THE KETTLE IS ALWAYS ON
A performance about balance, meaning and the rituals that make us feel at home.

In The Kettle is Always On, Nolanders searches for footing in a shared ritual. On the line between the poetic and absurd, handstand sisters Melody and Lily Nolan seek balance between jointly creating meaning and standing their ground when the other moves in a different direction. This performance is a ritual in the making, with the audience influencing its completion. It will premiere during This is not a circus, January 30, 2026 at theatre De Landing in Amstelveen.

The Nolan sisters are at a tipping point. As they grow older, they grow both closer and farther apart in the search for a place of their own. Together they create a performance about this precarious phase in which they seek an anchor amidst the nonsense of early adulthood. Growing up in a travelling circus family, they learned young what this means: the carefully chosen items in a backpack and your daily rituals. These objects and actions created peace, space and meaning in their nomadic existence. In the physical performance The Kettle is Always On, they set out together in search of a shared ritual. But: what if you each mean something different by that? Melody wants peace and quiet, tea and a neat table. Lily wants to let loose, blasting techno, energy.

As the sisters share the stage together, their worlds collide. With handstands, acrobatics and physical theatre, they seek solid ground. How do you stay balanced, when the other is moving? How do you keep yourself straight, when you have to carry something together? Their bodies intertwine, support, fall over, seek balance again. To complete the ritual of the performance, they have to embrace their differences. Ultimately, it is the audience that decides when the performance is finished. Thus, the performance grows into a new ritual in which they find meaning together in a world that is always in motion.

CREDITS CREATED & PERFORMED BY Melody Nolan •  Lily Nolan OUTSIDE EYE Noëmi Wagner DRAMATURGICAL ADVICE Aurelia Brailowsky COSTUMES Lisa Chudalla PRODUCED BY TENT House for Contemporary Circus CO-PRODUCERS PERPLX vzw • De Landing SUPPORTED BY Gemeente Rotterdam RESIDENCIES Silence Residency • Arts Printing House • De Clinch • Latitude 50 • Motion Chapel

OUR MAKER
Nolanders