Is a dramaturge more valuable than a public relations officer? Not according to Eline Arbo, since this year artistic director of the badly battered Internationaal Theater Amsterdam. She talks about "the long lines of the company" just as readily with communications staff. After all, people who put their lives at the service of studying the repertoire, the psychology of the director and the zeitgeist know nothing about attendance figures.
Last Wednesday, a nice story in the Volkskrant on dramaturges. In it, reporter Sander Janssens quotes Eline Arbo, who argues it is not the case that a director comes to stage performances on behalf of the company. "Almost all our titles are ideas of the director himself," she tells Janssens. Who argues that, in her opinion, "the idea that mainly dramatists come up with ideas for repertoire no longer corresponds to reality."
'Female perspective'
Shortly before, Janssens had quoted outgoing company dramaturge Johan Reyniers, who gave an interesting insight into how repertoire choices come about at such a company as ITA: "We had been looking for a new title for her for some time. A factor in this was that we wanted to build a bigger and wider audience for her, as she had not been associated with Ita for so long. So we wanted a well-known title, something that transcends multiple generations and fits her focus on the female perspective."
This is how they came up with Connie Palmen's The Laws, something that Eline Arbo was very happy with and also had a lot of success with. But who claims success? The dramaturge, or the director? The dramaturge gives an inside look, the director says how it should be told to the audience, preferably by a communications officer.
Public Theatre
So here the two sides seem to be in considerable disagreement. It sounds familiar to me. In 1989, I recorded almost exactly the same difference of opinion between dramaturge and artistic director of one of ITA's predecessors, the Public Theatre. For my thesis research on the performance tradition of Dutch-language theatre work, I and co-author Dan Rapaport also ended up with Guus Rekers, that company's resident dramaturge. Over a glass of whisky, this man gave a nice insight into the then practice of choosing repertoire at a large company: "Yes, Erik Schneider not working for a whole year, that's not possible, of course, so you decide to put in a 'Platonow' or an 'Iwanow', because then that's a fantastic role for Erik Schneider.[...] As the artistic direction becomes less coherent in terms of content, of course the other levels of input start working more. And that's what happened."
A little later, he said he was responsible for Hans Croiset's 'rediscovery' of Vondel: "That's actually a very 'mies' story. Through a calamity, that's how Lucifer came into the repertoire. Because Croiset came back from holiday with the plan to do a Schnitzler, an unknown Schnitzler, and he hadn't figured it out while on holiday. So: "What should we do now?" [...] Then the gods came to my rescue with an idea about Lucifer. Yes, how it could, it could, but that's how it happened. The cast that had been reserved for that Schnitzler could so be transferred into that Lucifer. Well, and we did that and it worked and he took a lot of credit for that. Then he smelt that pooch of, 'Jesus, there's trade in that!' and Vroem!"
Acknowledgement
Now it must be said that Hans Croiset disagreed with Guus Rekers on this history as much as Eline Arbo does with Johan Reyniers claiming the discovery of De Wetten. It is also fair to say that after rediscovering Vondel and reading our thesis, Croiset decided to focus his new company 'Het Toneel Speelt' on reviving existing Dutch-language repertoire, so his love was - and is - deep. And the role our thesis played in that is officially recognised, before you start thinking I'm doing a Reyniersje or Rekersje here too.
But back to that fittie between Arbo and Reyniers for a moment. Things don't seem to be going very well between the two. Reyniers is, of course, also someone who has long been part of ITA's now abandoned corporate culture. Of course, that says nothing about his actions, but if you don't get along with the new boss, that boss may therefore want to fire you. This is also tricky in a reorganisation if the conflict is personal. Of course, for reorganisation reasons, you can terminate an entire department. Saves a lot of hassle. You dissolve the desk, then the man behind it has to go.
Perhaps a year from now, ITA will start looking for communications staff with a dramaturgical background.
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