Duration: 2014 - 2016
Location: Stedelijk Museum 's-Hertogenbosch
Participants: 80
Visitors: 220
Number of stages: 3

Geregisseerd Geluk (STAGED HAPPINESS) is part of the 3-year exhibition series Reinventing Happiness. The search for happiness is conducted in such an intense, all-encompassing way nowadays that it makes many people deeply unhappy. A vicious circle arises as our collective depression sends us on a new quest for happiness over and over again. The cycle seems inevitable and doomed. Escape is no longer possible.

In collaboration with theatre maker Paul de Bruyne Jeanne van Heeswijk started a search for Reinventing Happiness. This resulted in the art project Staged Happiness that over 3 years unfolded in 3 stages. The project started in the Stedelijk museum with no certainties and few assumptions, but with the idea that a sitcom, a blijspel (a Dutch term for situation comedy), will served as a launch pad. The word 'blijspel' comes from another time and place, when happiness was an everyday thing. It’s a destination you arrive at by doing.

Comedy rests on the pleasure of shared frivolity. So Van Heeswijk and De Bruyne searched for players willing to venture fearlessly onto the field and throw themselves into the game. A desperate search for natural happiness in an era when manufactured, reproducible bonheur is for sale in potion and pill form. In order to get the party started, public auditions for a “happiness play” where held at the museum. The auditions delivered a taste of unparalleled happiness. A steady group of participants continued to work together even after the activities in the museum where finished. The project was finally rounded off with a massive march of Happiness through the streets of ‘s-Hertogenbosch. A public exercise in the search for a collective Happiness experience.