Biography English — Gable Roelofsen

Gable Roelofsen (Zeist, The Netherlands, 1982) is an actor, singer, director, writer and producer from Dutch-indies decent. He received his education at the Maastricht academy for Drama, Lincoln Center Theater Directorslab New York City and he conducted an artistic research about innovation in the field op opera and musictheatre at APT-Apass post-graduate in DeSingel, Antwerp. In 2015 he graduated from the Operamanagement course of Opera Europa.

He performed in plays by Shakespeare, Molière, Tsjechov but he also acted in plays by Ravenhill, Pinter, Enzensberger, Passolini and Eric Emmanuel Schmidt. He played the leadrole of Mowgli in the Dutch national tour of Junglebook. On camera he was seen in VPRO’s villa achterwerk, hotnews.nl, Stellenbosch and in the motion picture Far from Family.

He worked as an actor for theatres and companies like; Toneelgroep Amsterdam, Orkater, La Mamma experimental theatre, Bat Theater Berlin, Teatro del la Pergola Firenze en Teatro de la Abadia Madrid. He studied singing with Daniela Bernoulli, Dennis Wilgenhof, Kirsten Schotteldreier and Burckhard Fritz. Hij sang the role of Tobias Ragg in Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd with Dutch Touring opera and he sang the leadrole of Sjarikmans in the opera Hondenhartje at Dutch National opera en ballet.

He studied as a playwright/librettist with Charles Mee jr, Ko van den Bosch and Willem Bruls. He followed masterclasses in directing from Johan Simons and Alain Platel. He writes, directs and performs at his own musictheatre company Het Geluid Maastricht. The company is artist in residence of Theater aan het Vrijthof Maastricht and partnerorganization of Nederlandse Reisopera.

His plays Wesendoncklieder-Heute and Malta are translated in German. His soloplay Life is too good to be true was translated into English after winning the best of Amsterdam Fringe award in 2010. After that Roelofsen performed the play more than 50 times on different continents. The English translation of his play Shared Rooms is currently under preparation.

Het Geluid Maastricht worked together with companies like Paul Koek's Veenfabriek and Brussel's operahouse La Monnaie/De Munt and festivals like European Operadays and Operadagen Rotterdam. As well as Muziektheater Transparant, Neue Vocal Solisten Stuttgart, The DoelenQuartet and Gamelan Ensemble Gending.

Co-directed Bizet's/Brook's La tragedie de Carmen at Reisopera and directed productions of Schoenberg's Erwartung and Messiean's Harawi for The Euregional Opera and musictheatrefestival. He won the international Berlin Operaprize in 2016 and the Prins Bernhard cultuurfonds Inspirationprize in 2015. Was nominated for the International Rolex mentor and protege-program in 2011.

Mr Roelofsen is experienced in developing new work with composers like Boudewijn Tarenskeen, Thanasis Deglianis, Monique Kruss or Annelies van Parys.

Mr Roelofsen wrote columns for Huffingtonpost and the artsblog of The Guardian as well as for theatre magazines like Rekto Verso and Theatermaker and program essays for Reisopera, La Monnaie/ De Munt and Opera Forward festival (Dutch National opera). Also works as a guestlecturer in opera and musictheatre practices at faculty of theatre-sciences, University of Amsterdam and Interdisciplinary arts academy Maastricht. Through the European network of opera academies he further developed his skills with the help of The Dutch National opera through projects and sessions with Muziek Lod Gent and the workshop Opera and Creation of Festival d'Aix en Provence. (Where he had sessions with Katie Mitchel, Martin Crimp, Robert Carsen, Fabio Vacchi and Peter Sellars among others).

Mr Roelofsen directed two productions evolving around VR and drone technologies and opera, at the Reisopera Techtrip Festival. The Virtual Reality show Weltatem won two Dutch game awards. Probably the first time in the world that the Game industry celebrated an operashow. Dutch national newspaper called the work “Opera of 21st century.”

On the other end of that spectrum Mr. Roelofsen and his Company Het Geluid specialize in innovative social-artistic projects like Common Carnaval (2016) in which old and new Maastricht citizens met each other around redefining the ancient old local carnaval-tradition. (Charlemagneprize of the European Parlaiment and the Willem de Vliegerpenning). Recently the company worked on an other commoning project involving a newly founded choir around a local foodbank that sung new music that they co-created with contemporary composers(Common Chorale, 2018)

Since 2013 Gable Roelofsen is an advisor of the Dutch Arts-council. As of summer 2017 he is chairing a committee that advises the Dutch ministry of culture on the future of opera and music-theatre in the Netherlands. Since 2018 he is a boardmember of the renowned dutch new music-ensemble Asko-Schoenberg.

Future-engagements are planned at Musiktheatertage Wien, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart and Nasionale Opera Bergen Norway.