| Makers | DeRonde/Deroo |
| Duration | 60 min |
"“Their work is visually stunning; cinematic without a camera and poetic without words.” "
— Het Cultuurfonds at the presentation of the Wim Bary Stipendium (2025)
"“Acrobatics, clowning, dance, even traditional pantomime (of blessed memory) all appear, and everything is performed at the same high level by these two master performers from the acclaimed Dutch mime tradition.” "
— De Theaterkrant on It's Fine, You Can Tell Us (2025) - Critics’ Choice
Please Don’t Make Love to Me, I’m Exhausted is an acrobatic, cinematic theater performance where humor and total disorientation go hand in hand. You’ll meet a clown, a merman, and two comedians searching for stability in a world that’s going up in flames. As you’d expect from collective De Ronde/Deroo, the performance is full of physical (im)possibilities and striking, unexpected expressive power. It promises quite a ride.
A cinematic world of absurd characters
De Ronde/Deroo are determined to pull you into a cinematic universe where absurdity and reality constantly blur and twist. A clown is trapped in an interrogation room, staring ahead in tragicomic silence, though it might just be his smeared makeup. He is stubbornly folding balloon animals while the questions keep coming. A merman drags himself forward, gasping for the last drops of water, longing to feel like a fish in water once more. And two stand-up comedians desperately try to get a laugh from an audience that stares back at them in icy silence.
How do you keep going when everything around you is shaking to its core? In Please Don’t Make Love to Me, I’m Exhausted, everyone tries to survive by chasing small moments of joy. But whether that works is another question entirely!
The collective DeRonde/Deroo consists of Tom de Ronde (28) and Nick Deroo (36). Together, they create cinematic, physical, and acrobatic theater. As an audience member, you're immersed in surreal, absurdist dream worlds with their own rules and logic. The body is always their starting point. They constantly explore the body’s ability to take on poetic and unpredictable forms of expression.
In 2025, DeRonde/Deroo received the Wim Bary Stipendium from the Cultuurfonds, an award recognizing their promising body of work. Their youth production Hou Vast (7+, 2026) was also widely praised, receiving four stars in De Volkskrant and being named Critics’ Choice by the Theaterkrant. Their on-site performance It Really Hurts When Your Head Hits The Concrete toured more than 200 times in the Netherlands and abroad and received multiple awards and critical acclaim.
Concept & direction: DeRonde/Deroo
Performance: Tom de Ronde & Nick Deroo
Final artistic direction: Jef Van Gestel
Dramaturgy: Pol Eggermont
Sound design: Jethro Cooke
Lighting design: Tim van ’t Hof
Costume design: Karen Meijer
Photography/videography: Joshua Walter
Production lead: Pascal Kijzer
Business lead: Anna Schaap
Marketing: Lonneke van Eden
Production: DeRonde/Deroo
Co-production: Feikes Huis
With special thanks to: Theater na de Dam, De Verkadefabriek, Korzo, Club Nyx
Korzo Zaal