Back to the primal power of magic, through youth theatre. With thanks to Jetse Batelaan.

Plays often end in chaos. An overturned liquor cabinet, a blood blade among royals, we are used to a few things. Jetse Batelaan's latest play, baroque and sharper than he showed before, also ends in beauty, but then that is actually the beginning. Indeed, the ending is sterile and stripped of any life. But that is where the performance begins. The artistic director of Theatre Artemis, a company that also counts eight-year-olds among its target audience, turns everything around in 'The End of the Beginning of the End'. And it works.

For those not yet familiar with Batelaan's work, this theatre maker manages to make spectators watch almost nothing for a very long time, after which they come home with huge stories. Texts are usually hardly there and scenes are not really played. You can try it for yourself by sitting on a bench in a square, and then agree with yourself that everything that happens before your eyes is theatre, which has been worked on for weeks.

Bitterball backwards

His latest, 'The End of the Beginning of the End', is more theatre than Batelaan's earlier work. Indeed, it begins with the end of a theatre night, when the last technicians leave the premises. So now they come in, backwards. From now on, the film is played backwards for an hour and a half, which produces rather hilarious moments, like a technician bumping his head, or a bitterball being too hot on the first bite. Do that backwards for yourself, and you'll understand how hard it is.

Through all sorts of entanglements and paradoxical events, the ensemble works towards a finale that is heartbreakingly beautiful. Ultimately, the whole of the more than five quarters of an hour that this performance lasts is about the magic of the stage. And that is something we down-to-earth adults sometimes overlook. That we too still watch magic when we go to the theatre. And that that magic still works for us intelligent people too. You should go to a youth theatre performance just for fun to refresh that feeling.

Energy

After all, youth theatre, and certainly that for children of primary school age, does not do conventions. That at least applies to Dutch youth theatre, which has occupied a unique place in the world of theatre for years. On Monday 6 September, a number of youth theatre makers were invited to the Dutch Theatre Festival to explain to Dutch theatre students why their profession is so fascinating. It resulted in an encounter that gave this audience a hefty bulk of energy.

Moniek Merkx, for instance, can talk finely about how all the anarchy in youth theatre since the 1980s is actually thanks to Annie M.G.. In a workshop, she showed - while talking to the students - how you can work directly towards a performance from a simple personal story told by a student, just by staying close to yourself. Merkx's work, which is accompanied by a lot of music and dance, is ultimately rooted in those personal dreams and fears of the child inside yourself. This is also why adults at her performances are invariably in tears after half an hour, while children are still watching with fascination.

Undiscovered beast

Totally overwhelming was a presentation by the educational team of Theatre Artemis, Jetse Batelaan's Bossche company. During the lockdown they could not bring their performances, but they could, with only one actor, make theatre in schools. Batelaan set his colleagues to work on devising performances for one actor, which would then last three days, because that seemed like a good idea in times when travelling and many trips were impossible.

The ideas that resulted are worth a separate story. In short, Batelaan stirs the children's imagination and manages to draw them into a story for three days that is lived through during the school day, and beyond. Whether it is the search for 'The undiscovered beast', or a construction worker working on a project in school for three days in slow motion: the children are captivated. How I would have loved to have experienced something like this in my primary school, instead of the puppet show we got to visit in the 1960s.

Prices

In his latest show, Jetse Batelaan shows himself rather gloomy about the future of theatre. I tend not to agree with him on that, with that ironclad past of at least 30 centuries. His own performances are the most convincing proof of that.

Oh, yes. And why in youth theatre you can just have a black actor play the son of a white father, and the young audience has no problem with that, while in theatre for grown-ups it still can't be done? And why isn't an actor in youth theatre actually eligible for the big theatre awards that will once again be presented at the Theatre Festival? Just some questions that 'the sector' needs to rethink.