Troupe Courage: Play as a Survival Strategy

Somewhere on a village square in India, in the refugee camp in Jenin, or in a community center in Accra, a group of actors stands ready. No set, no costumes, no script. Only masks, live music, and the bodies of the performers themselves. This is Troupe Courage.

The international theatre company, founded by Katrien van Beurden, produces performances and runs workshops worldwide. They create virtuosic theatre using archetypal masks to portray characters from all walks of life: the old woman, the dictator, the playing child, the refugee. In a completely empty space, with live music, the actors manage to captivate audiences and bring collected stories to life.

Experts describe Troupe Courage’s work as Neo-Commedia Dell’arte. They work with newly developed, contemporary masks, made by mask-maker Den Durand — making them the only travelling, contemporary Commedia company in the world.

Commedia Dell’Arte originated in the 16th century, during a time of political and economic instability. Groups of performers traveled from city to city, constantly finding new ways to survive through humor, masks, and satire. Troupe Courage operates in the same spirit, but looks resolutely at the present. “We don’t make museum theatre and we don’t reenact stories from the past,” says Thomas van Ouwekerk of Troupe Courage. “We use the old principles — masks, improvisation, physical performance, and direct contact with the audience — to tell stories of today. The world of then is not central; the person of today is.”

There are no scripts, no costumes, and no set pieces. Only the masks are permanent baggage. Those masks are instruments, not decoration. Mask-maker Den Durand works with traditional techniques but looks at the world of today. Each mask contains an archetype — the old man, the bossy leader, the shy child — figures that are recognizable everywhere in the world. “The mask forces you to perform physically, directly, and honestly,” Van Ouwekerk explains. “Only when an actor plays it does it come to life.”

The actor’s body is the most important instrument at Troupe Courage, and it is continuously trained. Their knowledge and experience in mime, pantomime, and improvisation is at a level unmatched in the Netherlands. But improvisation is not freedom without structure.

Van Ouwekerk explains that Troupe Courage frequently works with the so-called via negativa technique: one player stands on the floor while another player responds from the audience as a critical or subconscious voice. Everything the audience thinks but does not say is made visible. This creates performance that lives entirely in the moment. The company also works extensively with audience input: an actor receives an assignment, but the audience determines the details. “Often perhaps ten percent is fixed and ninety percent remains open,” says Van Ouwekerk. “That demands great trust from actors — in each other, in their physical performance, and in contact with the audience.”

Troupe Courage travels the world like a group of explorers with a bag full of masks. They have performed on a village square for a tribe in Shantiniketan (India), at the Freedom Theatre in the refugee camp in Jenin (Palestine), and at the community center in Accra (Ghana). There is no fixed strategy for choosing performance locations. “Sometimes we are invited, sometimes we feel the need ourselves to go somewhere,” Van Ouwekerk says. “We don’t look for perfect performance spaces, but for places where something chafes, lives, or grates.”

Looking back, it is striking that Troupe Courage often ends up in conflict zones. Although this is never consciously sought out, the company is naturally drawn there. Crisis has always been fuel for travelling performers. Troupe Courage is rarely found in plush red-velvet theatres, but rather on the street, in the busy city, or in a completely deserted area.

Local residents and actors play an essential role in this. In 2022, the neighborhood project De held van BB (“The Hero of BB”) emerged on the Balboaplein in Amsterdam-West, in which young people from the neighborhood performed alongside Troupe Courage’s actors. “We shared stories about the people from the neighborhood itself: the greengrocer everyone knows, the youth worker, the stories that normally stay hidden,” says Van Ouwekerk. “That way, no performance arises about a place, but with the people who live there.”

Language is never an insurmountable barrier. The power of masks and pantomime is that they transcend language. At the same time, improvisations also reveal the differences between cultures. A simple action like getting water from the tap looks different in the Netherlands than in Shantiniketan, India. “Everyone recognizes the old man or the old woman as an archetype, but every audience fills in that image differently from their own reality,” Van Ouwekerk says. “It is precisely those differences — and that recognition — that connect people with one another.”

“The mask does not conceal; rather it reveals more of the performer. It helps people become freer, more physical, and braver in their expression.”

For Troupe Courage, play is not a technique but a way of life. Play intelligence is not about knowledge or ideas, but about action: how do you respond in a given situation? Every Courageist is like a young dog who wants nothing more than to go outside and play — to new places, new people, new things.

In workshops, the company shares that philosophy with others. The mask helps performers to play less from the head and more from the body, imagination, and instinct. “What participants often discover is a form of playfulness they lost somewhere along the way,” says Van Ouwekerk. “The mask does not conceal; rather it reveals more of the performer. It helps people become freer, more physical, and braver in their expression.”

The company advocates for a fundamental but neglected right: the right to play. Play increases creativity and resilience, and generates diversity in behavior, interactions, and connections.

One example of their productions is Harlekino, a solo performance by and starring Katrien van Beurden. After 25 years of traveling the world making theatre with a suitcase full of commedia masks, she suddenly had to lie still. Having just become a mother and diagnosed with breast cancer, she found herself in an MRI scanner asking: how do you actually do that — lie still?

The result is a wild, comedic, and poetic solo show: a kaleidoscopic journey through all the survivors she encountered along the way. With masks and specially composed music by Remy van Kesteren, she conjures a cinematic storm of stories. She steps into the skin of Harlekino, the iconic trickster, and shows that hope is not something to believe in, but something to do.

De Volkskrant wrote that Van Beurden shows in Harlekino how play can be a survival mechanism. De Theaterkrant called the performance “extraordinarily moving” and praised her playfulness and imagination as her superpowers.

Katrien van Beurden: Knight in the Order of Orange-Nassau

In May 2023, Katrien van Beurden was appointed Knight in the Order of Orange-Nassau, in recognition of her boundless dedication to making theatre relevant and indispensable. Director Titus Tiel Groenestege described her work as “an astounding, disarming, hilarious, confrontational, and powerfully primal theatre language with masks that is unique and boundary-crossing in every respect.”