Boulevard 2025 opens: celebrating festival in times of revolt

Marte Boneschansker managed to keep me entertained for an hour while everything inside me rebelled against what she made me experience and I eventually switched to passive resistance. It was a fascinating thing to experience and I can recommend it to anyone. So for something like that, you go to a festival, like Boulevard in Den Bosch.

The Avignon of Brabant kicked off under a pretty sad starry sky on Thursday 7 August. In her opening remarks to a packed Parade, artistic director Dana Kibbelaar reminded us that it feels pretty weird to open an upbeat summer festival when things are not going well in the world. . 

Group dynamics

So when Kibbelaar addressed all that in a few words, I had already finished that hour in which theatre-maker and journalist Marte Boneschansker posed the question of when and why you might rebel to a group of 50 festival-goers. To do so, she divided the group first through preferences, such as whether or not you fly or eat meat, and then also through secret assignments, while a fabric wall on wheels kept putting people in a different corner, sometimes literally.

Meanwhile, through speakers in the four corners of the room, lyrics rang out from people who had chosen to rebel, ranging from Extinction Rebellion supporters to a tractor farmer. 

If there is one thing you can get me riled up with, it is with this kind of group manipulation. I felt more and more anger rising as the twisting with the rolling wall progressed, but at the same time became fascinated by how the rest of the attendees handled their situation. Some chose to clamp down on the wall, others formed a union, still others dropped out, and me? I started doing something passive that wasn't actually allowed. 

Good side of history

Boneschansker thus managed to make us all think very carefully about what rebellion is, and how complicated it can be to take sides. After all, how do you know when you are on the right side of history? Afterwards, we talked with a very small club about what we had experienced. That kind of aftercare can be useful when you decide to take the show somewhere this season. Your human image could use a boost, after all?

I experienced a very different kind of rebellion at Louis Janssens' performance Family. In this performance, five queer performers talk about how their families reacted when they came out of the closet. As might be expected, it was different for everyone. Some met a mother who opened the champagne, others never spoke to their parents again.

Deep loneliness

The stories about parent-child relationships and dealing with siblings are relatable, even for those who are not queer. This makes Janssens' performance universal, but also less exciting than his earlier work. Moments of rebellion occur in every family, in every family there is resistance to fixed roles.

In any family, people usually find out too late how much they actually meant to each other. The final image rounded out the show nicely, sending me home with a deep image of lonely people around a laid table. Universal, and yet very beautiful because of it. 

So much emotion for just one day of Festival Boulevard is quite a lot.