Stage Your Voice participant

Myrthe

""Talk to your friends about misogynistic behavior!""

- Myrthe

"A few weeks before the Stage Your Voice auditions, a picture with the unanswered app: 'Text me when you get home' went viral. This was in response to the murder of 33-year-old Englishwoman Sarah. Every woman knows this text or the Dutch "App me when you get home. No matter how small and trivial your bike ride is, we say this to each other. We also all think about the safest route home. Especially when it's dark."

Dealing with it on a daily basis

"We women all know it. Appen when you're home, key between fist, phone at hand so you can pretend you're calling someone or actually make an emergency call if necessary. The ball needs to start rolling. We need to speak out about this as women, but also definitely have the conversation with the men around us. Do they realize that the women around them deal with this on a daily basis?"

Boys will be boys?

"It would be great if through my song the penny drops with men. What you say to a woman on the street, you are saying to someone's sister, daughter, friend, mother. She could have been your sister, daughter, friend, mother ... Be aware that if you walk close behind a woman, you might make her feel unsafe. Catch up with her, or cross over. Boys will be boys? No, boys will be held accountable for their actions. Behaving is not handsome or good. That should be the norm."

"The collaboration with the Residentie Orkest was great. Classical music is still pretty new to me, but matched my song so well. Lots of instruments starting small, fragile violin sounds, slowly building up to bombastic. And yet it also stayed nice and poppy, so I appeal to the target audience with the music."

Follow Myrthe on her journey to the stage!

Myrthe (20) studies at the Dutch Academy of Performing Arts. She gets angry about catcalling, street harassment and the fact that as a woman you always have to think about your safety.

The title of her song "I'll app you when I'm home" is familiar to every woman, but is far from the mind of many men. Myrthe wants to empower women and wake up men.