He is the greatest director in the Netherlands. But also the least honourable theatre-maker we know: Johan Simons. The man whose star has been rising since the 1980s is now in Munich. But he is not staying there. After putting the local company Kammerspiele on the international map some more firmly, he is looking for new challenges.
Den Bosch
Earlier, Mayor Rombouts of Den Bosch reported that Simons working with young creators in the frayed edge area 'De Heus'. Today, Saturday 16 August, Simons tells Volkskrant reporter Annette Embrechts that those plans were leaked a bit too early. Because Simons actually wants to go to Rotterdam. Or wait: he is going to Ghent. But will also become intendant of the mega-festival Ruhr Triennale in Essen. Oh. And he has been asked to become intendant of the Wiener Burgtheater, the mecca of anyone who is serious about theatre.
Rotterdam
What will come of it all: it is uncertain. What is certain is that Simons has a thing for Rotterdam. He was born near the city on the Maas and declared he would love to take over the reins of the ro theatre in the late 1990s, when it was just in crisis. Although: back then it was called 'merging'. Because Hollandia, the company with which he and musician Paul Koek conquered the world, was too good to dissolve.
Ghent
History turned out differently. After Utrecht also dropped out as a location, it became Eindhoven. And that was too far from home for Paul Koek, after which Hollandia effectively ceased to exist. Simons moved to Ghent (while also wanting something to do with Amsterdam) and from there to Munich.
Grand
And so now he wants to go back to Rotterdam after all. Because Alize Zandwijk is leaving there in a few years' time. Alize Zandwijk, who makes quite nice theatre at the ro theatre, but has not put the company on the map as grandly as her predecessor Guy Cassiers. And even though the husband of NRC reviewer Herien Wensink, Eric de Vroedt, would like to take her place, according to Johan Simons that is wrong: 'with me it will be great', he declares to the Volkskrant.
Three cocks
So the theatre seems to remain for a while longer in the hands of the three cocks who have owned it since the end of the last century, and who occasionally fight each other fiercely, and sometimes lovingly: Ivo van Hove, the youngest of the bunch, is firmly ensconced in Amsterdam. Theu Boermans, by now half over the disappointment of not sitting in Ivo's chair, is based in The Hague, as well as playing sold-out theatres with Soldaat van Oranje and Anne. And Johan Simons, in other words. Who is everywhere the other two are not.
Varik
What it will be? It's unclear. I do know what is going to stay: Varik. The hamlet in the Betuwe where Simons lives in a beautifully converted little school, together with his wife Elsie de Brauw. Elsie doesn't really need to go to Vienna, or Munich, or Essen. Or Ghent. Elsie doesn't mind living in the Betuwe. She wasn't going to move to Munich or Ghent. She's certainly not going with us to Vienna.
This is what I wrote down about it, in a interview in 2011:
She could have gone with Johan Simons to Munich, where her husband is now intendant at the Kammerspiele, but that was not what she wanted: she remains attached to Ntgent, she plays in Belgium, in the Netherlands and in Germany. So they are only apart in a practical sense, De Brauw stresses: 'Because of the 15 years I have lived here, I have become a real outdoor person. Johan asks every day (she puts on a sad little voice): "But you are coming here, right?" But I'm not going to be permanently employed there.
Rotterdam? Ruhr region? Johan can commute that best. Vienna did not.
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