Theatre festival Boulevard has a theme. This is new, and actually unusual for a large-scale festival like the one in Den Bosch. After all, how do you find so many performances for those claimed 120,000 spectators that are all about that same theme? The solution is simple: you don't have to. You can also attach a theme to a few appealing performances and a single section of your programme.
That was the intention of brand-new director Viktorien van Hulst this year. The frayed edge behind the Verkade Factory, last year still under the name The Heus a gathering place of 'young makers', should have offered the new interpretation. Only, after prolonged insistence, rumour has it, from an activist apparently rather keen on art, the municipality found a tiny fibre of asbestos in a piece of old moss ín a drainpipe. Usually no cause for panic, but now the TRAMKADE was turned into no-go area declared by a not too brave deputy mayor, who did not want a fuss during the summer holidays.
Malicious rumours, of course, but with that, the theme actually fell a bit flat. The new director could no longer show the world what her substantive direction would be with the Bossche festival. Still, thanks to the help of a lot of local entrepreneurs and institutions, a solution was found within a few days. No longer as intimate as the enclosed area of Tramkade, with its post-industrial romance, but still atmospheric enough to capture the imagination.
The MariaPavilion, a restaurant housed in an old sanatorium, now hosts the meetings of Boulevard 2015. Because meetings are what it's all about: between people, but especially between people and the city, between art and life. And between artists and the public. This is also where the artist catering takes place, and, as a spectator, you can chat with the makers afterwards.
The Maria Pavilion also features installations by artists who have done very exciting things with the encounter theme. The Flemish poet Peter Verhelst has built a little room full of upside-down dripping candles, and provides it with his wistfully charged texts. Behind the building is a little room decorated by Alexandra Broeder, where you can meet an actor, at least when he is not sitting at home overcome with emotion, which was the case on Monday 10 August. That leaves only his gently rotting apples and a letter explaining what he had wanted to tell you. Touching and quite confrontational. Opposite, a mountain has been built within which you can merge with another festival visitor.
Such installations fit in perfectly with those already discussed here performances by Rimini Protokol and Boukje Schweigman, Oscar Kocken's talk show and the TED talk by Lucas de Man. Those are the more theatrical depictions of the encounter theme. You can go into real depth at that Marian pavilion with Lotte van den Berg. Each day, this theatre-maker engages with a different group of invited guests on a current topic that happens to be at the festival. These people, who do not know each other beforehand, meet in sessions starting at one o'clock in the afternoon and ending with a joint dinner in the early evening.
This Monday it was about mourning, farewells and burial. The occasion was Ann van der Broeck's dance performance, which was supposed to play at a cemetery in Den Bosch, but which was cancelled at the eleventh hour because the management did not want any problems with opponents of such an idea. Earlier, in fact, this performance had caused a fuss in Alkmaar.
Lotte van den Berg is not into raw current affairs. So her talks are also not about the pros and cons of theatre in a cemetery, but about how people deal with mourning, with saying goodbye, and how they shape it. So Ann van den Broeck was there, the managers of the Bossche Cemetery were there, a few funeral directors and municipal officials, and an architect. And it was all about personal experiences. I met the participants at the meal, and they were all full from the day they had experienced. enthusiastic about the new insights they had gained, tired by the depth of the conversations.
It all seems very exclusive and private, but the format of this event is meant to be open. In fact, anyone can join in. This was better organised on Tramkade. Now, you feel a bit scared to sit down with complete strangers on a real restaurant terrace. So we will have to wait for next year, when even the last remnants of asbestos have been cleared away, and TRAMKADE programmer Nina Aalders can let her ideas float freely on Viktorien van Hulst's theme.
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