader dialogue and tangible action.
By bridging art and science, engaging social organizations, and igniting lasting change across society, education, and business, Via Berlin continues to shape the future.
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OUR THEATER SHOWS
What happens when you use classical music as your main ingredient to convey a self-written storyline about a topical and social subject, within a theatrical setting?
It might be hard to imagine, but that is what we do with our music theatre and arts-based research company VIA BERLIN.
Via Berlin is founded in 2008, when we started off as ‘Nieuwkomer’ (newcomer) at the well known Dutch music theatre company Orkater. Since then, we’ve grown to be a strong independent music theatre and arts-based research company and reached over 75.000 people with 16 new productions.
To us text and music, as well as the actor and the musician, are two completely equal means to convey the storyline. A continuous (classical) musical line exists throughout our pieces, and often the music even gets the leading part. The text merely gives the outlines of the story, location and characters; the images and music fill in the rest.
All of the performers on stage are both actors as musicians. This way of working creates a tight unity and an organic fusion between the two disciplines, bearing in mind that the individual qualities of the performers are preserved. Making music theatre about a topical subject using classical music as the main storyteller in combination with self-written text, is unique in the Netherlands and abroad.
With social and topical subjects like ‘war’ or ‘illegal immigrants’ as the underlying theme, the plays of Via Berlin are about intimate, personal stories, which symbolize universal happenings.
Our trilogy on WAR was awarded with the Dutch Charlotte Köhler Prize in 2014.
Besides theatre performances
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PROJECTS
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MEN4DEM 3year international project
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What if rethinking masculinity could strengthen democracy?
This question is at the heart of Men4Dem, a groundbreaking three-year European project exploring how we can make masculinity more inclusive—bridging society, art, and science to shape the future of European democracy.
Our project, funded by Horizon Europe, brings together gender equality organizations, performance artists, and academic partners from the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Poland, Greece, and Italy. Through intensive collaboration, we aim to create and share new forms of knowledge, developing and testing social artistic interventions and ways to transform anti-democratic masculinities into more inclusive ones.
As part of Men4Dem, Via Berlin will develop four new artistic projects:
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- A new MUSIC THEATRE PERFORMANCE ‘When did you leave?’ – A performance premiering at the Oerol festival June 2025, Netherlands.
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- A new THEATRICAL Live to play GAME immersing audiences in the themes of ‘When did you leave?’ – June 2026, Poland.
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- An IMMERSIVE VIDEO INSTALLATION – June 2026, Poland.
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- A new MUSIC THEATRE PERFORMANCE ‘Rauw / Rouw / Raw’ – A performance proposing a new vision for the future – Netherlands and Greece, 2027.
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For more information and inspiration, visit:
https://www.men4dem.eu/
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OTHER SHOWS & INSTALLATIONS
that we can performe in English or are Language no problem
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HUIS G.
HUIS G. unfolds a tale of love, sensuous and stifling, a poignant narrative that invites the audience to bear witness to the intricate dimensions of an intoxicating relationship teetering on the precipice between love and violence.
Synopsis
HUIS G. weaves a tapestry of love, sensuality, and heartache, immersing the audience in the profound emotions of this confrontational love story. Guided by the mesmerizing choreography of Laurent Delom de Mézerac and Dagmar Slagmolen, the performance is carried by a compelling, hypnotic soundtrack, spontaneously conjured by the masters of improvisation, Remco Menting and Oene van Geel.
What ensnares and sustains lovers in a perilous labyrinth of destructive patterns of behavior? What role does the outside world play in this complex dance, and when does one step in as an observer?
These queries are unveiled through a hallucinatory performance by Via Berlin, orchestrated with virtuoso music, alluringly sensual and daring.
House G. is bewildering, disquieting, yet surprisingly familiar.
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Scientific Inquiry
The questions posed during and after the performance form an integral part of an official scientific investigation, conducted in collaboration with Radboud University in Nijmegen. Should you wish to remain informed about this study and its revelations, kindly subscribe to our newsletter at the bottom of the page. Furthermore, immediately following the performance, in several cities, the initial findings are unveiled during the post-show discourse.
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Credits
Concept Dagmar Slagmolen
Director/Choreography Pim Veulings
Dancers Dagmar Slagmolen, Laurent Delom de Mézerac
Music Remco Menting, Oene van Geel
Set Design Michiel Voet
Costume Design Dieuweke van Reij
Sound Design Robert van Delft
Lighting Design Wilfred Loopstra
Technician AJ ten Napel
Context Program Mara van Nes, Madelinde Hageman, Daan Blankenstijn
Intimacy Coordinator Cynthia Abma
Interface Architect Jeroen Janssen
Scientists Johan Karremans, C.A. Dannisworo
Scene Photography Moon Saris, Nichon Glerum, Michiel Voet
Theatre Scene Photography
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Location Photography Oerol festival
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Invisible City
Can I take the words that hurt so much from you and carry them?
In the interactive theatrical performance and installation ‘Invisible city’ you view the city from a single room. A city that seems far away. Looking at the end of the horizon, behind the walls, the doors and through the trees. Taken to the past, to straighten that which is crooked and turn it upside down. And to see what is invisible to the outside world.
Words and sentences that are said casually, indifferently or directly, but which people take with them on their further journey after the contact has ended. They have stuck and we all carry them with us. What words and phrases are those?
Invisible city wants to work with people on a growing collection of painful words and sentences that have been said. Phrases that people say to each other in a romantic relationship, between colleagues, family and friends or just casually on the street.
You can leave those hurtfull words with Theatermaker Dagmar Slagmolen and social designer Madelinde Hageman, and continue your journey through the city relieved.
Credits
Concept Via Berlin
Text & voice Dagmar Slagmolen
Social designer Madelinde Hageman
Installation design Michiel Voet
Costume design Dieuweke van Reij
Sound Design Robert van Delft
Technique AJ ten Napel
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INSTANT LONELINESS
This city is home to hundreds of thousands of people.
And all those people are bubbling over with millions, if not billions, of dreams.
And somewhere along the way, most of those countless dreams run aground.
That’s not a bad thing. On the contrary, suppose all dreams came true, became realities.
A catastrophe.
Of all those hundreds of thousands of people with their billions of unfulfilled dreams, many feel deeply inadequate and lonely.
What are we to do with that mass grave of expectations?
How can a person learn to cope with loss, disappointment and loneliness?
Instant Loneliness is a musical theatre production that takes us from loneliness to connection.
A remarkable guide leads you through a landscape of dreams to an intimate, musical concert of life, performed by eight cellists, an actor and a dancer.
For fourteen years, the Dutch musical theatre ensemble Via Berlin has been mounting unique productions about burning social issues, interpreted through profoundly moving images, music and choreography. Instant Loneliness is the final instalment of Villa Berlin and Cello Octet Amsterdam’s Instant trilogy, in cooperation with the Dutch dance studio Korzo.
Credits
Concept Via Berlin & Cello Octet Amsterdam
Director Dagmar Slagmolen & Pim Veulings
Composer Kate Moore
Choreographer Pim Veulings
Music and performance Cello Octet Amsterdam
Dance and voices Pedro Ricardo Henry & Dagmar Slagmolen
Design Dieuweke van Reij
Trailer
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