UMA/Orkater - Burning Sweetgrass

2025
Costume Design

'Burning Sweetgrass' is a play about the inevitable: death. A night in a hospice in the middle of a big city. Three sisters sit by their dying mother's bedside, killing time. As night falls and the sounds from outside fade away, the boundaries between waking and sleeping, body and mind, life and death blur. As the end approaches, no one seems to know how to live anymore.

A physical music theatre performance  full of polyphonic singing, rousing dance, everyday conversations and tranquil images. Like previous work by UMA, the performance mixes diverse musical traditions: Indonesian gamelan and classical organ music are given a contemporary twist with synthesizers and drums.

The UMA collective and Stichting Orkater welcomed me into their team once again to design their costumes. We developed a powerful color code of red and blues which allow our characters to merge, contrast and relate to one another.

Director Joost van Hezik