Can Shoplifting Be Justified? This Artist Wants You to Decide.

Between two aisles of a grocery store, a woman is having a destructive meltdown. She opens a jar of applesauce, spits in it and returns it to the shelf. She squirts a tube of mayonnaise onto the floor, then smears tomato sauce from a container on her chest.

Climbing the shelves, she recites a soliloquy on the joys of shoplifting. “Why call it stealing?” she says, with surprising calm. “I call it a love affair.”

All of this takes place within a giant glass box on the stage of the International Theater Amsterdam as part of the six-hour performance installation “Everything Must Go,” by the Dutch artist Dries Verhoeven. Through Thursday, spectators can enter and exit the theater during the performance to peek into the box or can watch the performer unravel on TV monitors displaying CCTV footage.

It is the latest disquieting offering from Verhoeven, 49, who combines elements of theater and visual art to create performances that are engineered to leave the audience trembling.

“I’m quite a nervous person, and I like this feeling of nervousness, because it means there’s something at stake,” he said, while the glass box was being assembled at the theater earlier this week. “When we’re nervous, we are activated.”