According to some, Wim T Schippers died of grief. This is said to have been caused by the literary knockout blow dealt to him this spring by author and VPRO colleague Adriaan van Dis, who, in a book, recounted his relationship – which had been ongoing since 1985 – with Schippers’ partner Ellen Jens. Schippers, who died last month at the age of 83, never responded to this appropriation of his private life, through which Van Dis reduced him to ‘the other person’ in a relationship that revolved around him and Ellen.
Whether that is true – that sorrow – we will never know for certain, just as we will never know what Ellen Jens would actually have made of the whole story. Van Dis allows himself the freedom of literary imagination.
Lifetime Achievement Award
But did Schippers really never say anything about it? Interviews – insofar as they make any sense – never touch on his private life. Nor does Schippers’ work. Yet something striking happened to me this weekend. With a reading group consisting of seasoned theatre enthusiasts and actors in Leiden, we read – as a tribute to Schippers – *Sans Rancune*, the script of the television play that was awarded the LIRA Lifetime Achievement Award in 1993.
The television game show, which was broadcast by the VPRO in 1986, has since gone down in history as a classic Schippers programme. We see well-known Schippersian Slapstick, featuring exploding televisions, characters throwing up and Chinese food ending up in places it shouldn’t be. We also see André van den Heuvel, a celebrity at the time, in a cameo role as a surly waiter in a restaurant.
Big questions about life
All that mad chaos could cloud one’s view of just how brilliant the script is. Because when you read through the script together, after assigning the roles, you come across dialogue that is not only sharp and hilarious, but also tackles life’s biggest questions head-on.
*Sans Rancune*, directed in 1986 by Ellen Jens – who, according to Van Dis, began a secret relationship with him in 1985 – deals with a love triangle and having children, but of course also with the purpose and necessity of life and procreation. Dora, played by Carla Hardy, invites two men, Henk and Salco (Dick van den Toorn and Sjoerd Pleysier), because they could be the father of the child she is carrying.
Triangular relationship
After a road accident, a visit to a Chinese takeaway and an exploding TV, it turns out the pregnancy isn’t as bad as feared and nobody needs to be frozen. Salco, the opportunistic manager of budding pop star Coby, leaves the flat at the end, saying: “Sorry everyone, and… no hard feelings, right?”
It must surely be a mere coincidence that Ellen Jens and Wim T. Schippers were busy in 1985 preparing and writing a screenplay about a love triangle, whilst, according to Van Dis, this was in fact happening in their private lives from that year onwards. But it is amusing. Adriaan van Dis might see it as source material for a novel. Wim T. Schippers might well write a television play about it. That script is worth reading again, or even staging. Without any hard feelings.
Why was I born?
Why am I dying?
You don’t hear anything about that beforehand
Before you know it, you’ll be in the same boat
Before you know it, you’ll have got on board
and you have to run round and round for your life
Before you know it, you’ll be kicked out again
just as it was perhaps taking a bit of getting used to
(Theme song ‘Sans Rancune’, sung by Wim T Schippers.)
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