Utrecht Requiem gives stage to people who have to fight

A requiem is usually intended to commemorate the dead. The Utrecht Requiem is a celebration of the resilience of people for whom life has laid traps, but who are nevertheless very much alive. Six of them are even on stage, between professional singers and top musicians, to bring their life stories to the fore. Five renowned composers wrote the music. On Sunday afternoon, the Utrecht Requiem will be heard twice in TivoliVredenburg, followed by the last part of a tour that started in the autumn.

“In our society there is a large middle class of people who can make it,” says initiator Ellen Blom. “A few stand out and get an inordinate amount of attention. But there is hardly any eye for the people who had to fight enormously to find a connection with the middle bracket.” Under the title ‘Meet my Story’, the Utrecht Requiem gives them a stage. Blom: „The trauma does not end there, they have to deal with it. And they do! We want to show that.”

For people who had to fight enormously to find a connection with the middle bracket, it is hardly an eye

Ellen Blom initiator

Blom is a documentary maker and works as a psychodrama therapist in mental health care. Since 2017, she has been organizing the Utrecht Requiem every two years, with a varying approach. This time, various agencies suggested potential ‘main characters’, although they also come from her own network. After countless conversations, she chose six people to sing along or to recite something in the performance. “It is very exciting to go public with such intense stories. Who can wear it? That was an important criterion. They are not all success stories, I want their great resilience to stick.”

The six main characters are very different from each other. Lisa discovered she has autism when she was twenty-six, Johnno was bullied as a child and lived on the street for years. Due to extreme ADHD, Marcel had the permanent feeling that he had narrowly escaped death and fled into drugs and violence. Blom conducted extensive preliminary discussions and then recorded an interview with them, after which librettist Herman van Tongerloo wrote a text. With that, they went to the main character together.

i’m tired/ my body knows/ strings in all my being/ remembers every part of my body/ every spot hurts/ and covers the pain again

The recognition I feel, I can’t put into words what that does. It makes me less lonely in the sadness and in existence

Tilly participant

“I was so surprised,” Tilly says about what it was like to read her story back. “I said: you did that beautifully. Then Herman said: all these words are your words. I saw he was right. It was always like having several movies mixed up in my head, and Herman put them in the right order. That gives me something to hold on to. It is still a lot, but it overwhelms me less now.”

As a child, Tilly was sexually abused and psychologically abused by her father for years. But no one believed her: not her mother, not even the authorities. She was misdiagnosed as pseudologia phantastica, a sick form of lying, and was subjected to invasive medication. Her complaints increased: conversion (legs that no longer work), dissociation (time she lost without knowing what she had done). Decades later, post-traumatic stress disorder was diagnosed and doctors confirmed the truthfulness of Tilly’s story.

The entire team of the Utrecht Requiem.

The text about Tilly has been set to music by Monique Krus. When Blom approached her, she immediately felt that she had to tell this story. “Intuitively, perhaps because of the vehemence of the subject and the sheer injustice. A story like Tilly’s is unfortunately recognizable for many people. You notice it in the room, how the response is. That’s why this project is so important. Now it is around Utrecht, but it deserves a much wider scope.”

I especially want the great resilience of these people to stick

Ellen Blom initiator

Krüs composed music full of subcutaneous tension. At the end, Tilly reads a letter herself, in which she reflects on ‘what happened’ and how harmful it was not to be believed. The applause and the reactions are indescribable, Tilly says: “The recognition I feel, I can’t put into words what that does. Because of this experience I dare to show more of myself in daily life, I start to feel that it is not strange what I say. It makes me less lonely in grief and in existence.”

Tilly is training to become a carpenter and this week told the class about the Utrecht Requiem. “The teacher asked if there were any tickets left. Several classmates said they are coming to watch.”

Utrecht Requiem: 30/1, 13.30 and 16.00 in TivoliVredenburg Utrecht. Inl: utrechtsrequiem.nl Listen to NPO Radio 4 on 9/2, 8 p.m.

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