DARK Matinee | Lecture on 'The Prison' with Lara Staal
- 19 October 2025 - 15:00 - 17:00
Together with four ex-prisoners, Lara Staal, resident artist at NTGent, made a razor-sharp analysis of the Belgian prison system. Why do we stubbornly cling to a system that helps no one?
Lara Staal is interviewed by professor Geertjan Zuijdwegt (KULeuven). Freddie Konings and Bahadir Kanmaz, two of the ex-prisoners, read several excerpts from the performance. They reflect on the shame associated with imprisonment, but especially on the taboo and shame that rests on people who are released after years in that parallel universe.
Zondag 19 | 15u - 17u
€15 (standaard), €5 (reductie), €3 UiTPAS met kansentarief
Dit ticket geeft ook toegang tot het museum en de expo (UN)SHAME
Over de sprekers
Lara Staal
Lara Staal (1984) is a theatre maker who has worked as a resident artist at NTGent for the past five years. There she created, among other things, the performance DISSIDENT, in which five so-called “problem youths” teach the audience about what is wrong with contemporary education, the short film De Zaak Samuel about the hell a young Eritrean refugee has to go through to reach Europe, the play SERDI about youth care (selected by the theatre festival) and, most recently, DE GEVANGENIS, a play in which four ex-prisoners dissect the prison system and show its consequences for a human life.
Geertjan Zuijdwegt
Geertjan Zuijdwegt works at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies at KU Leuven, where he is a member of the Systematic Theology and Religious Studies research unit. He also works at the Centre for Religion, Ethics and Detention, housed at the Leuven Institute for Criminology (LINC), and as a prison chaplain in Mechelen and Leuven.
(c) NTGent
