Finding Willard

History of madness

Which place do we give to people who deviate from the norm in our society ?What does caring for each other mean in changing times ?

Winter 2018. Travelling in the US, theatre maker Tom Struyf accidentally arrives in a village near the Canadian border. Willard is situated on the shores of a vast lake in the shadow of the ruins of a former psychiatric institute. Fascinated by the landscape, the stories of the people who live there and a tiny church community Tom discovers a link with a psychiatric institute in Geel, at home in Belgium. An accidental acquaintance with a special place results into a moving trip in which Tom's personal life gets profoundly intertwined with Willard.

Between 2018 and now, Struyf and his team have taken some eight trips during which they closely followed the people and the landscape of Willard. The result is a multimedia cinematic performance in which the audience is sitting around a scale-model of Willard so that the spectator is very closely associated with the place and it looks as if you are walking in it yourself.

Finding Willard is a travel story, a personal search about construction and decay, care and community.

Tom Struyf is a theatre maker, writer and landscape architect. In his theatre work he involves the audience into a personal, honest quest. Recurring fascinations are the mixing of fact and fiction in the world around us, how we relate to past and future and the influence of social changes on the personal life of people and communities. Tom's performances are stories with a multidisciplinary character on the crossing of theatre, documentary and lecture performance, and flirting with genres such as the detective, the coming of age and the road movie.