Cultural journalist since 1996. Worked as theatre critic, columnist and reporter for Algemeen Dagblad, Utrechts Nieuwsblad, Rotterdams Dagblad, Parool and regional newspapers through Associated Press Services. Interviews for TheaterMaker, Theatererkrant Magazine, Ons Erfdeel, Boekman. Podcast maker, likes to experiment with new media. Culture Press is called the brainchild I gave birth to in 2009. Life partner of Suzanne Brink roommate of Edje, Fonzie and Rufus. Search and find me on Mastodon.
I remember it well, it was during a meeting of the magazine industry, sometime in 2012 or 2013. A grave mood hung in the Amsterdam debate centre De Balie, because the circulation and turnover figures of the major magazine publishers (plural at the time) had just been announced. The downward trend that had started years back had nothing to do with the crisis, but...
It is mouse-still in the studio auditorium of Korzo in The Hague. A few dozen spectators in the stands, a tangle of bodies on stage, shuffling, sighing and exerting their utmost strength, sliding, climbing and balancing on, over and under each other. Impressive, sensual too, this continuous movement that does not run from applause moment to applause moment, but rather lets you breathlessly follow how it...
The less real theatre is, the better it works. That insight dawned on me again this weekend, in Utrecht's Stadsschouwburg. Twice, in fact. Friday with the reprise of Aluin's Twelfth Night, Saturday with Koning Krump, the masterpiece by Het Nut. Two Utrecht groups, once sprung from the same theatre school, and drunk in the same theatre cafe, where...
The associate artist for the 78th edition of the Holland Festival in June 2025 is American choreographer Trajal Harrell (Douglas, Georgia, USA, 1973). Harrell is one of the most important international contemporary choreographers. His unique style incorporates elements from various dance traditions, fashion, music and visual art. With universal human emotions and themes of connection, tragedy, tenderness and vulnerability, Harrell's...
It was a remarkable report, this morning. According to newspaper Tubantia, the new cabinet was still willing to make extra money available for regional museums in Twente. It would be a sum of 1.5 million euros, earmarked to set up a joint presentation of Twente's history by De Museumfabriek in Enschede and Techniekmuseum Oyfo in Hengelo. According to...
On Saturday 19 October, Maas theatre and dance's new toddler performance PRRRT PRRRT FLAP FLAP (3+) will premiere at the Maaspodium in Rotterdam. Creators Sara Giampaolo and Esther Schouten build on the line of toddler theatre that Maas has developed in recent years: big themes brought in a playful way. After the premiere, the show will tour until February 2025
There are finer ways to wake up than with the finance minister. This Eelco Heinen was speaking to the Radio 1 News on Wednesday 18 September, and he really felt like it. Cheerful, perky, and full of good cheer, he told how they were going to energetically implement VVD policies in the Schoof Cabinet. And then followed the next...
The cultural sector can breathe a sigh of relief. Apart from the damning increase in VAT on everything beautiful and fragile from 9 to 21 per cent, the Basic Cultural Infrastructure (BIS) has been secured for the next four years. With inclement winds coming from the corner of PVV, VVD and BBB, this can be called a windfall. There is even a modest increase coming,...
Thirty-five euros an hour for a space that can just fit a piano or a drum kit. That is the rent charged by the municipality of Utrecht to music teachers who wanted to continue their practice on Utrecht's Domplein after their cooperative went bankrupt. For many of the teachers who thus became victims of their board's mismanagement, that means a cost increase
On Saturday, I caught myself having a wonderfully sexist thought. Not surprising, probably, as sexist thoughts appear to be in the standard package of the product 'man'. But there I was, sitting in a not so very full auditorium during the Gaudeamus Festival at For Real by Andrea Voets. There, the idea struck me that it was pretty weird to see a woman concentrated...
At 1 hour and 50 minutes, it happens. That's when Nicolien van Vroonhoven, culture spokesperson for the governing NSC party, makes it clear what the fuss is about. "The cultural sector should also take a look at itself, because there are whole groups in society that have nothing to do with culture." Venue: pop temple Paradiso in Amsterdam; the occasion: a church early...
'Plattenbau,' the driver says with some horror as we pass some boarded-up concrete porch flats. The GDR-built flats are in Alt Schöndorf, two kilometres outside Weimar's historic centre. Nailed shut for years, and squatters didn't look after them either. A hated legacy, but more by the West than the East. The...
Wat is de overeenkomst tussen een reggaetonbandje, twee pizzabezorgers, een slager, een talkshowhost met neanderthaler-DNA, het Vietnamese Rode Leger en een Chinese universiteit? In de verbeelding van Guillermo Calderon: een koe. De Chileense theatermaker en auteur is inmiddels een beroemdheid in het internationale theater en toert sinds afgelopen zondag door Europa. Althans: of hij er zelf bij is, weten we…
The management of ITA (International Theatre Amsterdam) is terminating its collaboration with Ivo van Hove with immediate effect. The world-famous director of high-profile, often rather serious performances, had become discredited. An unsafe working climate had developed under his management. Not only the strict leadership by van Hove himself, but also the transgressive behaviour of his life partner and regular designer Jan Versweyveld was...
You tell the best story by putting your audience on the edge of their seats right from the start. Using well-chosen fragments, Liesbeth Zegveld managed to build a story in which the climax stunned everyone. Even the excellently prepared Margriet van der Linden sat at the moment suprême with eyes like saucers and chin on...
Going over the edge, exploring and pushing boundaries, pushing the limits of bystanders' comprehension, performing feats no one expects. And seeing gnomes walking through a forest. Or reading things in water. Seeing half a boy save the world. The first 11 days of August 2024 were legendary, never to be forgotten. And all in the...
"How nice it would have been if, as a (male) viewer, I had really been taken out of my comfort zone by the fact that the anger was not so obviously played and commented on. How thought-provoking I would have been when they weren't making goofy faces at their Rudi Carell-German that - if implemented consistently - would have made me laugh....
Het leuke van festivals als Boulevard in Den Bosch is dat je na een paar dagen vanzelf verbinding legt tussen alles wat je meemaakt. Niet dat alles op elkaar gaat lijken, zoals in de sport. Daar bepaalt een enkele chromosoom of honderdste van een seconde het verschil tussen wereldvrede of de apocalyps. Daar moet alles zo gelijk zijn dat over…
Right by St John's, next to the Tower Stage where Theatre Festival Boulevard holds its talk shows and free live concerts, is 'Tent Purple'. That tent is different, this year. Outside, kids in baggy trainers are doing break moves, inside it is steaming hot. For ten days, Tent Purple is Cypher HQ, the home of Bossche hip-hop and street culture, also known as...
Yesterday, someone from Amsterdam told me that he had long thought Boulevard was a provincial version of an Amsterdam rosé party: lots of conviviality, food, drink and mediocre art. Fortunately, after just one visit, he was convinced that something has grown in Den Bosch over the past 40 years that cannot be compared to other Dutch festivals. There...
It's cucumber time and many journalists are on holiday, so Culture Press has to turn up to interpret something that doesn't smell quite right. This time it is the press statement the directors of De Tocht have put on their website. In it, they explain how it was possible that this musical company, Friesland's pride, could suddenly go bankrupt. In a nutshell: it was not...
We had barely recovered from the rebirth of Celine Dion. The traditionally long-winded and kitschy 'Son et Lumière' with which France had this time made the opening of the Olympics a quintessentially French event had also unleashed a storm of protests with a tableau vivant after the sadly just short of famous painting 'The Feast...
"As for the victims, it was mainly employees with managerial duties who experienced the cross-border behaviour. This seemingly contradictory result with the discussed hierarchy is explicable from the fact that the perpetrator of the transgressive behaviour in the majority of these cases is (a) board member(s) or other manager(s)." Ivo van Hove suddenly left as director last year
With the new far-right cabinet, a new reality has also arrived for the arts. As before in Brabant, where the provincial councils no longer placed arts and culture under science and education, Schoof-1, despite an NSC minister on Education, Culture and Science, puts culture under the heading 'Culture, Sports and Leisure'. This is evident from the new classification of the...
"I didn't hear a song I didn't know." Over white wine after Trajal Harrell's The Romeo, the lady was quite grumpy. I might add that I hadn't seen a move I couldn't have made myself. And yet that did not make me cranky. On the contrary: rarely have I been so happy and relaxed...
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