DE MAAN

DE MAAN is a 175-seat theatre in Mechelen, built for visual and figure theatre and occasionally used by concert presenters such as Lunalia. Its calling card is architectural: the main room sits in a gold cube, a Moon-lander-inspired addition beside restored historic fabric. For a showgoing reader, that makes this a seated, close-scale arts house, far removed from a club or standing-room rock hall.

From city puppets to the gold cube

The roots reach to 1948, when puppet-theatre pioneer Jef Contryn founded Mechels Stadspoppentheater. In 1968, Mechelen acquired the medieval Heilige Geestkapel and adapted it for the city puppet theatre; the company adopted the DE MAAN name in 1995 under director Willem Verheyden. The site paused for restoration in April 2013. A 2015 renewal restored the Heilige Geesthuis and added the conspicuous cube; DE MAAN moved into the completed premises in November that year. The company shifted again in January 2020, when Stef De Paepe handed artistic leadership to Greet Jacobs, Gorges Ocloo and Femke Stallaert; Simon D’Huyvetter joined Jacobs and Stallaert in April 2026.

The room today

Today, DE MAAN commissions and presents visual theatre, puppet and object work, workshops and participatory projects, with children and young people at the center; visiting productions share the programme. Music bills make the most sense as seated concert events within that arts-house policy, as its inclusion in Lunalia’s venue list suggests. Choose the 175-seat main theatre for a standard performance; the 124-seat smaller room handles rehearsals, research and intimate productions. A city-run culture café anchors the building, while public spaces have wheelchair access.