Amsterdam Fringe Festival: Flat News

Taking the everyday noise of home as her theme of research, artist Meis Vranken stages an impressive and musical spectacle in her first theatre production, Flat News: an intimate yet exuberant tribute to her messy flat and the historic concrete building in which it is situated. This hybrid lecture-performance is packed with art-pop melodies, poetic everyday life, lively guitar riffs, and sincere philosophy on how we create and maintain a home.

The dull and the unremarkable are sharply captured by Vranken’s charming lyrics and childlike curiosity as she—as a punk anthropologist—takes the audience into her inner world full of living household objects, peculiar visitors, and, above all, resilient humanity. From her own small apartment, she muses on the meaning of home: sometimes melancholic, sometimes destructive, Vranken speaks and sings about arriving and departing, about rest and clutter, about grief and construction, and about two ancient presences in our lives: tea and bread.

Meis Vranken is a creator of worlds that she sings and writes to life in her work. Since graduating from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in 2021, this Amsterdam-based visual artist, filmmaker, writer, and musician has developed her multidisciplinary practice in a constant state of creative cross-pollination. Her sensational performances as part of the punk group Yodel Queen and the charming lo-fi rawness of her debut film De Ochtend (2024) make it clear that a cheerful DIY energy flows through Vranken’s work. The personal, the philosophical, and the humorous vie for the spotlight in her work; what she creates brings all these aspects together, only to subsequently transcend them.

From psychedelic ceramic garden gnomes to essays on the trash can and the meter cupboard, Vranken’s work encompasses film, installations, music, poetry, prose, and now also theater with Flat News – her debut in the theater world, in which the beauty of the raw, the awkward, and the domestic takes center stage. Vranken’s infectious charisma and cheerful artistic spirit are beautifully expressed in Flat News, an intimate tribute to her own apartment. The musical lecture-performance is a call for connection: a plea for living as the ultimate exercise in connection – with a place, with an environment, and with a community.

Concept, text, music and performance: Meis Vranken
Direction: Ineke Nijssen and Sanne Vanderbruggen
Production and directing assistance: Lelie Danesh
Lighting: Jochem van Tol
Sound: Jan Schenk

Note: This program is in Dutch   

The people at Amsterdam Fringe Festival have kindly offered a limited amount of free tickets for Subbacultcha members. Please make a reservation by sending an email to mailinglist@subbacultcha.nl with ‘Flat News, Sept 5th’ in the subject line + your name in the email.

Registrations are open until 12.00 PM on weekdays.