Massimo Furlan (1965, Lausanne) is a Swiss director and performer of Italian descent. He studied at the Beaux-Arts School of Lausanne and started his own company in 2003. He blends humour, philosophy and poetry in his pieces and takes inspiration from the memories of his youth, with a special focus on the intense experience of his formative years. In his work, he also meditates on individual and collective memory and the way people live together. From early on in his career, Furlan collaborates with Claire de Ribaupierre (1968), dramaturge, doctor in anthropology, and permanent teacher at the school of performing Arts La Manufacture in Lausanne. Long images In theatre, Furlan and Ribaupierre are known for their evocative theatre with minimal movements. The series of still lifes they make are reminiscent of films or art installations. They call this ‘long images’. It gives the audience time to fully absorb each image and fantasise about it. They often look to true events for their subject matter, exploring the limits of theatre, and like to work in public spaces with non-professional actors and performers. Furlan, for example, re-enacted mythical moments of football history in stadiums, alone without a ball. Previously at the Holland Festival In 2011, Furlan featured at the Holland Festival with You can speak, you are an animal: a nightmarish stream of images about the relationship between humans and animals and nature and civilization, set to the post-punk sounds of the band Killing Joke. He returned in 2015 together with Ribaupierre with Un Jour, a moving piece in which spirits are contacted in an associative procession of carefully stylised theatrical tableaus. In recent years, Furlan took a critical look at the issues surrounding migration. In both Hospitalités (2017) and The Italians (2018) he blended fiction with reality. The migrants in question were invited onto the stage to tell their story themselves. In Dans la Forêt, it is nature doing the speaking. Jeroen De Man (1980) completed the actors' programme at the Toneelacademie Maastricht in 2005. He has performed with the Noord Nederlands Toneel, Het Zuidelijk Toneel, Artemis and Toneelschuur Producties, among others. He was a part of the artistic core of De Warme Winkel until 2016. There he created, among others, Totaal Thomas (2006), Kokoschka live! (2010) and Stroganoff (2014). De Man also acted in films and series, such as Mees Kees and De ontmaskering van de vastgoedfraude. In recent years, De Man has increasingly developed as a director. He directed Als ik de Liefde niet heb by Marjolijn van Heemstra (2014). At Nieuw Amsterdams Peil he directed Anaïs Nin (2010) by Louis Andriessen and Uwe leipe mastdramnis (2016) by Rob Zuidam. He also directed 100 jaar LUXOR (2017). In a four-year trajectory between 2016 and 2020, he worked as in-house director at Het Nationale Theater in The Hague and Toneelgroep Oostpool. There, he directed among others Cinema (2018) by Annie Baker, Ondine (2018) by Jean Giraudoux, Sexual Healing (2019) by Jan Hulst and Kasper Tarenskeen and Skylight (2020) by David Hare. De Man is a member of the board of performance collective La Isla Bonita and teaches regularly at the drama schools of Arnhem, Utrecht, Brussels and Maastricht. For the Dutch version of the performance Dans la forêt, he takes on the role of guide. The interplay between landscape and theatre has been a green thread running through his work before. In line with Dans la forêt, De Man's future plans will increasingly focus on this cross-pollination. Kate Moore (1979) is a sound artist, visual artist, composer. Her compositions are performed by Asko|Schönberg, Bang on a Can, Icebreaker, Slagwerk Den Haag, Ensemble Offspring, the Australian String Quartet, the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and Groot Omroepkoor, among others. Moore holds a doctorate from the Sydney University Conservatorium of Music, a master’s from Royal Conservatoire The Hague and an honours degree from the Australian National University, where she received the University Medal, majoring in composition and electroacoustic composition. In 2017 she was the recipient of the Matthijs Vermeulen Prize, the most prestigious Dutch prize for composers, for her work The Dam commissioned for The Canberra International Festival. Her major work Sacred Environment was premiered by the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and Radio Choir with soloists Alex Oomens and Lies Beijerinck, taking place at the Holland Festival Proms in The Concertgebouw in 2017. Moore’s work is directly inspired by the organic shapes and sounds found in nature and lost objects of the natural biosphere, both sonic and visual. In search of shapes, structures and lines unique in form but in harmony with the diversity of living creatures, plants and animals, she recognises the correspondence between physical form and resonance. She is attracted to the invisible world of sound where an object’s sonic potential may only be realised when it is engaged with, pondered and considered, like a hidden treasure, or the possibility that a visual object hidden from the eye may not be silent. For the English version of Dans la forêt, she takes on the role of guide.