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'I will never go to anything undergrounds again,' sighs a lady as she leaves the auditorium. She looks pained, after more than an hour and a half of Neutral Hero by director Richard Maxwell and the New York City Players. The paper description of the show may therefore lead a potential visitor astray. A 'country opera' sounds far too...
What art can accomplish. At least Enschede gained a church, thanks to the people of festival Grenswerk, which lasts until 2 October. Because, where there used to be a somewhat dull square next to Enschede's railway station, there is now a church made of colourful Lego blocks. Intended as a multifunctional festival pavilion. Temporary too, because the lego building blocks can...
"What we lose audiences massively with is that if we give seven shows a week, quietly three of them are so substandard that people say 'And now I won't go for three years'. What we need to do is put the performance level back on a structurally high level." One of the statements made by composer Jeroen Sleijfer during the lively roundtable discussion - with no table...
"We are blind to the big changes in the world and meanwhile we are arguing with one-liners on Radio One." These words, penned by reporter Robbert van Heuven from the mouth of writer Abdelkader Benali during the Choice Debate on Tuesday 20 September perhaps best captures what The International Choice was all about. Artistic director Annemie Vanackere...
A procession of bright red and green bicycles snakes along the Meuse, ridden by people looking around curiously, conferring with each other and wondering at every moment if 'this is part of it'. The Parfum de BoemBoem ticket in their pocket is proof: this is not an ordinary bike ride, but one with theatrical surprises. Guide Sereh enjoys the questioning looks and leads the group to the first location: the waste incinerator in Rotterdam-South.
Listen here to the podcast/work in progress by Jowi Schmitz who attended the event with chef Natasja Postma: Fantasising about 2020 in International Choice 2011 Liposuction fat. Blood. Vomit. 'You can look at it that way too!' says the Appetitheque's food designer excitedly. It doesn't bother her that her thin-walled jelly pudding, processed cola and her yellow-white lumps of beef salad are still...
Far more people waved at the Queen on Princes Day than stood on Malieveld a day earlier to protest against austerity. Why are we unable to revolt? And what can we learn from the Tahrir Square uprising. These were some of the questions that came up during 'Lessons in revolt', the debate...
Opinion pollsters take note: "People give the moderate answer to most questions they are asked in life. The characters in 'This is not a love story' are very ordinary, very average. In that, it clicks between those two. It's an ending where you feel an enormous satisfaction." Enthusiasm prevails after the opening weekend of The International Choice of the...
For the opening night of The International Choice, the Rotterdam Schouwburg was briefly transformed into Berlin's Volksbühne. The same black plastic rags on the walls, the same ugly yellow front curtain and - most strikingly - the seats in the auditorium have been replaced by white beanbags. Those beanbags, by the way, are widely despised and mocked in Berlin. They should...
Let's start again with yet another sloppiness of the Rutte government: that damned VAT measure on the arts, which are the only ones to be bounced to the 'normal' rate of 19%. VVD doesn't like it, CDA isn't happy about it, but, because tolerance specialist Martin Bosma once had to play a red toadstool in the school play, he has forever...
Update: the poem in question was not meant to convince Voltaire of the Prussian thrust, but an Italian, Francesco Alegerotti. A scrabeus poem by Frederick the Great has surfaced. A poem, whose existence but content was unknown. Until now, that is. Today, the German quality magazine Die Zeit comes out with the full text. And Bild Zeitung has...
'The problem with art in public spaces is that you can't avoid it. At least with art in a museum, you can still choose not to go to the museum, but with these works, you are literally forced to walk a long way to miss them. That fact, and the fact that you can...
"My commitment to the city (Rotterdam) and the orchestra knows no end," Valeri Gergyev spoke on the occasion of the Gergyev Festival taking place in Rotterdam this week. This is good news, as the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and the former principal conductor still get along well. And to be backed by this global top-five conductor is...
On Sunday evening 11 September, the VSCD Drama Awards, the VSCD Mime Prize, the VSCD Youth Theatre Awards and the AVRO Toneel Publieksprijs 2011 were presented at the Gala van het Nederlands Theater. And that you then know that VSCD stands for the Association of Theatre and Concert Hall Directors and AVRO for General Free Radio Broadcasting. The award for the best male lead of the past...
Often, publicity texts conjure up an inappropriate image of the performance they refer to. "The air base as a no man's land: a military state wiped out and where nature has taken over the area," is one such. The text belongs to Welcome in the human zoo, an experiential theatre performance created by Suze Milius and Bram Jansen. Such a sentence evokes associations....
"You are my sunshine," sings a woman very softly. Meanwhile, the audience sits in pitch darkness. We are trapped. Banished to a shelter that, it seems, suddenly has no exit. It is a real shelter in which theatre-maker Davy Pieters holds her performance Helium. Shelter 313 at Soesterberg Air Base once served as a refuge for personnel. Via...
Soesterberg Air Base is full of large hangars, sheds and other massive buildings. All dream locations for theatre-makers, it seems. Director Ilmer Rozendaal made a different choice for her performance Thousand Yard Stare. She placed the solo in a small, airy oak forest containing an old and dilapidated bunker. The timelessness of this place turns out to be ideal for her small and human...
A clearing in the forest. It could be idyllic, but from the forest come suspicious noises. Men are singing and pulling tractors. The echoes of explosions echo. It's all just fake. It's just theatre - which nevertheless inspires fear. Daria Bukvic, a newly graduated director from the Maastricht Drama School, created a play about her mother. Who...
Ok. It is not Victory Boogie Woogie, the Mondrian painting that, in a distant and then cultural past, embarrassed ministry and municipality of Hilversum, because of the planned sale of the canvas to pay for the renovation of the town hall. Still. 'Schoolboys' by Marlene Dumas is also a canvas by a cherished painter, and you don't sell that either
Pim van Klink is his name. He has been popping up everywhere lately. Especially when the malicious subsidy orientation of the cultural sector needs to be pointed out, every medium calls Van Klink first. Last week, he once again threw his hobbyhorse into the henhouse in the NRC and was invited to join Buitenhof. And according to our trench-coat-clad...
Arts organisations are subsidy-addicted and so we are withdrawing subsidies. The VVD's approach is clear. On the exact how, they appear to need to think longer about that, now that there is so much opposition from the country. Cold Turkey, the treatment proposed by tolerance partner (nice word in this context) PVV, could well result in deaths. To...
The Dutch Theatre Festival opened with combative speeches by its director, jury president and patron. Joop van den Ende called for a big lobbyist. We wonder who is strong enough for that.
Nice, that secretary of state of hard rock and Tom Clancy. Mr Halbe Zijlstra-san has once again lived up to his change manager name in China. But in a slightly different way. In the land of eternally sealed mouths, he opened the Dutch stand at the book fair there, with a speech that once again rammed Dutch values into the Chinese. Anyway...
Ever known that 'The Wedding of Kloris and Roosje' was first performed in 1707, and that it is the forerunner of today's New Year's Eve conference? Thanks to the theatre encyclopaedia, which will be available online from 1 September, these and many more facts can be found. The Theaterinstituut Nederland (TIN) is the initiator and provides much of the content of...
Every disadvantage has its advantage: Whoever steals a sculpture from a public garden frees up space for a new work of art. Residents of Utrecht's Willem de Zwijgerplantsoen looked at an empty pedestal for a year because 'their' sculpture 'Homo Ludens' had been stolen by bronze thieves. As no one expected the sculpture to be returned yet, the municipality organised a competition for a replacement sculpture....
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