Everything must go is a performative installation investigating the moral tensions of late capitalism through the lens of the shoplifter. For this work, Verhoeven interviewed 24 individuals who occasionally “forget” to pay—ranging from professional thieves to people who frame shoplifting as an act of resistance. Their testimonies became the foundation of a text that shifts between confession and accusation, where activism and opportunism blur and intertwine. As in his earlier projects, Verhoeven uses a clandestine act to probe broader questions about human behaviour. The work suggests a striking contrast between public self-image and private conduct: “In public, we tend to present ourselves as ethical and socially aware, yet when we believe we are unseen, our behaviour often reveals far more ambiguity.”

The performance unfolds in an exact replica of a supermarket aisle, complete with fully stocked shelves and surveillance cameras. Within this narrow space, an anonymous performer occupies the scene. Dressed in a pig mask and a Snow White costume, she embodies the fundamental contradiction at the heart of the contemporary shoplifter: predatory yet innocent, criminal yet political. Her inner monologue draws on interviews conducted for the project, as well as on texts by Jean Genet, Karl Marx, Slavoj Žižek and others who have examined the ethical dimensions of theft and consumption.

Visitors cannot enter the supermarket installation. They can only look in from the outside—through gaps between the products on the shelves or via CCTV monitors mounted along the corridor. Like guards in a panopticon, they observe the shoplifter in all her contradictions.

With dark humour and meticulous staging, Everything Must Go transforms one of the most ordinary places—the supermarket—into a sharp allegory of a disillusioned society. “Why be virtuous when the world is going to hell?”

“An impressive allegory of modern capitalism… The attention to detail borders on perfection. The audience stands there, chuckling bitterly.” — Theaterkrant