Theatre
I work as a composer within theatre, often in close collaboration with directors, performers, and makers from different disciplines. In many projects I am also present on stage as a performer, allowing music and performance to influence each other directly.
Moeder Courage
2025 Het Nationale Theater, Den HaagA woman, known as Mother Courage, risks everything during the war to survive with her children. As a trader, she tirelessly moves through a harsh, chaotic world, where unexpected moments of humor and even love sometimes emerge.
In this new adaptation of Mother Courage, director Liesbeth Coltof brings Brecht’s classic firmly into the 21st century. Together with Nina de Jong, we composed a new score for the production, replacing the original music by Paul Dessau, and performed live on stage as part of the piece.
The music draws inspiration from texts by poets writing from war-torn regions such as Gaza and Ukraine, where the lived reality of conflict leaves deep and lasting scars.
Witch Hunt
2023NITE, Groningen
The idea for the production grew out of a lullaby director Eline Arbo remembered from her childhood. Uti vår hage (“In Our Gardens”) appears to be an innocent song about plants and herbs, but was later revealed to be a recipe for a drink used to induce an abortion. What seemed like a naïve children’s song turned out to be a form of oral tradition—knowledge passed on by women, hidden in plain sight.
The song became the guiding thread of an existential performance in which a young woman searches for her native soil, her mother, and her history. The story follows Esther, a young archaeologist who returns to her home village to investigate a mysterious grave containing the bones of five women, pointing toward a much larger, buried narrative.
Together with Nina de Jong and Thijs van Vuuren, we composed the score for the production and performed the music live on stage.
XX
2020Orkater, Amsterdam
A group of female warriors in classical antiquity, a burnt witch in 1607, a trans-man in the interwar period and a woman who falls victim to an internet criminal. These historical figures shared no time, no genes, but they did share something else: they didn't belong. They fell out of their time. XX is a historiography disguised as a concert, sometimes made up but nevertheless true.
Text by iona&rineke, music by Rosa Ronsdorf and Nina de Jong, performance by Rosa Ronsdorf, Nina de Jong, Iona Daniel , Rineke Roosenboom.