In my timeline on Facebook around this time, photos and updates of this day from previous years pop up. Colourful pictures of tents on De Parade, the square below Sint Jan in Den Bosch. Images of heat waves, happy crowds, beautiful locations with expectant heads of happy festival audiences.
It is hard for me to watch it because this year is surrounded by a sense of grief. By Corona, crowds are dangerous, clammy halls are potential flashpoints and together on the bus only allowed at one-and-a-half metres. Still, Theatre Festival Boulevard is going ahead this year.
What festival director Viktorien van Hulst, together with her team, is pulling off seems almost impossible, but it fits the tradition she has developed since taking office. For a few years now, Boulevard has been as much about massive events as intimate encounters.
What they have now conceived, or even - on the eve of the original opening - are still conceiving, is a festival of intimate encounters, one-on-one happenings and safe coincidences.
Groundbreaking
'Many theatres are now removing seats. A hall that normally holds 200 people will still have 30 seats. We started exploring new places, new set-ups.'
With that research, the festival could be groundbreaking. While many people continue to assume that the new normal will be a mild variation on the old normal, in these times when a working vaccine against the coronavirus has not even been found yet, you can also prepare for a future where keeping your distance and avoiding contact are the norm.
Who better than artists to show the way in such a case? In any case, in Den Bosch they figured out that they had to act decisively: 'We figured: nobody expects a festival anymore, so now let's just do what we can do, what we want to do, what is needed by the makers and what is needed in the city.'
In search of the audience
All overboard, then, and start with a virtually clean slate. Good idea. One of the biggest objections I personally have to one-half-meter art is that previously already closed buildings with an empty auditorium are even more daunting for people who don't go there every day. Then you soon find yourself sitting in an expensive empty hall with other people from your own network for a lot of money.
That doesn't suit a festival, they also thought in Den Bosch. 'Our concern was,' explains Van Hulst, 'That we would now have a very homogeneous audience of theatre lovers, because everything has to be by appointment. So we quickly decided to reverse the movement with at least half of the offerings, i.e. to go out and find the audience. Our makers now go into town, pitching their tents wherever they can - figuratively speaking. Hence the alternative name 'Sender Boulevard': the artists now move through the city like postal packages, stopping off everywhere for a while and leaving something behind there.'
By bike
She cites as an example the rather idiosyncratic Flemish artist Benjamin Verdonck, a creator regularly featured on Boulevard: 'His talent is to create a world on a square metre. He now wanted to make that principle available to people. Even if you can't go out yourself, you can still create a world in your own home.'
'So he goes around the city on a bicycle to show his work and let people feel how they can do the same themselves: create their own miniature world. A few people will then stand there each time.'
Tessa Smeulers, Head of Programme at the festival, cites Alexandra Broeder, also a frequent guest on Boulevard, as an example. 'She works a lot with young people with mental vulnerability. When we talked to each other about a project in Den Bosch, she told us that she had discovered that - contrary to her own expectations - those young people sometimes also experienced the lockdown as a special rest. 'Normally their life in the institution stands still while the world goes on, but now it stood still outside too.'
'With that fact, she is now working in Den Bosch. She talks to young people, counsellors and psychiatrists. Alexandra is processing these conversations and is now translating this into a theatrical product that should be active in a week's time. This is a gain compared to other years, there is room to let the process lead, instead of the express train determining when something is finished.'
Canvas
As a visitor to 'Sender Boulevard', you will have to look for the art. Small art, but with great impact. I just think that the path they are now choosing in Den Bosch is a fruitful route to a future for performing arts in the new reality. Something Viktorien van Hulst acknowledges: 'For us, it's a step further in a movement we already started several years ago. For us, it is also easier to do that than when you have a fixed building with a stage. After all, then you are tied to what you can do within those four walls.'
'We have the luxury of being able to redefine the canvas all the time. The canvas is big, it covers the whole city. We feel the space to move forward next year with what is urgent at that time. That was also in our policy plan: just innovative ideas to look again at playgrounds, again at the environment, at contact. We will continue with that.'
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