Greg Nottrot is energised by the corona crisis: 'Let's enjoy the fact that there is finally room for experimentation again.'

'I did get startled at first by being so laconic under the lockdown. I thought: don't I care enough to step over it so lightly? I also understand very well that people are very sad that it is all off, but apparently I am a bit more fatalistic about that.'

Two months after the closure of all theatres because of the Corona pandemic, Greg Nottrot, theatre-maker and riddle-builder, cannot be caught in lethargy. Indeed, he is brimming with ideas. The foreman of the New Utrecht Theatre does not want to wait for a possible easing of the lockdown. Listen to the conversation here:

Cooking yourself

'Honestly: I do take on those constraints. It excites me because it always leads to new forms. The play planned for the festivals, 'Digging', cannot go on in the old way. That is why we are going to spend a month leading up to the 'performance' letting the audience share in the story. If you sign up, you will be sent something every day to take part in the scavenger hunt the performance is about. These will be clues and hints, but there will also be some recipes in between: "Cook this" or "Post this, because then you'll understand better what the story will be about later."'

Greg continues: 'There is also an option to join us for dinner soon. We are working with neighbourhood restaurant Venster, which is already organising 'zoom dinners'. Then you pick up your bag at their place, with dishes that have already been prepared to perfection, and really only need 15 minutes in the oven. It then starts with an online meeting with the chef, who tells you what he has made, and then you start cooking and talking together in "breakout rooms" with small groups of people. That's a really special experience.'

Still a full house

Together but still alone, and with strangers at the table without being ticketed. Nottrot also thinks beyond the lockdown, when people are allowed to go to the theatre again, but with more space between seats: 'For our performance about the US elections, this autumn, we have now dropped the idea of playing it not in one theatre for a very small audience each time, but in two cities at the same time. If Victor, my counterpart, is in Leiden and I am in Amsterdam, and our American actress is in America, with a third of the audience at home, a third in Leiden and a third in Amsterdam, you still have a full theatre.'

You just have to think of it.

'It is obviously still very much in development, because it is completely unclear what the theatres will be able to do after the summer. Technically it's also a bit of a challenge: what do we do if the connection doesn't materialise? Have we pre-recorded it then?'

In performances by Greg Nottrot, such as his version of The Cherry Garden, which was based on the conflict, true or otherwise, surrounding the family cottage in Greece, or his performance on borders, last year, truth and fabrication have always played an intelligent cat-and-mouse game.

Four scenarios

'The nice thing about my way of working is that it always stems from current events, and the concepts only form at a fairly late stage. And because real and fake always mix, that's also something that offers all kinds of possibilities in the form. It's also exciting, because you don't come up with just one scenario, but at least four. In which you are not sure which one will go through.'

So the play Graves, which was planned for the summer, will go ahead anyway. The story about his grandmother, who now that she has dementia starts whispering a German name the family has never heard of, may even be released as a podcast or radio play.

'We can stage it in Berlin Square. Under the canopy, we can fit a hundred spectators on one-and-a-half metres. I don't know how it will go, so I can't say whether it will go ahead. I'd rather make a performance that takes place in the spectators' living rooms. For that, I do research how to hear the audience's breath. If I do a Zoom meeting with 100 people, everyone is on 'mute' and I no longer hear the breath, I no longer hear the laughter, I no longer notice the reactions. It's a cliché that has been used a lot recently, but theatre is really what you play with the audience. How do you make that interaction happen between a hundred people at home and me as an actor?'

Vuelta

Typical Greg Nottrot to come up with a solution for that in due course, just like the performance he was going to make for the start of the Vuelta. Coming up with solutions is in his nature. 'I keep making plans. I had thought, once it became clear that the European Football Championship would not go ahead, that we would then come up with this one. On every match day, just commentate the match that day as if it was being played.'

Is nothing impossible, then? Even for Nottrot, there are limits: 'Meanwhile, I do have two daughters, so I went back from working five days to three, and that with three times as many ideas and four possible scenarios of each idea. I had to be a bit careful not to push too hard.'

Experiment

'Crazy isn't it: the virus actually calls for us to slow down as a world. I also agree with people who are now calling for artists to do nothing for a while: just wait, observe the world, let there be nothing for a while, there is nothing wrong if we don't make ourselves heard for a while. We'll come back ten times as strong after that. I get that thought. It's just not in my nature. I can hardly stop myself, thinking goes on. So I have to hold back a bit within the organisation as well. We don't have to be at the forefront tomorrow, let's explore things. And let's enjoy the fact that there is finally room for experimentation again. Because that's also what we lost for a long time. That was on the backburner. Now there is room for research again.'