Mariën, FreekThe Wetsuitman

2015. Between the rocks of the Norwegian coastline, an architect is walking his dog. What at first looks like an oil slick close to the cliffs turns out to be a wetsuit. Bones are sticking out of the flippers. Even with the help of the police, nobody is able to identify the corpse. But then the Dutch police reach out: they appear to have found a similar skeleton and are likewise faced with a mystery.

Kicking off like a Scandinavian crime story, ‘The Wetsuitman’ leads from pastiche to a social drama in the ‘jungle’, the refugee camp in Calais. The script grows into a piece about identity, expectations and prejudice. Switching between different perspectives and genres, ‘The Wetsuitman’ reveals itself to be a portrait of loss, a meditation on bereavement. It becomes a search for the truth, for the essence of the Wetsuitman or perhaps rather the world in which he was washed up and exactly how that could happen.

‘The Wetsuitman’ is intelligent narrative theatre in which Freek Mariën sheds light on one of the most important and pressing themes of the contemporary public debate: the refugee crisis.