Sismo Stories & Performances is committed to giving text theatre a central place in the Dutch theatre landscape. We achieve this by developing various strands of activities. For example, we bring the best original written work from the United Kingdom to the Netherlands celebrating its rich tradition when it comes to text theatre. It is a fertile breeding ground for new work by young playwrights. With these productions we want to reach audiences from all corners of society. But more importantly, we give talent in the Netherlands the opportunity to create new work, and help playwrights on the road from text to performance. We also support Dutch productions going to the UK. 

We work with and support playwrights with powerful and innovative ideas. We guide them in writing new work, and make sure the play is seen and heard by audiences, but especially by directors and producers. In this way we increase the chances that the work will be picked up, and eventually appear on stage.

In the Dutch theatre landscape, the director is the central creative artist and visionary. Although there are valuable initiatives to support playwrights (think Verse Tekst, Bellevue, TheaterTekstTalent Stipendium by De Versterking) they are distinct from text based work that is more familiar in the UK and the USA. Moreover, in the Netherlands non-commissioned plays rarely make it to production. The system is not designed to allow the text to lead, and for a director to respect the script. We aim to give writers the opportunity to write new work and support them to get plays on in the future. 

In time, Sismo Stories & Performances wants to function as a network organisation and build a bridge between the various initiatives in the field of text theatre. At the moment there are excellent initiatives but they are distinct and lack coherence. Above all, we see the need to connect the world of playwrights and directors, producers and programmers. We want to ensure that new work has a life because only in this way can we also develop a tradition in the Netherlands of text based theatre. We are keen to create and develop over and above existing initiatives. We then want to create a metaplan with stakeholders across the theatre world (producers, directors, venues, writers and performers) with the goal of creating a chain of support in which new text based work can be developed that can transfer across between the UK and the Netherlands. We also see as key a mentoring programme for talented playwrights.