Schneiders, Ayla (Netherlands)

Ayla Schneiders (1989-) writes about questions where there is more than one answer. Majestic and moving, small and what appears to be insignificant. Honest, brutal and poetic. ‘I am, therefore I think that I’m thinking’ is her point of view in life and for her thesis she wrote this year. In the thesis she searches for an experience for the audience that is both reassuring and disturbing at the same time. She tries to interpret the latest developments in neuroscience and translates them into tools for directors, performers and writers to get a more deep-seated experience which a spectator will not easily forget. Playing with our unconsciousness, we have to hand ourselves over to the characters Schneiders brings to the stage.

‘Kid, aren’t your eyes bigger than your belly?’, her mum used to say when Ayla used to fill her plate full with food again. It is still one of her favorite statements. She knew her eyes couldn’t be bigger than a belly but she still got what her mum tried to say. Schneiders fell head over heels for words and language.

At the moment she writes as a critic young writer about everything that is going on in politics and society for a site called www.spunk.nl. She is trying to bring her first plays to the stage, theatre for youth but also theatre for adults. At the site she works as a writing and theatre teacher for every age and she is a cook in a romantic restaurant in Utrecht.