Theatre Show

The Caravan Hitchhiking Project has become an inspiring multimedia travel story, with a book, a DVD and a theatre program.

The songs that Tjerk Ridder wrote inspired by the journey, are the red thread in the ‘theatrical road movie’ he made out of it. This combination of live music, storytelling and film premiered at the Shanghai World Expo in China and has played at different big festivals in the Netherlands.

After creating the theatre program, Tjerk and his travel companion Peter Bijl transformed their travel into a bilingual book, Dutch and English. This book contains 156 pages of picture material, and inspiring stories and encounters from on the road, written by both Tjerk Ridder as Peter Bijl.

Just like the journey of 2010, the book contains of two parts: ‘Dreams’ deals about Tjerk’s personal inspiration of beginning this project and the dreams of the people he met on the road. This part is accompanied by the songs out of the theatre show.

‘Borders’ deals about personal borders, pushing limits and European dreams. This part, playing in the Balkans, is accompanied by road movie material Peter Bijl shot along the way.

The book was released on August, 19th, 2011, at the foremost festival of the Netherlands, A Campingflight to Lowlands Paradise.

Overwhelming

All the experiences of the journey have been overwhelming. Just like the ever growing impact of the project. If we look back at the early days, this is what Tjerk wrote after he just finished the first part of his journey:

My own ‘dream’ is to create a musical theatre show, inspired by the stories and encounters I have on my way. I will record the stories and impressions on my laptop and I will try to make pictures and capture some video as well. After finishing stage I of the journey in March, we started working on a theatre show for the Shanghai World Expo. The first version of this show, a compilation of stories, music, images and video, premiered at the Dutch Culture Center in China on May 25. After we return from Istanbul this summer, we will work out the complete journey into the next version of this show.

Some of the songs from the show can be listened here:

 Unterwegs
 Spreek je uit (de juiste woorden)

Spring 
 Omarm

. Domstad