Coen Aerts has spent over two decades creating performances that exist in the charged space between performer and audience — encounters where neither party quite knows what happens next. Over the years he has developed around twenty alter egos, each one a different way of entering a room, making contact, and opening up the unexpected. Some are solo, some involve an ensemble; some speak, some don’t. What they share is a method: turning the audience from witness into accomplice.
His best-known acts, Mr. Vibes and The Buttlers, have appeared at festivals, museums, galleries, corporate events and theatre stages across the Netherlands and beyond. In recent years his practice has grown to include interactive theatre for young audiences, approached with the same rigour and care as his adult work. Every performance is built fresh for its context — the theme, the space, the audience in front of him — not as an afterthought, but as the principle the whole practice runs on.