Opening #TF2010: 'Theatre should be at the forefront of discussion on society, instead of being dictated to by prevailing mores.'

On 2 September 2010, actress, writer, theatre and television producer Joan Nederlof opened the Dutch Theatre Festival with a speech that was as entertaining as it was provocative. As it was her turn to pronounce the annual 'State of the Theatre', Nederlof, born in 1962, seized the opportunity to call on her own generation to take a stand in the social debate. She did so in her own relatable way, known for her roles on TV (Deer Park) and in the theatre (Inside Out):

I am happy to make myself available as a guinea pig to the theatre science. I came of age in a postmodern, individualistic, secular free-market economy and am thus the living outcome of it.

In times of austerity, the theatre-maker says it is not enough to complain about the stepmotherly treatment of the arts by subsidisers and politicians. Although the temptation is great, she acknowledges:

I sometimes feel like that lady one row ahead of me at an Kunsten '92 meeting, who, when asked about the necessity of art, shouted in a pinched voice "art is oxygen!". So yes we won't get away with that now doll. Oxygen is free and art is not.

According to Nederlof, the theatre of her contemporaries stands outside society, is on an island and does not know how to bridge to society:

In my twenty-five years of making theatre, I have never experienced a really heated debate about the functioning of our society following a performance. Because that society was more like a foam mattress; if you planted your fist in it, it sprung along. Postmodernism prevailed and if you asserted something, at the same time all sorts of people asserted something else that was equally valid. Our hands were free but empty, we concluded. And so our creative involvement lay in form innovation rather than content engagement.

And so updating your work won't get you there:

The topical references can fly around your ears, there can be so many modernities clattering from the grit on the stage floor, so many times the word Uruzgan can be dropped, so many standing ovations, so many times the programme booklet says that the play refers to today's greed culture, in my view that does not automatically mean that what is shown matters substantially.

Nederlof thus calls on theatre-makers to be at the centre of society and, following what Polish poet Adam Zagajewski already wrote, to act as law and measure in our increasingly complex society.

Joan Nederlof's entire speech can be downloaded here: State of the Theatre 2010