What does the canalside have against Drenthe anyway? Now Marieke Heebink again. It started with Yvonne Kroonenberg who, after a visit to Assen, spoke of "Simple people with those classic Drenthe heads, but with expressionless eyes. I walked around there and tried to understand those people in the same way I try to immerse myself in the spiritual life of animals." Afterwards, Kroonenberg hurried to the Concertgebouw, although she apparently understands nothing about Mahler without prior readings.
Finally, justifiably much ado, la Kroonenberg wriggled into all sorts of corners with the toe-curling low point being that her comment "Everyone calls themselves human too these days" was just a joke.
Laughter.
She will want to sell books there too, we immediately think and wish her well in doing so. And mutter: luckily you only mentioned Assen, because it is clear that for Assen we should read: everything outside a small part of Amsterdam.
Much more serious is when not much later Marieke Heebink, one of our best actresses, once again feels she has to put the province away, annoyingly referring again to one of its provincial cities for Drenthe.
[bol_product_links block_id=”bol_5454d8df5a039_selected-products" products="9200000021765860″ name="crown" sub_id="" link_color="003399″ subtitle_color="000000″ pricetype_color="000000″ price_color="CC3300″ deliverytime_color="009900″ background_colour="FFFFFF" border_colour="D2D2D2″ width="250″ cols="1″ show_bol_logo="undefined" show_price="1″ show_rating="1″ show_deliverytime="1″ link_target="1″ image_size="1″ admin_preview="1″]Because Meppel, that's apparently bad too: "Sometimes it's hard, but look: I'm here playing three nights for a sold-out hall in New York and thank God I don't have to go to Meppel," Heebink told De Volkskrant.
Of course, Toneelgroep Amsterdam's success in New York is more than due to her, and who wouldn't rather go to New York than Meppel, if at all possible at taxpayers' expense?
That sounds a bit populist, yes, provincial even.
But equally provincial is the unthinking parroting of Melle Daamen, member of the Council for Culture and director of Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam where Toneelgroep Amsterdam usually resides. Because we know by now that Daamen is no advocate of spreading culture. Everything should be kept in Amsterdam and flown in if necessary.
And in the case of Toneelgroep Amsterdam let it fly out, of course, because anything is better than Meppel.
Would Heebink actually know where that is?
You can get there, counting from the centre of the universe Amsterdam, in just under an hour. The average New York resident would consider it a quiet suburb, with lots of surrounding nature and an ideal place to raise your children. Something for the super-rich.
But Marieke Heebink's thoughts do not extend that far, now that, after an hour-long flight, much hassle at customs and a long taxi ride, she has landed in downtown New York. Nor does the time-consuming struggle to get even a few blocks away in the big apple, for instance from your hotel to the theatre, bother her at all.
Thank God not to Meppel.
Wybrich Kaastra, director and programmer of that oh-so-dreaded theatre in Meppel responded, you wouldn't expect it from the province, extremely courteously: http://www.schouwburgogterop.nl/wybrich-blogt
English (UK) 
Nederlands 
Français 
%20Actrice%20praat%20vanuit%20New%20York%20Melle%20Daamen%20na:%20Godzijdank%20niet%20naar%20Meppel!){kind=link}
I completely understand why the director of Meppel writes such an inspired response. But surely it should be clear that Heebink used ' Meppel' as a (rather clumsy) example. For the same money, the theatre director of Kerkrade or Middelburg had now climbed into the pen. Quite a different story from the book's interviews with Peter Middendorp, who indeed takes a rather heavy-handed approach to his hometown of Emmen.
Comments are closed.