Hidden colonial women’s history forms the basis for a theatre thriller

MATZER’s *Pretty Girls* opens in cinemas across the country on 22 October

From 22 October to 20 December, MATZER Theatre Productions will be touring the country with Pretty Girls — a thriller about love, loss and a deliberately concealed history, at the intersection of theatre and investigative journalism. The cast comprises Anne-Chris Schulting, Billy de Walle and Jelle Hoekstra. Written and directed by Melissa Knollenburg. The premiere takes place on Saturday 24 October at the Verkadefabriek in Den Bosch.

Following the death of her great love, a woman is confronted by an unknown Moluccan boy with the hidden life and untold family history of her partner, Joia. What begins as mourning for her wife develops into a profound quest and raises the question: can you continue to love someone who turns out to be a stranger to you?

Pretty Girls is a play about loss and shame, but also about resilience, breaking the silence and the courage to hold on to love when the truth is painful and confusing. A gripping thriller in which personal tragedy converges with a system fuelled by guilt, injustice against women and the shifting of responsibility. A colonial legacy that, generations later, still shapes and distorts lives.

After Kantjil and the Tiger, COMFORT and Jam Karet Melissa Knollenburg turns her attention to the hidden history of women in wartime and the Netherlands“ financial debt to Indonesia and its citizens of Indonesian descent. She is supported in this by investigative journalist Griselda Molemans (Follow the Money). Over the past ten years, she has focused her investigative journalism on the failure to provide redress for the Indo community. Melissa: ”Creating a performance about love in the context of our colonial past is an absurd process. Small stories and major state secrets are unravelled in parallel. By focusing on the past of the Moluccan-Indonesian Joia, this piece exposes a history of violence against women. It is high time to look that beast in the eye, so that the world becomes a safer place for the girls of tomorrow.”

Pretty Girls It will be on display from 22 October to 20 December in cities including Amsterdam, Den Bosch, The Hague, Gouda, Nijmegen, Oosterhout, Utrecht, Vught and Waalwijk.

Game: Anne-Chris Schulting, Billy de Walle, Jelle Hoekstra, script & direction: Melissa Knollenburg, scenography: Marjolijn Brouwer, costume design: Anke Vromen, composition: Rosa Sanne and Scott Beekhuizen, artistic guidance: Martine Manten, campaign image: SOGO.