The HM Concert -PERMANENT DESTRUCTION

English Version

“Good evening Holland!” PERMANENT DESTRUCTION is back. Following on from their first successful theatrical concert performance The SK Concert, the pop-up band consisting of theatre maker/performer Naomi Velissariou and sound producer Joost Maaskant returned. This second time around the code word feminist terrorism. The HM Concert was inspired by and based on the body of work of the German playwright Heiner Müller. The show featured visuals by photographer and visual artist Jan Hoek. PERMANENT DESTRUCTION was commended by the press for its daring mix of incisive, abrasive lyrics plus a soundscape that combines danceable, poppy melodies with pounding beats. “An intense, schizophrenic theatre concert that rips apart the mind and the body” said Flemish newspaper De Morgen ★★★★. 

PERMANENT DESTRUCTION- The HM Concert premiered on Saturday 18 May 2019 during SPRING Performing Arts Festival in Utrecht (at De Paardenkathedraal), after which it toured in the Netherlands and Belgium until February 2020.

For The SK Concert, Naomi Velissariou did an autopsy on the work of the British author Sarah Kane. Processing the traces of venom, violence, and sex she found, she turned them into a concept album centred on self-hatred, heartbreak and death. In The HM Concert Velissariou was facing another confrontation, this time with the merciless work of the German author and director Heiner Müller. She was dissecting and transforming his themes of misogyny, sexism and destructive behaviour. Naomi Velissariou has found a radical mode to express the essence, in her view, of Heiner Müller’s work. The theatrical concert is the ultimate form to present her take on the man and his work.

The HM Concert was the second instalment of a three-part post-dystopian music theatre series that does away with the taboos of visual culture today. Within this culture, emotions such as heartbreak and misogyny must be avoided because they aren’t sexy or Instagram-worthy. After all, you can’t define yourself through displays of hurt. Or can you? PERMANENT DESTRUCTION proves that fear can be tamed by honouring it, and that the weight of the world will be lifted from your shoulders if you dance to the beat of your pain.

The music in PERMANENT DESTRUCTION – varying from techno to trap, hardcore and punk – is a compelling rendering of a sinister message, or, as the band likes to put it “melodrama on speed”. “The setting of a live concert is brilliant – harrowing” Het Parool wrote about The SK Concert. “A steamy theatre concert. Uncompromising, brimming with life, and macabre. Her Permanent Destruction is all of these” De Standaard headline read ★★★★ “The contrast between the energetic, aesthetic form and the sinister content works wonderfully well.” De Volkskrant ★★★★

Naomi Velissariou: “As a theatre maker I can’t think of a more rewarding vehicle to carry my take on today’s pop culture than a fictional upcoming band with an expensive, highly dramatic image. Or as we opened our first show: Good evening Holland. We’re PERMANENT DESTRUCTION, we’re very happy to be here. And we’re here to stay.”