Doel Festival is not about grand designs, instead, our stages are meant to form a bond with their environment. Doel is a peculiar place with a distinct visual style, telling many stories of the past and inspiring a future. Our stages either tell one of those stories or are heavily inspired by the visual language they’re surrounded by, referencing the characteristics of a worn down town, reinvigorating it with intricate scenographic details.
Pastorij
The Pastorij returns as our largest stage and a street where you can truly lose yourself to the sound, presenting the deeper and warmer side of techno. We’re reimagining the stage’s scenography entirely, thinking of ways to defibrillate a barren street, connect dancers in the front to dancers in the back and provide visual refreshment to a stage that relied on a heavy structured deejay booth.
Bungalow
Tucked away in the farthest corner of Doel, you’ll find two rows of overgrown graffiti clad retirement bungalows, offering a more intimate space, much like our Garage Box stage. By day you’ll be able to enjoy a decent walk, as the only way to get there is to cross the longest street of the village from North to South. At night, lighting will be implemented in the bungalow’s doorways, resembling door lights, and the still present street lanterns will be brought back to life, all playfully flickering.
Garage Box
Two rows of colourfully marked garage boxes with trees toppling over them set the boundaries for the Garage Box stage. A bright line of light skates back and forth past silhouetted heads, ending their travel at a simple deejay booth covered by a boat sail, referencing the nearby harbour.
Haven
The Haven stage is imagined as an open air club, a harbour for dancing, evolving with each year by adding platforms, lifting the dancers and allowing them to climb inside the stage’s structures, as well as reinventing the light scenography, referencing the lighting of a gas station in year one and the inside of a club in year two.
Live by RUIS
As of this year, Doel Festival will incorporate Live performances, with a program hand picked by RUIS, an Antwerpian organisation and event dedicated to celebrating underground music culture. The stage for our Live acts are the streets of Doel itself. Follow the sound waves emanating from the abandoned village, turn corners and discover their raw energy atop the black tarmac.
