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.
(Volume podcast corrected) This crisis will accelerate the disappearance of small shops run by small independents. Although it would be nice if actions to do your shopping right there made a difference, competing with the gigantic offer of the big online chains is almost impossible. That is why we should cherish them while they are still around. And not...
Utrecht-based theatre group Aluin is in dire straits. Like all other theatre companies, they cannot do their work, and performances have been postponed or cancelled. That it does not only apply to ongoing tours is now apparent. Performances scheduled for autumn and next spring have also been cancelled. The company reports this in a press release. Alum would...
Lot Douze delivers to your door. By bicycle. With her bookshop Over Het Water, she focuses very specifically on her neighbourhood, Amsterdam Noord. Now that everyone has to stay at home as much as possible because of the corona situation, she experiences an increase in demand. Online, customers in Amsterdam Noord now also know how to find her well. Because of her customer focus, she has a...
'Your hands can't stop you anyway, so I will always make things. But I'm not just an artist pur sang, I also want to keep communicating.' Chantal van Heeswijk is an artist. She had a packed schedule, until mid-March. 'I am always busy in many ways. But that's almost always work involving a lot of people....
'Exercising at home is very nice to do. In your own living room, you have no shame.' Dereck Cayla is associated with ICK Amsterdam, the capital's urban dance company. Now that all performances are down and he can no longer train with the company's dancers in the studio, he offers his lessons online. For ICK's own professionals,...
Just a breather from the stress. Today I am talking to Yolande Melsert. She is cultural attachée of the Dutch embassy in the Indonesian capital Jakarta. Because of the corona-lockdown, she is temporarily back in the Netherlands. Reason enough to look back on an eventful year in relations between the Netherlands and its former colony. Indonesia is still a young country. You notice...
Slowly but surely, the absurdity of the rescue measures for the cultural sector is sinking in. The national museums will not have to pay rent for three months for a while, but will have to pay it back retroactively once the crisis is over. Entrepreneurs can get extra support worth 4,000 euros, provided they have business premises outside their homes. Actors, directors (also freelance journalists, by the way) and artists...
It's not 50 billion, like in Germany, but it's more than nothing: the support measures Minister Ingrid van Engelshoven announced today for the hard-hit cultural sector. And, who knows, this may offer openings to do a few things completely differently after this crisis. For instance, it is great that the national museums do not have to pay rent for a while,...
'It may sound very double, but somewhere a moment of peace, a moment of contemplation, is something you always long for. That the trigger now is that pandemic is not nice, of course, but still." Fedor Teunissen is artistic director of Asko|Schönberg, the world-class ensemble founded by the world-renowned conductor, composer and pianist Reinbert De Leeuw. Die...
Machteld Kooij sees at least three or four people she has trained pass by every night on the news or the big talk shows. She calls herself The Secret Weapon of Hilversum and now there is also a book: The Monster with the Golden Eyes. We all have to deal with it from time to time: stage fright. And Machteld Kooij has excellent tips ...
An online party with a few close friends, and that you then invite a musician to perform live there. It can be done, and Deborah Jacobs would think it a fantastic idea. The musician, music teacher and lyricist from Breda had just about got her act together when Corona struck. All at once, all performances were cancelled and the...
‘Blijf zoveel mogelijk je dagelijkse routines doen, als er een ramp gebeurt.’ Willem Jaap Zwart is directeur van theater, filmhuis en kunstencentrum Concordia in Enschede, en hij weet waar hij het over heeft. Als inwoner van Enschede maakte hij de vuurwerkramp mee, en ook toen was het devies: toon veerkracht, en blijf dicht bij jezelf: ‘Op de dag dat het…
Gisteren las ik deze update van Madeleine Matzer op facebook: ‘Twee jaar geleden koos ik dit uitzicht. Zo mooi. Zo stil. Zo sereen. En zo goed passend in het hectische en dynamische leven dat ik normaal gesproken leid. Waanzinnig zinnig werk met prachtige en inspirerende collega’s, een groot en heerlijk sociaal netwerk, en dan ook nog al die kansen op…
Leon Giesen, also known as Mondo Leone, said goodbye to mainstream theatre some time ago. He played - until Coronoa struck - increasingly at meetings and seminars, where the audience is more massive and attentive. But now that market has fallen away, and Leon has come up with something new. Listen to this race storyteller's story in our podcast in...
'Like asking after a play or a concert which seats they had in the auditorium.' According to Gerrit Heijkoop, it is not interesting to know what software you can use to share knowledge online, or organise video chats. 'You can go to Facebook, to YouTube, and then there are all kinds of programmes. If you want to communicate, it goes...
‘Het was heel raar om hier weg te gaan. Zo’n plek die altijd aan is, waar het altijd druk is, waar het altijd licht is, dat was nu gewoon zwart.’ Lieke Timmermans, manager Marketing en Communicatie van TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht kan het nog steeds niet helemaal bevatten. Donderdag 12 maart 2020, na de persconferentie van de regering, moest het programma…
When he started for himself in 2006, the CoC's question was not, how Oscar Kocken would later deal with a global pandemic of apocalyptic proportions, income-wise. This is just to point out what a stooge our minister of economic affairs is, and how we can yet gain some understanding of the wall of misunderstanding where the...
UPDATE Friday, March 13, 9:30 a.m.: After the Culture Council sounded the alarm on Thursday night, the Lower House passed a motion urging a support package for the affected cultural sector. The text of the motion, tabled by D66, Groen Links, PvdA, Partij van de Dieren, Denk and 50Plus, reads as follows: 'The Chamber, having heard the debate, whereas meetings with...
Fred Goessens has been dead, but is still alive. As uncompromising as ever. The Netherlands' most reliable actor makes an interim will after twenty-two years with Toneelgroep Amsterdam. 'I had shit on everything' This interview was published 10 years ago in TheaterMaker, the trade magazine for the theatre sector. As Fred Goessens is now leaving ITA, the company where he once...
Talent is often developed thanks to considerable opposition. Rodaan Al Galidi got talent for life thanks to more opposition than a white, former blond Dutchman like me will ever meet. He escaped from Iraq and then spent years in the purgatory of the IND and COA, the abbreviations that define the border of the Netherlands. He wrote down what he...
I have often resisted thinking of the Netherlands as a business. After all, a country cannot lay off people, or divest unprofitable sectors to make more profit. So anyone who speaks of the BV Nederland has not understood it. There are no competitors that you can fight out of the market while being entrepreneurial on those few square kilometres of polder land,...
There is something incredibly cosy about it. While outside the storm is howling through deserted, boarded-up shopping streets full of demolished mini houses, baking pasties against the malady. But so it does work. On the side of The Kop, the most famous stand at the Anfield stadium on Liverpool's Oakfield Road, Dutch artist Jeanne van Heeswijk established a neighbourhood cooperative in 2012, when megalomaniacal urban renewal plans...
After all, we did spend just under three hours on something completely nonsensical. Stupid, of course, because we had already written ourselves on 27 November 2019 that today's little debate in the Troelstra Room of the Lower House would be totally pointless. Everyone already knew that too, not least the movers of the motion, including Lodewijk Asscher ...
When a Dutchman thinks of art, he thinks of buildings that cannot support themselves, played by, or hung with work by, people who cannot sustain themselves. So money must be added, and we call this subsidy. In this way, art subsidies become a suspicious form of welfare, more suspicious than the billions in income support that wealthy...
A real estate agent once confided in me that a bookcase in the living room saves thousands of euros in the resale value of a house. In a negative sense. This fact always does well at parties, and book lovers (my network is full of them) grudge it. On a tour of Manchester Central Library, the head librarian proudly told us that the café...
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