Stichting I/O

Slab Altar

Slab Altar (working title) is a new work by Thanasis Deligiannis, in development for 2028 as a co-production with Holland Festival and Het Muziek. Hybrid in form, it brings together performance, concert and visual installation, unfolding around a concrete slab as a site of ritual, labour, destruction and transformation.

Brief description

Slab Altar takes the form of a dismantled liturgy, structured through actions that continually shift between task, ritual and performance. At its centre lies a concrete slab that can be perceived simultaneously as altar, foundation and monument, ruin and debris, stage and gathering place. Around it, music, movement, and acts of construction and demolition unfold, while care and violence, presence and absence continuously shift their meanings.

The work approaches the theatre itself as a place and instrument of witnessing. Rather than treating the hall as a neutral container, it works with the existing relation between stage and seated audience, composing the conditions through which events are seen, heard and shared. Voices, instruments, machines, resonating materials and video form a shifting landscape in which actions and sounds accumulate, interrupt and transform one another, turning the act of watching into part of the work.

The project began its practical development with a first research residency at Het Muziek Studio in November 2025. It is being developed towards a 2028 co-production by Holland Festival and Het Muziek, taking shape through successive research periods, workshops, tryouts and rehearsals. I/O is involved as a supporting production partner, helping connect the project across its different development phases.

About the work

Slab Altar (working title) is a hybrid performance that unfolds through music, movement, ritual, the act of labour, video and visuals. Taking the form of a dismantled liturgy, it brings together performers, musicians, materials and the theatre hall itself into a single performative environment.

At the centre of the work lies a large concrete slab. It may be perceived simultaneously as altar, foundation and monument, ruin and debris, stage and gathering place. Throughout the performance it becomes a site where construction and demolition, care and violence, presence and absence continuously shift their meanings.

The Theatre as a Place of Witnessing

The work approaches the theatre not as a place of representation, but as a place of witnessing. Rather than presenting a narrative, the project creates conditions in which audiences become aware of both the unfolding events and their own presence within a shared space.

The theatre hall functions as an active environment rather than a neutral container. Rather than transforming its architecture, Slab Altar works with the existing relationship between stage and seated audience, composing an experience that reminds us we are gathered inside a space designed for collective watching.

The word theatre originates from the Ancient Greek “théatron”, derived from the verb “theáomai”: to see, to watch, to observe. Combined with the suffix “-tron”, denoting a place or instrument, theatre becomes literally a place where observation takes place. Slab Altar adopts this etymology as a conceptual point of departure, approaching the theatre hall as an instrument that composes acts of observation, shared attention and witnessing.

Dramaturgical Landscape

Slab Altar originates from an ongoing artistic research into rituals surrounding loss, care, and collective presence. The work explores how the living negotiate disappearance and transformation, asking what kinds of gestures, actions, and forms of gathering emerge in the face of what cannot be undone. The work repeatedly alludes to a sacrifice that is either imminent or has just been completed.

A vocal presence moves through the work carrying the energy of a revolutionary figure —a body in search of others, moving between danger and hope, separation and reunion. This figure introduces an underlying sense of urgency into the work. Acts of construction and demolition unfold alongside performers and audience waiting, gathering, and negotiating uncertainty. Together they sustain a tension between vulnerability and resistance, presence and disappearance suggesting that a common body is never a given but something that must be continually enacted.

The musical world brings together contemporary composition, multichannel sound, Balkan brass traditions, Eastern Mediterranean musical practices and contemporary electronic music. Sound emerges from voices, instruments, machines, materials, designed in a dialogue with the venue’s architecture. Live performance, processed sounds, field recordings and resonating objects form a constantly shifting acoustic landscape which leads the work’s dramaturgy.

Creation Process

The project develops through successive residencies, workshops and laboratories, where dramaturgical questions are explored through synthesis, allowing new relationships to emerge through the interaction of artistic disciplines. Music, movement, building materials, space, and observation are treated as interconnected components of a single compositional process, continuously informing one another.

The research investigates how the forms and functions of liturgical traditions and Greek tragedy can inform new performative structures. Alongside this, it explores the compositional potential of concrete, water, multichannel sound, live image, and diverse musical traditions, each contributing to the work’s evolving performative language.

Videos

Team (production phase)

Artistic team
Thanasis Deligiannis — artist / composer / director (NL/GR)
Yannis Michalopoulos — dramaturg (FR/GR)
— associate set designer
— associate light designer
— associate cinematographer
— visual programmer/coder

Performers
Jozef Jie Sheng Chua — performer (NL/SG)
— 2nd performer
— construction worker (possibly joining on location)
— female singer (possibly with 2 extra singers joining on location)
— musicians (3 brass, 1 synth, 1 percussion) lineup to be confirmed

Production & Technical teams
Frank van der Weij — Project manager, I/O
— producer
— assistant producer
— technical director
— sound engineer
— light/video technician
— theatre technician

Provisional Timetable

2025
Nov — 10-day residency at Het Muziek Studio, Amsterdam

2026
Feb — dramaturgy sessions, Paris
Jun — dramaturgy sessions, Amsterdam
Aug — countryside scouting (rock / sea texture), Greece
Nov — dramaturgy sessions, Paris
Dec — 10-day residency on music & movement at Het Muziek Studio tbc, Amsterdam

2027
Jan — visual environment workshop tbc, location tbd
May — workshop on composing with all elements tbc, Amsterdam
Jun — tryout presentation at Holland Festival, Amsterdam
Jul — outdoor filming, Greece
Aug — visual environment workshop tbc, location tbd
Nov — composition & dramaturgy sessions, Amsterdam

2028
Feb — performance workshop tbc, Amsterdam
May — 3-week final rehearsal period, Amsterdam
Jun — adjustment to venue, dress rehearsal & premiere at Holland Festival, Amsterdam

Production partners / contact

Co-production
Holland Festival
Het Muziek

Supporting production partner
I/O

For programming, co-production and further information
Frank van der Weij — project manager, I/O
info@frankvanderweijstudio.nl

Thanasis Deligiannis — artistic contact
info@thanasisdeligiannis.com