Veronique Zonneveld

Immersive Theatre and more

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LOS!

De Klassieken, 2023-2024
Production Management, Stage Management

LOS! is a theatre show following young adults in their every day lives. The show is aimed at teens ages 14 and up and we invite schools throughout The Netherlands to come and watch the show.The show addresses topics such housing shortages, gender identity, loneliness, mental health, drug usage, relationships both with family, friends and partners, sex work and sextortion. Perhaps on a first view these are quite heavy topics, but the show is primarily meant to be light and comical while holding up a mirror and giving a bit of insight as to what life might be like when these teens grow up.For the show I started working as a production manager during preproduction. I was responsible for creating rehearsal schedules, prop lists based on the script, and generally overview the rehearsal process alongside the director. During the tour I now shifted into a stage management role where I am responsible for presetting props, mic'ing actors, cueing live projections as well as overseeing the show backstage on a technical and safety perspective.

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The Foundation

HKU (University of Arts Utecht), 2021
Concept, Narrative Structure, Dramaturgy, Performing (as Karen), Directing, Game Design

The Foundation is the proof of concept that derived from my 10 month graduation research project. I dived into the feeling of uncanniness, what my definition of that is and how that can be implemented within immersive entertainment. I used the medium of alternate reality games and remote theatre to apply the mechanic of uncanniness to.From your own home, you dive into The Foundation organisation and its secrets. With the help of other employees, you unravel the story which blends reality and fiction. In comparison to the regular theatre, you become one of the leading characters and you will get to make your own decisions. In this individually tailored experience, you will interact with the theatrical universe both on and offline. Maybe you will find a package on your doormat or you need to meet up with one of the characters at a secret location. How far will you go?The experience is an ongoing parallel universe with no set end. You as a participant can join the world and you compile your own adventure. You become a co-creator of the story in which your decisions matter. This show uses a large variation of media, on- and offline, to immerse you in its story. You can expect to interact with the story and its characters through multiple media such as: SNS, emails, texts messages and physical letters.For my research I decided to use existing pieces of theatre to apply my theories and hypotheses of uncanniness to it. I drew inspiration from Blast Theory's Karen and House of Cenci from Parabolic Theatre. I put references and easter eggs in my work as an ode to those creators who inspired me within immersive theatre. I tried to push the boundaries of the audience and create the feeling of uncanniness. I made it personal and really made the show about them and tried to invade their privacy a little bit. I played with the expectations of the audience and surprise them with unexpected and uncanny elements through different media.For an overview of my research and more details please visit my Research Catologue

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Above The Line

Over Het IJ / HKU (University of Arts Utecht), 2018
Concept, Narrative Structure, Dramaturgy, (Audience) Directing, Graphic Design, Show Calling/Stage management

Above The Line is an immersive show about the Amsterdam neighbourhoud of Noord and the people of the NDSM docks. We were asked to make a story that related to the local people and could teach people from outside the neighbourhood about the problems that are going on there.The show mainly focussed on themes on gentrification and told the stories of local people alongside you that were asked to be in a documentary film. The audience along with actors, pretending to be part of the audience, all arrive to a film set where they are roaming around freely while exploring all of the characters and their own personal stories. The characters clash in norms and values. Though it is a fictional story, it is meant to illustrate the clash between the groups living in the neighbourhood and the conflict of interest with the development in the area.For this show I focussed on the narrative design as this show used parallel storytelling. We wanted to create a show where each audience member would have a totally different perspective of the night. You as the audience could hand pick your own experience based on your interests and your attraction to certain characters. During the show I was stage managing the production and cueing actors to maintain the flow of the show.For the show we transformed a small bar into the film set along with handmade panels and set pieces to create spaces for 1 on 1 interactions as well as have a covid safe show and to separate the audience members from time to time.

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Oneiro

HKU (University of Arts Utrecht), 2018
Concept, Game Design, Audience Directing, Graphic Design, Performing (as Eve)

Oneiro is a real life game created for groups with 3 to 8 people. We created this game for
people with no experience with immersive theatre, and made it approachable for an audience
unfamiliar with this. The experience was 20 minutes long and took place in a small warehouse outside of the city centre of Utrecht.Oneiro is about a cult like company that believes in eternal happiness. If everyone is happy then there would be no fights, no war, no unhappiness? Hence why they created this to lure people and turn them into eternal happy beings via a serum.With the use of 5 actors, an old building and mobile phones, we created all the elements to tell the story with. The actors improvised along with the audience and stayed in contact at all times with them.I played Eve, an ex participant, who introduced the story. Eve hands the audience a phone. Via this phone the audience would have secret contact with Eve, and she guided them through the experience as well as helping them if they get stuck.Through the phone, the audience also learns new things within the story about Eve’s past experience with Oneiro, as parts of her memory flashed by. And as the experience progresses they realize that what is happening is wrong and it will also happen to them as well. Their goal is to sneak into places where they are not allowed by distraction and make an antidote before the time is up.While being responsible for directing the experience and designing a large part of it, I made sure the actors are always there helping the audience members. By giving unconscious suggestions and make them feel welcome to act along. A lot of people are not used to it and might feel uncomfortable, so it was a key point to make this as easy for them as possible.

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Avalon

HKU (University of Arts Utrecht), 2018
Concept, Graphic Design, Directing, Performing (as GWEN)

Avalon is a transmedial performance where a small team of players are invited to test the newest Avatar on the market called GWEN. The game like experience is based upon the stories around King Arthur. The game takes place in a future world where a big corporation called Avalon produces avatars. Avatars are deceased humans with chips implanted, so they can be recycled as our personal assistants.In this game the players are surround by actors, playing the staff members of Avalon and being an escaperoom like hint system throughout the game.The game uses live video connection with the avatar and a microphone to communicate. The players can see what the avatar is seeing and they can give instructions to the avatar on where to walk to and other actions to take. The actor also have a phone with a GPS tracker so the players could follow her and give her the correct directions.Me, while acting as GWEN, was walking around in the real world, making the game blend the borders between the fictional and the real world.The goal of the game is to find a missing avatar, LANCE. He went missing earlier that week and has been spotted in the area their test avatar is. Throughout the game, with the use of environmental storytelling in the real world, the players realise that the avatar they are searching for didn't leave for no reason. He started spreading flyers throughout the city with messages about stopping the company and that avatars should be free. LANCE got his own will back. The game ends when GWEN decides to go rogue where one final scene happens between her and LANCE.During the project I focussed on the interactivity of all the media and the overal dramaturgy of the experience. Next to that, as I was also performing, we overcame the challenge of communicating remotely and performing for an audience you as an actor don't get live feedback from.

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El Mesto

HKU (University of Arts Utrecht), 2018
Concept, Graphic Design, Directing, Project Managing, Show Calling

El Mesto is 10 minute performance in which the audience is confronted with their past on social media. The audience is invited to join the robot El Mesto during a ritual and a laughing therapy course. They are laughing along with the robot but shortly after, El Mesto starts revealing all kinds of secrets about its audience members.El Mesto confronts each audience member with slightly embarrassing facts that we as creators found on their social media beforehand. We let the robot come to live via a text to speech programme. Because of the laughing therapy, and the fact that it was oddly done by a robot, the mood of the performance became silly and comical. The little secret we got from Facebook and Twitter were in between the robot laughing resulting in the audience then genuinely laughing at their own stories and embarrassment.Even though it is meant to be funny it does have a serious message. We tried making the audience aware on the things we post on our social media and that a lot is open to the public.

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Shepard Effect

HKU (University of Arts Utrecht), 2018
Concept, Video Editing, Performing, Directing, Show Calling

Shepard Effect is a 10 minute continuous immersive performance in which audience experience a medical experiment. 4 participants get to go into what looks like an odd hospital. They go in as a 4, but soon one by one you they are picked up by a nurse and everyone will experience the trial individually. How is it to be totally powerless?First you are led into a waiting room where you will be picked up by a big male nurse with a wheelchair. The participant is forced to sit in the wheelchair and from that moment on you can only sit and give in.In room 2 the participant is put on a pair of headphones and a video projection starts playing. The images are from the point of view of the participant and show images of events that take place further in the experiment as if that takes place in the future. The video ends with the participant passing out due to a drug and in the experience itself the participant then is blindfolded and wheeled into the next room.In room 3 a doctor sits in front of the participant like portrayed in the video. The doctor tells you that you have signed a form and you can take in the medicine that stands in front of you.Then a nurse picks you up and leads you to the last room which is a waiting room just like the first room. They have the exact same furniture but this time the participant is alone. At this point the participants leaves the room and the same nurse as in the beginning stands outside but only this time she asks you for your name as if she does not know you.The experience portrays the story backwards as if you are able to know what is going to happen. The experience was made to let the participant experience the feeling of having a deja-vu.

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Operation Anvil

Backspace Escaperooms, 2019
Concept, Project Management, Game Design, Audience Directing

Project Anvil was my internship project at Backspace Escaperooms. They are an escaperoom company wanting to extend into real life games. I was responsible for leading that project and coming up with a concept that fit the company.I created a concept for the company that evolved around a spy organisation which the audience is asked to join from home. The game mixes location based theatre, ARG and escape room techniques as the players meet on location to solve a series of puzzles and meet various characters throughout the city centre of Amsterdam.Throughout the creative process I focussed on developing a proof of concept and an plan of execution. I scouted locations for the game, playtests gameplay elements and scenes and worked on the dramaturgy of the game as a whole.

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Traces of a Mind

HKU (University of Arts Utrecht), 2019
Concept, Script Writing, Directing, Audio Design, Audience Directing

Traces of a Mind is an interacting performance based on Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. Intrigued by the element of power and control within the story we decided to make a performance surrounding that theme.Within the performance we have 4 active members within the audience and 4 passive. The passive audience are placed upon a small platform on wheels.The active audience get a device that they will have to wear during the performance. A Bluetooth speaker and a LED-strip is attached to it together with an Arduino. They receive instructions to move the white boxes around the stage. The active audience is playing Hermia's inner conflict and are becoming the voice in her head. It becomes a spectacle of freedom versus ruling. Blue versus red. The audience along with the boxes quite literally push Hermia away and also pull her in again.At the same time the passive audience is on a platform that also gets pulled forward and backwards to let them experiencing the same feeling. We tried to get a discussion going on the appearance of control versus actually having control. Are you actually choosing your own actions or are you just obeying the rules because people tell you to?The project artistically evolved around us learning the tools of project mapping, motion capture to track the boxes and the use of real time audio and lights.

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Brick Bewust

Critical Mass / HKU (University of Arts Utrecht), 2020
Concept, Game Design, Graphic Design

Brick Bewust or Brick Consciously is a playful children's class programme about CO2. It is meant to teach children about the impact of CO2 and teach team in a visual way how much we CO2 we emit a day.The children are given an instruction booklet with small and fun exercises. The children are calculating their own CO2 emission and using the bricks to visualize it. Each brick stands for a certain amount of CO2 and each colour for a category. For example 3 green bricks are 1KG of CO2 emitted by food or drinks. This way children easier can see what is emitting a lot of CO2 in and around the house and get a better understanding of it.This project was in collaboration with Critical Mass, an organisation who designs serious games about current topics such as climate change or diversity. They were looking for new inputs to use within the company and we were asked to all pitch our ideas.

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Loods in Symfonie

Worteldagen / HKU (University of Arts Utrecht), 2019
Music Composition, Light Design, Audience Directing, VJ Performance

De Worteldagen is a Dutch location based theatre festival happening every year in the town of Norg. The whole city transforms for this festival with local people giving up their garages, gardens and public places for students to come and make theatre.I was assigned this garage and got inspired by the flickering lights in the room. Upon turning on the lights each one of the light bars turned on in a different pattern all making a soft ping noise. To me it sounded like music and from that moment I knew I wanted to continue on that. So I created an interactive music composition. All the music is made from samples recorded in the garage and the audience are given the same tools I used so live they can join in and add extra layers to my made music.

Eventually returning to school we were asked to take the project a step further and we received the challenge of now converting our work to the school building.So my "Zaal in Symfonie" or Auditorium in Symphony turned out to be a similar composition but then of our school auditorium. In comparison to my original work where the audience joined in, I now played to the strength of the stage and performed a visual audio performance of the song. The visuals include videos of me recording the samples as you hear those samples being played.

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Ibimus

NJMT, 2018
Concept, Script, Song Writing, Lyrics, Performing (as Dr. Parker)

Ibimus is a musical about six young women who are part of the American sect “Fundamental Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” (FLDS), led by Warren Jeffs. The FLDS was an offshoot of the Mormon Church and split when it resigned itself to the US government's demand that polygamy be abolished.The NJMT (National Youth Musical Theatre) offered a select group of students to let them create their own show for the first time. Our group was responsible for writing out the concept for the story as well as the script, song writing, choreography, costume design and set design. We were directed by Elise Berends.In the first act we see the six young women in a bunker, where they have been staying for more than 100 days, waiting for the end of time. We see the boredom, their desires and the strong mutual bond with each other. We also see the power of their faith in their church and leader. But we also see that one of them has a miscarriage, a crime in the eyes of the others. At the end of the first act, the police invade their hideout and they end up in a health facility.In the show I played the role of Dr. Parker, a doctor in Psychiatry who works in a mental health facility where in act 2 the FLDS women are brought to. She tries her hardest to make the young women fit for their new environment only to struggle with the fact their reality and view of the world is so different. Some end up still choosing faith over the harsh reality and end their lives at the end of the show, leaving the staff and the other girls who did choose for a new life, in shock.

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Een Nacht Onder Het Beukenboomwoud

Rosa Spier Huis / HKU (University of Arts Utrecht), 2020
Concept and narrative, 2D animation, Dramaturgy, Audio Design

This is a short animation video based upon Nora Kretz her fantasies she made up while living in the Rosa Spier Huis. This is an elderly home for people with a background in the arts. My school collaborated with them to link the youth with the older generation so they can learn from each other and make timeless art together.Nora and I were paired up and I wanted to make something that could give her stories a platform and use technologies she couldn't use to bring her imagination to new levels.Our first idea was to create a scale model of the house and make miniature puppet theatre with the use of live cameras, lighting and projection mapping. Sadly this was the time where Covid hit us and we were forced to make an online version. We ended up translating our ideas to a 2D animation. The animation tells quite bizarre and fictional stories of imaginary characters that live in the house. No one knows what happens behind all the closed doors, so what if we let our imagination run wild?I directed Nora while she voice acted and I hand drew all the animations while she created the figures for the characters. We blended our skills and backgrounds together, learned more about each other's fields and ended up making something that we could never imagined us to make.

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Adventure

HKU (University of Arts Utrecht), 2018
Narrative Design, Puzzle Design, (Audience) Directing

Adventure is a theatrical escaperoom in which 3 people enter a children's bedroom to help a child overcome her fear of the dark. Amber is scared because she thinks there is a monster under her bed. By completing the puzzles the bedroom becomes lighter and more colourful, making it more peaceful so she can eventually drift of to sleep.The puzzles consisted out of a large music box which you had to turn at the right speed to create soothing music for Amber, toy blocks that you needed to put back in the right order and a play table which resulted in more light in the room.Alongside the puzzles we had a soundscape, live directed projection mapping and lights as well as a voice actress who played the voice of the young girl who sometimes was giving hints to the players.

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Arcade Animal

HKU (University of Arts Utrecht) / LaserQuest Nijmegen, 2018
Music Composition, Project Management, Sales and Marketing

I followed a seminar called Selling The Song where we were taught how to create music for a specific audience and sell your work even when you are still a student.Throughout the seminar we picked a target audience (leisure entertainment) and created a MVP to pitch ourselves for a partnership with companies. We reached out to lasergame arenas across the country and eventually within less than a week we partnered with LaserQuest Nijmegen to create music for their laser games.We were given conditions such as time limit and certain genres of music the owner wanted us to include. Based upon his ideas we created a couple of iterations until the owner was happy with his music. Later that week we were invited to come deliver the music and play games ourselves on the music we had created.

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Volle Bloei

Karin Bloemen, 2017
Singing, Performing (as myself)

Karin Bloemen is a well known Dutch singer and actress who often has her own solo theatre shows touring around the country. In 2017 she made a show about blooming in life, hence the title, and for each show she did she was searching for local talent to be a part of her show. If chosen the local talent would sing a song in her show.I auditioned with the song Another Night at Daryls from The Witches of Eastwick.

I got chosen to perform in her show where I sang You Give Me Something by James Morrison as well as the final song alongside Karin Bloemen which was I'm Still Standing by Elton John.

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Through The Dark

HKU (University of Arts Utrecht), 2017
Story and concept, Character Modeling, Animation

Together with 4 other classmates, I created this short film during a 3D animation project.The story is about a little creature who is lost in a cave and is afraid of the dark. They are scared to move on their own but with the help of the blocks who generate light he slowly finds a path towards his lost family and reunites with them.This short film was created within 6 weeks. Within the project I was responsible mainly for the flow in narrative, character modelling and the character animation.

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De Stimkoepel

HKU (University of Arts Utrecht), 2018
Concept, Designer, Researcher

After focussing mainly on theatre and games throughout my study, I wanted to explore a different path of immersive art. I therefore chose to create an installation and use the medium of touch and the environment to immerse people.Started to research touch and the effect touch has on our emotions. I felt attracted towards the feeling of relaxations and wanted to create an installation to help people become calm and relaxed. During my research I spoke with my Aunt, who is working with people who have an intellectual disability. She introduced me to the concept of stimming. Stimming is the repetition of physical movements, sounds, words, or moving objects. Stimming has been interpreted as a protective response to over-stimulation, in which people calm themselves by blocking less predictable environmental stimuli, to which they have a heightened sensitivity. A further explanation views stimming as a way to relieve anxiety and other negative or heightened emotions.I did an survey and playtests amongst people with anxiety disorder, ADHD and autism to see what fabrics they prefer for stimming, how big the space needs to be and what type of music would soothe them while being in the "stimkoepel" or stimmingdome. It resulted in a prototype of the dome which was free to visit for people from the HKU.