The International Choice does, what The International Choice has been doing for years: divide opinion and loosen tongues.

"We are blind to the big changes in the world and meanwhile we argue with one-liners on Radio One."

These words, by reporter Robbert van Heuven from the mouth of writer Abdelkader Benali chronicled during the Choice Debate on Tuesday 20 September perhaps best captures what The International Choice was all about. Artistic director Annemie Vanackere is showing perhaps her most political face in years with her latest edition of the Rotterdam festival. Not only in the traditional debate, but also in the performances.

Sometimes that turns out to be a bit shaky, Simon van den Berg observed after watching Free Mason On that same Tuesday:

"Thus Free Mason has become a rather double-hearted performance, where irony and purity want to stand side by side. If you want to do that consciously, it is tricky, but if you just let it happen, like Lima with the cross in front of St Paul's Church, it is schittating."

All by itself, because deeply rooted in Spanish culture, there was the performance Gogotha Picnic by Rodrigo Garcia. In it, it was about God and what he might or might not mean more to us. The two performances required a total of 34,000 hamburger buns. A form of food consumption that could be called wasteful, though it might also be the weekly consumption of an overweight American family. In oeder case, the show shakes up, especially in countries where the Catholic god is still firmly in the saddle. And it ended in silence:

"Just when things start to get really nasty, the performance completely changes character. The delivery boy from MacDonalds, until then a fringe figure in the performance, undresses and sits down behind the concert grand piano that has just been brought up. After which he turns out to be called Marino Formenti and turns out to be a phenomenal concert pianist who performs Haydn's 'Sieben Leztzte Wörter' from memory and in supreme concentration."

Reviewer Wijbrand Schaap, having become a bit more musical thanks to this experience, was a bit less enthusiastic about the show Cry me a River, in which performer Anna Mendelssohn single-handedly re-enacts an entire climate summit, trying to make us understand that we are going to perish from bullshit:

"It's an interesting statement Mendelssohn makes, but the execution could be better. However nicely she demonstrates, for example by painting herself a skin disease, that the world is dying while we all talk endlessly, if you show that something doesn't touch, it therefore doesn't touch the viewer either"

Saturday was the day of food and the future. Our reporter Jowi Schmitz had some bizarre eating experiences while trying to enjoy Muesli with Maggots with a chef friend on the schouwburgplein. The podcast she made of it can be listened to here:

Imagining 2020 in International Choice 2011

Davis Freeman's theatre programme could hardly captivate her:

"Defining Energy is most like a talk about Energy. 'Edison invented the light bulb and that light bulb will soon no longer be made.' No buts. Although, to be fair, your reporter did not know that Edison once electrocuted an elephant."

Meanwhile, reporter Anne Bonthuis cycled through the city with the people of Parfum de Boemboem and learned to look at the city differently:

“Rotterdammers step up gaping and look indifferent to the wrestling. When the whole group is finally downstairs, the busker in the corner is overlooked. He probably doesn't belong, after all?”

The middle week of The International Choice does, in short, what The International Choice has been doing for years: divide opinion and loosen tongues. That that could include food this time is new.

The festival continues until 2 October. Information.