Johan Simons receives 150,000 euros: 'I thought, that must be for Elsie'

This year's Prince Bernhard Culture Fund Prize goes to Johan Simons. At the announcement, in a meadow below Utrecht, the director was surprised: he suspected the prize was meant for his wife, Elsie de Brauw, widely regarded as one of the best actresses in the Netherlands and Belgium.

Simons himself is the most important director in the Netherlands. The award is therefore justified, even though he no longer needs it income-wise. His international career has also made him financially independent. His company in Germany receives more in subsidy alone than all major theatre companies in the Netherlands put together. A figure that is put into perspective when we consider that it is the only company of significance in the state of Bavaria, which, with almost 13 million inhabitants, is almost as big as the whole of the Netherlands.

Simons may spend half of the prize money himself on, for example, renovating his house in Varik, while the other half is deposited in a so-called named fund. Such a named fund is money managed by the Prince Bernhard Fund, but for which Simons is allowed to come up with his own destination. He hasn't decided yet, but we could imagine him putting it into training theatre critics. After all, the Münchner Kammerspiele's artistic director is not very happy about the level of that group of journalists. They are said to be partly responsible for the stepmotherly treatment theatre in the Netherlands in particular enjoys from politicians and the press these days.

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