Theatre season opens with pep talk for paralysed artists.

To start right away with the rottenest news: according to Ferry Mingelen, D66 is not going to deliver on its election promise of 100 million reparations for the arts budget. The retired parliamentary journalist announced this during his opening word of The Theatre Festival, Thursday 7 September at the Amsterdam Stadsschouwburg. He had spoken to party leader Pechtold on Tuesday. The latter had said that the extra ten million he had received last year had been hard enough. So if there was any cause for celebration, it was now being pushed into the ground. While the season had yet to start.

A bit of a pep talk was needed, on that overcast Thursday afternoon. That pep talk came from playwright Lot Vekemans. It was her honour to pronounce the 'State of Theatre', yet another one. She started with the observation that all those previous inspired speeches had had no effect whatsoever. Lots of talk, little action.

Schulp

She went on to say that, in her view, the theatre world had crept further and further into its shell in recent years. Not only that: it had also become self-absorbed, concerned only with survival, with justifying why there had to be theatre, with defending its existence and whining for money.

Sharply noted from Vekemans, a writer who is now considered one of our most successful authors. Abroad. She then tried to give encouragement to the troubled sector, based on something she had learned herself.

Final product

When she started as a playwright, in the late 1990s, she said, she attended an international playwriting master class in Edinburgh. There, she discovered that in all countries of the world, the playwright is seen as an artist. The stage text is a finished literary product, which, like a musical score, is then presented to performers for performance. This was an eye-opener, because in the Netherlands she had learnt that a play is only a semi-finished product. The playwright provides material for directors, actors and dramatists who start scratching your work even before the ink is dry.

Thanks to that master class, she had learned to stand up for herself, and that had made her grow as a writer. It allowed her to break through internationally. So her advice to everyone in the room - and especially outside, because not everyone was there - was: stand up for yourself, don't linger in self-pity but get going, because no one is going to do it for you.

Getting started

'Don't bullshit, but polish', Rotterdam words, albeit slightly more poetic and worded more woolly here and there. Vekemans has recently been audibly annoyed by all the discussions about identity, accountability and money that dominate the art world. Just get to work, take risks, go down on your face and start again or do something else. Fresh words in a sector that will have to get used to the fact that the government no longer values difficult, searching, unknown or contrarian art in itself.

Afterwards, this opening made for plenty of conversations. Whether these will also take place during the festival? The hosts of the daily talk show announced in advance that theirs would only be about good news.