AMANDA PAYNE - Actress, Playwright.
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@amandaepayne
THEATRE
A dialogue that unfolds like an unfinished melody. Words and phrases repeat, forming rhythmic patterns that echo techno beats or pop melodies, yet never fully complete. Driven less by meaning and more by the sound of the words these rhythms overlap and intertwine into a textured sonic tapestry.
Photo by Elena Štrok
A musical mosaic of encounters with ordinary people and extraordinary stories. In Alle Markten Thuis, a violinist and a singer venture into the market ( De Dappermarkt) they happen to live beside. With music as their guide, they reach out to ‘the other’ who may be closer than they think.
For this piece, I wrote verbatim lyrics based on interviews with people from the Dappermarkt. More...
See upcoming performance dates.
De Keizerin is a morbid monologue for two performers, a reflection on sleep and sleeplessness, late-night wanderings, senseless cruelty, broken relationships… and flowers.
Theaterkrant: ‘Payne’s speelstijl sluit daarbij aan. Ze hanteert een insteek die aan monologen in de recente Britse traditie doet denken, zoals die van Sarah Kane, Martin Crimp en Dennis Kelly – duister, beheerst, hoofdelijk, emotionally repressed. Ze is altijd in controle, zelfs als ze in woede uitbarst tegenover haar man, die vanwege zijn comateuze staat buiten haar bereik blijft.‘
Photo by Artun Alaska Arasli
De Brakke Grond - Amsterdam
04. Grond (2025)
by Nanoek
When the ground beneath your feet gives way, what’s left to hold on to? And how do you move forward when life suddenly changes?
Grond is a musical about grief — honest, daring and laced with humor. It offers comfort while looking loss straight in the eye. More...
Photo by Daniela Petrovic
Isabel Pronk takes you on a journey through the hauntingly beautiful emotions of loneliness and vulnerability that arise in the quiet of the night. But from this solitude emerges a powerful strength, the courage to begin again. More...
Watch the trailer
Photo by Juri Hiensch
TivoliVredenburg - Utrecht
a site-specific performance commissioned by the Dutch National Opera and the Opera Forward Festival. The starting point for the performance was the concept of instruction scores, a working method that balances the improvisational skills of the performer with rehearsed sequences.
Photos by Isabell Janssen
Dutch National Opera - Amsterdam
The terminus a quo for the performance was the opening of H’art Museum’s exhibition about Julius Caesar I came, I saw, I met my doom and Elif Murat’s sound piece Sonic Phantasmagoria.
Photos by Hildur Elísa
H’Art museum - Amsterdam
Pink Elephants on Parade is an anti-coming-of-age story in the form of an electro-pop performance that transports you into a psychedelic fairy tale with live visuals and music.
In 2019, Jip Bartels, de Transmissie, and Amanda Payne won the Walhalla Pitch with their hallucinatory presentation of Pink Elephants on Parade, an ode to imagination and a requiem for childlike fantasy.
Watch the trailer
Photos by Vincent van Woerkom
Walhalla Werkplaats - Rotterdam
Niet Antigone is a contemporary response to Sophocles’ timeless tragedy. At its heart are two young women, artistically aligned in their defiance of the status quo. But unity gives way to tension, and the collaboration unravels into a fierce battle between writer and composer.
What are they truly trying to say through this reinterpretation of Antigone? And who, in the end most embodies Antigone: the one who writes the words or the one who scores the emotion?
WORM.UBIK (O. festival for Opera. Music. Theatre) Rotterdam
P(L)AYHAUS is a music-theater collective of Charlotte Dommershausen and Amanda Payne. They collide urgent social issues with atomic physics, fuse spoken word and R&B with the drama of Poulenc and stage a musical with zero flying sets, no tap-dancing just raw energy.
Pleintheater (Amsterdam Fringe Festival) - Amsterdam
The Unsatisfied Girls Club asks: how can a privileged young woman speak sincerely about social injustice? In this electro-pop-tinged, poetry-laced performance, P(L)AYHAUS dives in (naive but earnest) on a search for a stance, for something authentic, for the first step toward… well, toward what, exactly?
Scala - Amsterdam