World Premiere of SUMMIT by Ontroerend Goed & NTGent Set for 2026

Following the success of its predecessor 'Thanks for Being Here', the Belgian theatre company Ontroerend Goed is once again joining forces with city theatre NTGent for 'SUMMIT', which has it world premiere on  February, 12. In its new production, Ontroerend Goed explores the limits of our imagination.

Theatre thrives on the willing suspension of disbelief: the audience's readiness to believe in something that is clearly fiction. It is from this willingness, and from the power of the human imagination, that theatre derives its power to step outside reality. Together, audience and creators can imagine a different future that resonates far beyond the walls of the auditorium.

With SUMMIT, Ontroerend Goed taps into humans' insatiable desire for familiarity and reality. The collective explores the power of language and our eternal quest for meaning, shaking up theatre conventions along the way. In a production that navigates between meeting, musical and meta-theatre, Ontroerend Goed does everything it can to stretch our imagination. Until it reaches its moral limits. If there are any.

You are invited to a summit.
You are invited to a performance entitled 'SUMMIT'.
You know, of course, that those are not the same thing.
After all, you know very well where the line lies between reality and fiction.

You like to see reality in a way you've never seen it before.
That's why you choose theatre. But whether what you'll see is always fiction - that, we cannot promise.

SUMMIT is the successor to Thanks for Being Here, the previous collaboration between Ontroerend Goed and NTGent, an ingenious and heartwarming ode to the audience that was praised in Belgium, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, among other places. Belgian leading newspaper De Morgen described the performance as “radically hopeful”, The Guardian (UK, ****) loved how "joyful, funny, accepting and warm-hearted" the performance is.

The Belgian collective Ontroerend Goed has been excelling in innovative interactive theatre for decades. Awarded numerous prizes at festivals in Europe and Australia, the work of the collective, led by artistic director Alexander Devriendt, has been performed all over the world since 2007.  Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad recently selected its performance Are we not drawn onward to new erA (2019) as one of the absolute milestones of 21st-Century Theatre.