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.
Good timing always remains tricky. Just as the middle class is getting ready for the Sinterklaas season, the Supervisory Board of Kunstencentrum Witte de With announces that the name is going to change. That name came up for discussion in the wave of public agitation over appropriation, unionist images and reparations for the Netherlands' slavery past. Initially, it seemed to...
Interesting news (from August) from the HBO Monitor was released into the world today by lobbying club Arts 92. Never before has unemployment among newly graduated artists been as low as in 2016. At just 3.1 per cent, it is even below the average for all HBO students. The average hourly wage of fresh artists, however, is more than 30 per cent below that of their colleagues
'When Paul moves his little finger something happens. They have a scene where Jochem draws a picture of Paul. Paul is posing naked. And that lasts. That takes a long time. You and I, as amateurs, would fill that with all sorts of poses and movements, but Paul doesn't do anything. You think. And all sorts of things happen. HIj is doing something, then, but....
Art has been utterly politicised. It has been creeping, and faster than I thought. Artists now make political speeches, conduct rounds of public participation in the service of lobbying organisations. They discuss identity instead of telling the stories that take us beyond the delusion of the day. That cultural funds are now gently starting to talk about social connection too,...
This week it was announced that the VSB Fund is discontinuing the VSB Poetry Prize. That announcement came rather hard throughout the art world. After all, the fund stated that it was going to focus much less on culture and more on social causes. It appears to fit a trend. More funds are shifting their focus from culture to society. At least, that ...
The decision will be official in mid-September, but behind the scenes it has already been made. The Netherlands will have a very small basic cultural infrastructure for the performing arts, and a very large fund that anyone who wants to make theatre, dance, mime or music must apply to. I asked around a bit recently, and so that's what it's going to be. That way, politicians can't...
Last month, RTL investigated how badly libraries in the Netherlands were doing. An article on this site then made it clear that writers are more than necessary victims of this. Indeed, by moving library collections to schools, libraries would escape the obligation to pay a fee (the so-called 'lending right'). This, of course, called for a...
Especially for our regular readers and subscribers, temporarily available for everyone to view: the e-book with all the stories about Theatre Festival Boulevard 2017 listed. Members and subscribers can also download the book, and read it on their e-reader.
Wine tasting and listening to medieval music are usually things people only do with very serious faces. So it took five glasses, three drunken singers and a good hour before the mob in the sober Heilig Hart church in Den Bosch loosened up a bit. With a Frontignan to boot. You do start fantasising about the amazing dinner you had at...
Claron McFadden is a phenomenon. Josse de Pauw is a phenomenon. Arnon Grunberg is a phenomenon. LOD is a phenomenon. KVS is a phenomenon. Theatre Festival Boulevard is a phenomenon. I did not yet know pianist Kris Defoort, but he is also a phenomenon. As is Henry Purcell, but we've known that for a couple of centuries: also a phenomenon. After such an opening paragraph...
Anyone who is young, a little nicely educated and otherwise generally of good character does not go on a North Sea cruise. A cruise on the North Sea, that's what you do if you have no imagination, have bad legs or are too sick for anything else. Believes Wunderbaum. The theatre collective that likes to take care of the vulnerable of this planet is...
The most beautiful end of the world is in Lars von Trier's Melancholia. Floating poplars, a woolly planet eating us in a wave of atmospheric mist. I'd sign up for it. Anything better than the sloshing slabs of earth full of screaming puppets in the failed 2012 disaster film. Then again, not as much fun as the end of times in The Hitchhikers Guide...
Industrial estates are weird. They lie souring on the outskirts of one city, only to seamlessly morph into the same site on the outskirts of another. Once they were A-locations, places of visibility and the incarnate dream of reconstruction. Now they are low-grade structures, halls with a front door, a visible office for the Dirk and a pathetic...
The prize for the longest and most artful kiss of 2017 has been given away and goes to Conny Janssen Danst. In a small tent on the square below Bossche Sint-Jan, this danced kiss forms the technical and dramatic highlight of Clarity. Two dancers, spinning pirouettes while keeping their lips connected, a video artist and the floating music performed live by iET were on Saturday ...
Heroes are not always the smartest people. Indeed, most acts that have gone down in history as heroes have been thoughtless actions. That happened to succeed. Pure luck. Against every heroic act, therefore, there is an unknown but not negligible number of senseless deaths of would-be heroes. The main character of the theatre play The Heroes, which I attended in Den Bosch on 4 August,...
Opening speeches. Every festival has one. Or two. You have to go through them. As a guest, but also as a host. Something should be found on it. Of course a point has to be made, a flag raised, a champagne bottle bang introduced. And also the sponsors should be thanked. In these times of a retreating government, there are more of them every year. And.
'Can I ask you: do you know what time is?' Greg Nottrot's question cannot be straightforward, as I am the only spectator. MIjn spot is uncomfortable: a chair sinking into fresh gravel on the curious Utrecht plain christened 'Berlinplein' by city developers. I witness an early rehearsal of De Denderende Tijd. In that...
That libraries are doing badly was already known. But in the news about this, made public on 27 July by RTL, there is still something hidden that the editors themselves leave underexposed. Because who is paying the real price in the austerity operation? Indeed, the writers. The libraries settle that with a simple trick. They cancel the rent from their own...
Would like your interpretation of the cover girl's look on the Theatre Festival Boulevard programme book. It may be projection, but I see a slightly overwhelmed desperation in those eyes, whose eyebrows have been replaced by two playfully placed arches of St John's, above: Den Bosch on my mind. Where to start, mostly. In the book, especially abundance. Glassily designed...
[This post was already online under the title 'Save us from the Transition Office', but has been updated in a few details] While you are preparing for a well-deserved holiday, people in the arts sector are working on a new model. That new model is needed because the old model is no longer adequate. That old model, and we are of course talking about our...
I held my heart. Patrick Nederkoorn and Oscar Kocken had been tempted by television to bring their brilliant gem 'Zomaargasten' over to the living room. NPO3 still. The channel targeting millennials. I had visions of channel managers, dramaturgs, audience specialists and gussied-up boys and girls well over forty that these two little artists would...
'I would love to have a human resources manager on staff, but yes, quite a shame.' Dixit the director of a medium-sized arts institution. As in the rest of the Dutch SME sector, in the arts sector personnel policy, or HR policy, is something that is at most done on the side. Anyone who has ever got it wrong can tell great stories about...
The advantage of being a subscriber to Culture Press is, of course, mainly that we can exist thanks to you. So our independent sound remains audible, so you get the interpretation of the news as you get it nowhere else. In June, a total of 14 authors hit the road for you to see as many Holland Festival performances as possible....
Radio Kunststof is one of the most successful early-evening programmes on our national disaster channel Radio 1. That success is partly due to its great formula: a long conversation with a more or less well-known figure from the arts and media corner. However, much more important reason for that success is the broadcast time. Between seven and eight in the evening, very...
Sometimes you don't need a lot of words for a great story. Often, few words also require more effort than many words. That idea Blaise Pascal once managed to coin. Yesterday, on the penultimate day of the seventieth Holland Festival, the statement was reinforced in another, unexpected way. Australia's Back to Back Theatre told the story of...
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