PODCAST - Naomi Velissariou's permanent quest: 'I wonder if I should do interpretation or connection as an artist.'

A major setback, it seems to me, but Naomi Velissariou is remarkably laconic about it. How did she experience the past Corona year?

'It was extremely busy and chaotic, and in a way unsatisfactory. With me, projects always went ahead when I thought they would not, but under dire circumstances. As a result, it was constantly switching between what was practically feasible and what was artistically sound. So it was a year of constant meetings and watering down and searching with organisations for ways to make things happen. I'm glad I was able to work all the time, though. So I also think I should be grateful for that.'

And you would be at Lowlands?

'It was wonderful to be programmed there, and unfortunate that it didn't go ahead, but for the organisation, of course, it is much worse. The big question is: will this kind of event continue in the future? I worry about how that will continue with life, with raves, with going out, with theatre.'

I also felt you were about to break into that rave culture.

'Well, no. I was exploring it, but switching to another genre is never an end in itself. I'm looking for something I want to tell all the time, and that involves a certain form. So that can also be film, or a book or record. So it's not like I'm making a switch to the rave world, but I really wanted these pieces to be shown in a rave environment.'

'The trilogy would be on Boulevard, and they also went to great lengths to make it as a safe rave in the Brabanthallen, but it did not succeed for the first two parts. It can be done with the third part. That was also made during Corona, so that is smaller scale.'

'I would very much like to perform the first two movements again in music venues, but that is now totally uncertain. So I decided myself not to perform the first two movements in an adapted setting. It was a difficult consideration though: should I protect my artwork, or should I adapt it?'

How do you envision the future, as a creator, now with Corona, in a world that may have changed forever?

'That is a question not only for me, but for the whole world. I move very fluidly in the world. So I will adapt. That's what all my work is about and that's how I live. There are plans to make films, and I'm thinking about a visual album. Big performances for people sitting remotely in a big hall? It's shifting gears, but it can be done. On a micro level, I will continue, and will continue to question that world. But if Corona never passes, we do have bigger problems than just making art.'

How do you do the more intimate part three of the trilogy now on Boulevard?

'We are now doing the big version, as it premiered last year, which we were going to tour with. It will be different every night, of course, but it's not a club rave. The audience cannot stand, which is essential for the first two parts. Part three is better suited to playing with a seated audience. At the premiere, I was extremely annoyed that the audience had to sit, but later, during a whole week of performances at Frascati, I really made that part of the show. It's a performance about the audience and the relationship between the audience and me.'

At a story in the Green talk about how you seem to have made yourself impossible for commercial films and theatres because you no longer accept the images of women in them. You are now making a series of performances aimed at the also highly commercial club culture. Is that your way of giving traditional thinkers in film and theatre a shit?

'Oh, no, I don't work like that. I never make work that responds to anything like that. That I'm entering the rave world now is because I'm exploring what pop culture means to me. I read a lot, I watch videos, and then I make compilations. That's a quest I've been on with all my work since 2013. That's a through-line. In between that, you do have to make career choices all the time.'

'I do really enjoy doing my own imaging. That suits me. It's hard as an actress, when I'm not in my own work, to do that own image building completely ignoring. But so that means I pick my jobs accordingly. I'm not very conscious about it. It's more that I think about whether I want to work with certain people on their quest.'

You have done a lot of training, including theatre science. That's not something you should advertise in the theatre world, I know from personal experience. How do you resolve that?

'I never tell. I'm actually a dramaturg and theatre scholar, but I never say that. That's not cool, as a theatre maker. Then you're on the other side of the fence.'

Why did you do that study, anyway? After all, you had already attended Dora van der Groen's pretisgious drama school in Antwerp, the school where pretty much all the greats of the Dutch-language theatre were schooled.

'I only spent one year with Dora van der Groen, out of my 18^e until my 19^e. I was so insecure. I thought, if I don't leave now, I never want to play again. Then I went to university with the idea that I would do a sabbatical year there. It was the first year of the bachelor/master system. I figured, if I study for two years, I will be a bachelor. My admission at Dora van der Groen was for four years, so that would just do. I would get my bachelor's and then come back to Dora van der Groen and finish it there.'

'After my undergraduate, however, I was gripped by the subject matter - literary studies, gender and performance studies, philosophy and film studies. I never wanted to leave and never wanted to play again. I then enrolled for a master's degree. After a year in that master's, I was asked to do a play. I started playing, but I didn't like it at all because I had become even more insecure. So I never wanted to play at all and did an extra year at university. I made sure I had a high enough score to get a PhD.'

'Only, when I had that high score, I went straight to drama school because I figured I didn't want to live the rest of my life at university. I was then accepted at the drama school in Maastricht and that's when it really started.'

'I deliberately chose acting school, because I just wanted to play. I didn't want to be trained as a maker, but school required that. Yvette Feijen, head of the programme and my mentor, said I shouldn't become such an actress, but should start "making". I had only just finished university and didn't want to have to think things up myself. I just wanted to play.'

'At school, I was looked up to, but when I left school after my final exams, there were no roles for me. I was too old for the Juliet roles and too young for the mother roles, which I did often play at school.'

'I had no job, and I thought: shit. Then I dug up my theatre science degree and started writing applications, and I'm actually still doing that now. I can write applications really well. That's my biggest talent. (laughs)'

For women at the theatre, being in their thirties is a tricky position, especially in the traditional repertoire. There are not that many roles for that age.

'While the biggest audience is women of that age. I think the commercial sector is now finding out that that age is represented more in the new stories. Then, though, the question is still which images of women you show.'

There are now many female creators your age who are speeding in the theatre world: Daria Bukvic, Davy Pieters, to name a few. Is the zeitgeist changing for the better, or is it a temporary upswing?

'You hope, of course, that it is a lasting change and not a hype. That's the danger though because it's suddenly going so fast now: that it won't stay. I hope it sticks, and I also hope it doesn't become the same as now, but in reverse. I sometimes fear that, that there will be a resentment, and people shout: now it's up to us.'

'It may be too theoretical and philosophical, I worry that there is now too much talk about everyone being allowed to have their own truth. This is hugely reinforced by social media. What was still hoped for in the 1980s, the multi-perspective, is then going to lead to islands all being created with people seeing themselves confirmed in their own peer group. Then we are even further apart. Activism is necessary, but it is also necessary to look to the future together. We need to strive for shared values, and not lock ourselves into our own truth. That is the dark side of it.'

You went to nunnery school in Belgium, and had traditional education. The Dora van der Groen drama school is also very solid and technique-oriented. The drama academy Maastricht is also strongly craft-oriented. In your work, but also when I see you speaking, I notice that technique in a wonderful way. Many Dutch people are less good at it.

'I really like the Dutch openness. The curiosity about each other. In the Netherlands, there is a culture of saying yes. Which I find super-emancipating. I get a lot of energy from that. In Flanders there is more scepticism, but when it comes to education, I think Flanders is better. When I sometimes hear the conversations about cultural education and education plans, I think: just give people a solid education. That's the most emancipating thing you can do. Give everyone quality education and do it for free. Education and healthcare are the two things in the Netherlands that scare me.'

'If there is really something physically wrong with me, I will go to Belgium, because I know I will be really helped. I also know that I got a solid education which meant my chances were as good as others. My parents were not rich people. Anyone from a working-class family can just do gymnasium at some kind of boarding school and no one comes to test whether you can handle that level, and that kind of bullshit. That psychologisation, individualisation, everything tailor-made: I think you should just give everyone a super good education and for free. That's very emancipating.'

'I learned to think for myself at school, but not because I "21st Century Skills" learned. I have things Learned. Kept my mouth shut until I was eighteen and listened. I think that did lead to how I am now. Sitting still and listening is out of date, but I do think it is important for the frame of reference. That you first learn to listen and don't have to think of everything yourself right away. When you are young, you shouldn't immediately have to interpret things from an individual you haven't yet formed at all. That gives too much pressure.

You have a little son who has to go to school soon. Will you send him to Belgium?

'No, it just stays in the Netherlands. I'm in the Netherlands now, so everything I do is in the Netherlands.'

Your performance now tells a pretty strong modern feminist story

'That's not true. Everyone writes that about it, but it is not true that I have become a radical feminist. I do question everything. I made a performance about radical feminism, but in it I also show what the dark side of that radical feminism can be. For that reason, I then also That article written for the Groene Amsterdammer. Because I want my own voice to be heard on that. In the public eye, that does put you right in that box.'

'If you don't know my work, you think: that's a radical feminist. But once you have seen a performance you know better. I recently had an interview with Marijn Lems for NRC in which I said, somewhat exaggeratedly, 'I do know that I tell something in every performance, but I just don't know what. I try to create a tension between content and form, implicitly giving you a kind of moral. Only, if you watch long enough, you can turn that moral into its opposite. People can't take that very well.'

People very much want to be sure where you stand, otherwise they don't want to be seen in the same room with you.

'I noticed that with programmers too, that they wanted to be sure in advance where I stood, and that I was not going to make misogynistic statements on stage. I said there was a very good chance that I was going to say misogynistic things on stage. I only say them in such a crude way that it is over the top. Moments later, I say the same thing about men. But that programmer then says: Are you sure people will go out afterwards with the right message? Was I sure it was a politically correct performance? I said: no, I can't guarantee that. Then you shouldn't programme my work. Then you will silence art.'

'If I have to give that guarantee in advance, I won't be able to make anything. The things I make can vary from night to night and from person who sees it. I can't control that. If I had to, I couldn't make art any more.'

'That's kind of difficult about these times, that truth is so complicated and hard to understand and that people need interpretation. I just wonder if I should do interpretation or connection as an artist. I believe art also has other functions and I want to choose what I make myself.'

The videos from Permanent Destruction on your website are cool, but also rock hard. An interview with you is circulating on YouTube, with Simon(e) van Saarloos, in which you respond very angrily to questions and even call her a retard. When preparing for this interview, I saw it, and for a moment I was afraid that this was going to be a very difficult interview.

'That's right, it was a skit we had made for my show about Susan Sontag. Somehow, it took on a life of its own on YouTube and people think I'm a huge hard-ass. Actually, that's kind of nice. I wish I could be like Susan Sontag in interviews.'