Delft Fringe Festival, a leader in offering new stage talent for 15 years, opened quite remarkably on Wednesday afternoon, 27 May. It wasn't even about the impressive opening performance by Collective Tender, last year's audience award winners. They did bring a wonderful follow-up to their previous performance about cornflakes and porn, and the new one, called ‘Pretty privilege’, has since been seen at major festivals like ‘O’.
Nor did the first news of the festival come from Nitchka Wevers Bettink, head of programme at The Hague-based Korzo. This production house, as announced, will no longer present as many new makers as possible from next season, but, in addition to mentoring new makers, will make a selection of theatre, dance and circus talents who will each play their show in the theatre for 2 weeks.
100 kilometres away
Korzo chooses to do this not only to have the hall open more often, but also because it is of little use to new makers to perform one show for a small audience, and then travel further. You don't build an audience that way, Wevers Bettink argued. By playing in the same place for a fortnight, you can build a bond with the theatre, the city and the audience. After all, how often does it happen that a spectator just can't make it on the one day you are playing, or would like to point friends to your performance, but has to find out that it can only be seen 100 kilometres away.
That this inevitably leads to less space for new creators is something the theatre takes for granted.
Not so long ago, a comment like this on an occasion like this, with a room full of young and new creators, would have caused uproar. The great news is that this time the exact opposite happened. Korzo's plan garnered almost unanimous support, except for a few naysayers, from the likes of youth theatre impresario Karin Bannink, who is already struggling to sell all her productions. But she too quickly recovered.
Disposable theatre
‘We need to get rid of that throwaway theatre’, it even sounded from the audience, and that term, which once a Labour Party member would still be ashamed of (oh, tempora!), was adopted quite eagerly by the panel at Theater de Veste.
And rightly so, perhaps, because the way the performing arts system, and especially its funding, is currently regulated, has run into every possible limit.
In the hall, stories rang out from the mouths of several new makers about long production processes for a tour of seven performances in theatres that then demand another fresh new product from you. And if it's not the theatres, it's the subsidisers who keep demanding something new. That is indeed disposable theatre, and totally unsustainable, the actual theme of the panel discussion.
Producer Bannink added that the current system also does not allow unsuccessful performances to be removed from the repertoire. Even unsuccessful plays go on tour because subsidy conditions require it. The theatres draw in audiences, who are presented with a poor product, and so may not choose the theatre next time, but a cinema.
Less supply
So more quiet in the tent, and giving creators the chance to let a show grow and bond with a theatre's audience. It works in all the countries around us, where the compulsion to always come up with something new does not exist in this extreme form.
So that leads to a decrease in supply, if more theatres than just Korzo opt for longer playing periods. Wevers Bettink nuanced that somewhat by stating that not every theatre has to make that choice, but the trend became clear this afternoon in Delft. With the current oversupply of makers and especially performances, the system is getting bogged down. The Fonds Podiumkunsten, which is currently teetering from court case to court case, is noticing this, and so are the mid-career makers, who are instituting all these court cases, because they are having to make way with a heavy hand for all these new makers.
Thus, if more theatres adopt Korzo's course, the interesting situation arises that precisely those kinds of theatres take over the gatekeeper function from the subsidisers. This would make our theatre more like the British.
Most striking this afternoon, however, is the way this system is gaining popularity: from the young creators themselves, not from committees in The Hague.
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