The Stormruiter

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Eastern Friesland legend meets 100 Frisian horses

The international theatrical event of the year, starring a hundred glossy Friesian horses. Director Jos Thie takes you to the year 1650 in this impressive performance based on the internationally renowned story Der Schimmelreiter. The year of the legend of Friesland. 

One hundred gleaming Frisian horses in the lead role of an unprecedented theatre piece. It all comes together in Storm Rider, a smashing performance about the overconfident dyke master Hauke Haien and the eternal battle against the water.

It promises to be one of the largest cultural productions of 2018: Storm Rider, based on the nineteenth-century novel Der Schimmelreiter by Theodor Storm. Commissioned by the Royal Frisian Horses studbook and the Faderpaard Foundation, Jos Thie translated the German novella into a grand musical theatre piece, with hundreds of Frisian horses in the lead role.

Hauke Haien and his white stallion

Storm Rider tells the dramatic story of the ambitious and quirky Hauke Haien. A dyke master with only one goal in mind: build a dyke that defies the centuries. On a white stallion, he storms over the dykes, rousing up dyke workers. Until, during a storm surge, the dyke breaks and Hauke is swallowed up by the sea together with his white stallion.

Legend comes to Friesland

To this day, people see the ghost of the dyke master and that of his horse on the mudflats. Jos Thie, who wrote earlier productions like ABE! and Peer Gynt, brings the legend to Friesland and takes us to the year 1650.