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 company VIA BERLIN

Via Berlin is a young, Dutch music theatre group founded in 2008, when we started off as ‘Nieuwkomer’ (newcomer) at the Dutch music theatre company Orkater. Since then, we’ve reached over 45.000 people with 10 productions and have grown to be an independent company.

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.