L: Have you ever thought a problem through? All the way through to the end?
T: I’m afraid I haven’t.
L: How do you know?
T: I’m still alive.

(Gerardjan Rijnders, Pick-Up , 1986)

The Dutch theatre maker and author Gerardjan Rijnders is unquestionably one of the most important dramatists in the Low Countries.

In 1995 the two actors, Sara De Roo and Guy Dermul, staged one of his older texts: Pick-Up (1986). As a result Gerardjan Rijnders wrote a sequel specially for them, entitled Cancer . De Roo and Dermul performed this new text together with Pick-Up in 1996.

Their common fascination with Rijnders’ contemporary and fragmented writing style remained and inspired them to carry on with a third text in 2003, again written specially for them. In ‘zien en zien’ ( ‘seeing and seeing’ ), the actors share the stage with – alternately – a viola player (Paul De Clerck), a pianist (Alain Franco), a saxophone player (Eric Morel) and a guitarist (John Parish).

‘voir et voir’ , the French version of ‘zien en zien’ , was premiered in the autumn of 2005 during the Festival d’Automne in Paris.