We Don't Live Here Anymore (2025)

International touring - in production (available for booking from February 2026)

The story

We Don’t Live Here Anymore

Words deceive, bodies reveal

Two couples, seemingly closely connected, become caught up in a web of desires, guilt and betrayal. Is it pure passion, an escape from the mundane, or a deep emptiness that drives them? Secrets are whispered and the truth is twisted. How much remains hidden between lovers and friends? And what responsibility do you take for your own actions?

Jakop invited Marijke Schermer to write this new theatre text We Don’t Live Here Anymore for the company. In the show we hear the characters’ dialogues as voice-overs, while the performers express their inner emotions in Ahlbom’s unique language of movement.

The characters’ emotional lives are visualised by (the bodies of) the performers, while we listen to their conversations. What is said, and what remains unspoken?

Sources of inspiration for this show were the novellas We Don’t Live Here Anymore and In the bedroom by Andre Dubus, the novel Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates and the eponymous film by John Curran, the film Closer by Mike Nichols, and Husbands and Wives by Woody Allen.

We Don’t Live Here Anymore is a piece about hidden truths and the discomfort that can arise when choices made in the past start to feel restrictive. The characters find themselves at a breaking point where they start to question themselves and their desires anew. Instead of contenting themselves with what is, they search for what could be. This poetic piece challenges our reasoning as well as our imagination. It allows us to feel the pain, doubts and strengths of lovers in transformation.

Credits

Direction Jakop Ahlbom
Choreography Jakop Ahlbom icw the performers
Text Marijke Schermer
Dramaturgy Judith Wendel
Translation Rina Vergano
Music & sound design Leonard Lucieer
Set & costume design Thomas Rupert
Lighting design Pepijn van der Sanden

Performers
Silke Hundertmark - Mary
Gwen Langenberg - Anna
Renato Bertolino - William
Reinier Schimmel - George

Voice actors
Stacey Goddard - Mary
Alison Campbell - Anna
Brandon Delagraentiss - William
Jonathan Gundel - George

Teaser

About our company

Jakop Ahlbom Company developed a trademark theatrical form that unites theatre, mime, dance, music and the world of illusion. The company has an unique talent for combining powerful visual language with equally powerful content. Based in Amsterdam but we share our stories all over the world.

Jakop Ahlbom (1971) was born in Sweden. In the early 1990s he moved to the Netherlands where he studied Mime at the Amsterdam School of the Arts. Upon his graduation in 1998 he was presented with the Top Naeff Award for the most promising student. His gift for choreography had been noticed – and so had his poeticism and his ability to get his cast to unleash their energy, bravado and physicality. The award jury described him as an eager, outstanding and exuberant talent. After graduating he worked with a variety of theatre makers as a performer, choreographer and director.

In 2000 he started working on his own, idiosyncratic oeuvre, which includes Stella Maris (2000), Nur zur Erinnerung (2002), Lost (2004), Vielfalt (2006), De Architect (2008), Innenschau (2010), Lebensraum (2012), Het Leven een Gebruiksaanwijzing (2013), Bug (2014), Horror (2014), Swan Lake (2016), Innenschau Revisited (2018), Le Bal (2019), Syzygy (2020), Knock-Out (2021), Unseen (2022) and Strangely Familiar (2023)