For Mantike Bloom Boom, Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe invited author Louise Van den Eede to write a monologue for actress and soprano Marjan De Schutter, known for her successful roles in the TV series Albatros, in productions like Fledermaus Forever by Transparant, Do the Calimero by Lies Pauwels, Cantina by Laika, Vanish Beach by Hof van Eede… and in Der Silbersee and Kruistocht by Opera Ballet Vlaanderen. You will recognize Louise Van den Eede’s name from her work at Hof van Eede and for her collaborations with Pieter Ampe, Jan Decorte & Sigrid Vinks, Miet Warlop and, just recently, with Jonas Vermeulen. Since 2018, she has also worked as a dramaturge with Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe, for whom she wrote the texts in Nachten/ ballet de la nuit, A Revue and Madrigals. Benjamin is also working again with Bart Van Merode and Zaza Dupont, who previously created impressive scenographies and lighting designs. Together, they are making a production that focuses on the future. ‘Mantikê tékhnê’ is the name given by the ancient Greeks to the art of divination, the primeval technique of seeing omens in the migration of birds, in a stand of trees, in bees going astray. For the Greeks, omens were divinely inspired and sighted after prayers or sacrifices. Mantike Bloom Boom will also be a production (or prediction) that conducts a dialogue with the ecosystem and the current, vulnerable, natural environment.Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe’s productions invariably start with a desolate landscape: sometimes a cave with paintings, other times a volcanic crater or moon landscape. For Mantike Bloom Boom, he starts with an impending apocalypse. He likes to compare it to the painting Le Vent by Félix Vallotton, or to the moment when a storm is brewing, when cows take cover under a tree, the sky darkens and the first breeze rises. What do people still undertake in such a landscape at that point? “The bees are the first sign. The hives are emptying out. This had to wait until it appeared on the front page of the New York Times in 2006 before we gave a name to the curious disappearance of the most responsible and disciplined members of all families here on earth: Colony Collapse Disorder. The demise of the bee family, the syndrome of the destroyed colony: one of the most home-oriented creatures loses its skill in finding its way home, gets lost and dies. There is more apocalypse in this than in other abracadabra. The so-called Angels of the Apocalypse. We await the trumpets of Jericho, and we hear bzzzz bzzzz ever softer and further away.” (Georgi Gospodinov, The Physics of Sorrow)Marjan De Schutter will assume various guises of seers and oracles, diving and resurfacing in all reaches of our imagination, channelling signs from the past and future and passing them on, with a Thus Spake Zarathustra-like providence and tone. Marjan will orate, shifting gears with athletic swiftness, as dangerously seductive as a siren, supple as a whiplash. She proclaims what is happening before our eyes, and looks at what is teeming behind nature’s masks.Just as with Beckett's Waiting for Godot, in which ‘a boy’ comes to Vladimir and Estragon at the end of each act to tell them that Mr Godot will not be coming, Meirhaeghe plans to have a second performer appear somewhere halfway through the show in relation to the predictions, with or without words.This time, the typical ingredients of Meirhaeghe's work, such as striking images, playful symbolism, dance, music, visual art, are coupled with a brand new, Dutch-language script. Mantike Bloom Boom makes a plea for a multiplicity of perspectives and takes up the fight against resignation. No doom-mongering, no conspiracy, but a hopeful warning that inspires. It’s not too late, it’s the silence before the storm.