For HOUSEWARMING, Kes Bakker, Anna De Graeve, and Toon Acke take their cue from Václav Havel’s 1975 one-act play Vernisáž (NL: ‘De Vernissage’). Inspired by the contemporary relevance of the themes and ideas in Havel’s critical, humorous work, they add new, self-written texts to the original.

Vera and Michael have just renovated their house. To celebrate, they invite their good friend Ferdinand over. They proudly show him their new interior, full of objects that hover between design and complete nonsense: from an antique Turkish scimitar to an electric almond peeler. Vera and Michael are up on the latest trends, their son is doing great at school, and their sex life is more exciting than ever.

But they are worried about their friend Ferdinand. He is a writer, but hardly ever publishes anything. He works in a brewery, has no exclusive record collection, and doesn’t want children. What starts as a seemingly pleasant evening quickly degenerates into a desperate search by the couple for confirmation of their existence. But in that search, they are mercilessly confronted with the emptiness of their material and bourgeois lives.

HOUSEWARMING is a timeless satire about a couple having a conversation that is not really a conversation.We see the dissection of two deeply unhappy people who are weighed down by the suffocating expectations that society imposes on them. A couple who build their identity based on what they own, what they experience, what they wear… But what is such an identity worth if you have no one to show it to?

By stepping into the shoes of an older generation, the young creators ask themselves whether they want children of their own. Whether they want to end up in that same bourgeois existence. We see an older generation struggling with who they have become and young creators struggling with who they want to become.