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.
The Dutch Dance Audience Award 2012 was awarded on Saturday 9 February 2013 to the Belgian performance Et Après By Isabelle Beernaert. During the festive ceremony on the closing night of The Hague CaDance Festival, awards were also presented to
Once upon a time, subsidised theatre was a left-wing hobby. Now, two years on, subsidised theatre has effortlessly conformed to the prevailing, much more right-wing trend.
Writers like to talk, and people like to talk about, with and through writers. As much as that may be reason to organise a literature festival, it is also why
Whether Tahmina Akefi is a good writer, I dare not say. The Afghan beauty can at least glue sentences together, and knows how to add an erotic layer on top. But whether this means she surpasses the average penny novel, or whether she has nothing to offer but oriental soft porn anyway? Tricky.
We spoke briefly at Writers Unlimited 2013 with the woman who has been giving workshops in poetry to schoolchildren for a few years now. And we wondered again if rap wasn't enough for them, those kids. No. So it turns out. And she explains it clearly.
John de Mol is doing good business in the Arab world. He acts rather dismissively about this, according to Hassnae Bouazza. According to her, the television producer talks publicly mainly about the many restrictions on his formats because of Islam and the sentimentalism of TV in the Middle East in general. That De Mol's success number The Voice of Arabia during the final in
How many male genitals Yasmine Allas had weighed in her hand. For a while, that was the question during Writers Unlimited's most shameless programme to date. This latenight talk show addressed the question of how shameless writers actually dare to be these days. Kristien Hemmerechts, always good for a few firm statements, met her peers in
And then, just like that, you can miss the highlight of the first Winternacht because you don't pull it together with a presenter. Flemish author Bart van Loo, according to many a twitterer, seems to have uttered beautiful sentences in the programme 'Daar geef ik mijn leven voor', but that was well after midnight and I was already
Lebanese writer Hanaan al-Shaykh (Beirut, Lebanon, 1945) opened Wrtiters Unlimited on Thursday 17 January with a blazing argument against Arab culture of shame. This, according to the writer whose books The story of Zahra, Women between sky and sand, Beirut blues and Only in London have been translated into Dutch, so deep in
Writers Unlimited Special - One of the important guests at Writers Unlimited is Roland Colastica. This Curaçao author made his debut in 2012 with the children's book 'Fireworks in my head'. The book was enthusiastically received, and has since grown into a modest bestseller. Great strength of the story is its colourful and rhythmic style, but just as important is
Some artists age beautifully. Johnny Cash aged beautifully, Bruce Springsteen remains young in an absurd way and all members of the Rolling Stones turned into convincing zombies after their unnoticed deaths in the seventies
Everywhere, arts attendance is falling dramatically, except, for now, in Rotterdam. There, the Rotterdamnse Schouwburg managed to keep the number of paying visitors the same, or even increase slightly to over 147,500, in its first real cultural disaster year 2012. In its own press release, the management (currently in the hands of Jan Zoet) attributes this to sharper programming and revivals of successful productions, and an increase in the number of concerts:
With paper, you never know ('0.3% of newspaper readers read the reviews on the art page'), and with TV it's always a bit of estimating and extrapolating too, but the internet is rock hard. We know how many times you read one of our pieces, and how long you lingered at our videos. Well: we were already proud last year, now we are well over 200,000
Unrest in poetry land. By a error 'obscurity' in the website of the National Turing Poem Contest several hundred poems disappeared from the competition probably for the wrong reasons. Alexis de Roode, herself a multiple prize winner, raised the issue on facebook.
Rijksmuseum Twente can probably stay open now that culture minister Jet Bussemaker (PvdA) has promised the chamber to halve the planned 50% cut in operations. Moreover, she is going to fight hard to keep the Cultural and Artistic Formation subject in secondary education as a compulsory examination subject 'left or right',
While the city has to make huge cuts in music schools, libraries, a few drama clubs and other nice things for the people, like public transport and healthcare, The Hague does build a new art building. Rather, the municipality is putting 181 million into demolishing and renovating the theatres on the Spui, because the architect who built the complex 20 years ago apparently did not do his job properly.
The Netherlands' greatest artist is dead. Can happen. But can I then also curse heartily? Because Jeroen Willems is irreplaceable. As a journalist, you know the drill: of actors over 60, or of otherwise fragile stature, you have a necrootje ready. If you are well-known and meet the requirements, count on your friends and acquaintances to...
The previous Secretary of State for Culture, Halbe Zijlstra, made his draconian cuts cast in concrete. The 35-40 per cent cut in the budgets of orchestras, theatre companies and some museums has become law. The new minister of culture, PvdA star Jet Bussemaker, cannot change that at all an iota. And if she even wanted to: the architect of the cuts she has to allow sits in the chamber as the ruling party's group leader. No chance that he will allow his policies to go down the drain.
Anyway: while Amsterdam's city newspaper Parool was embarking on a campaign against the Dutch capital's city company at the behest of the Flemish publishing board, the same Toneelgroep Amsterdam was winning the hearts of New York audiences with a production of the already years-old 'Roman Tragedies', which a few here did not even like overall: http://www.wijbrandschaap.nl/2007/06/romeinse-tragedies-hf2007ta/
If the Netherlands consistently sticks to previously adopted PVV positions, the second chamber will say 'No' to a European investment in culture, innovation and media on 21 November 2012. However, if the current Rutte government sticks to the pro-European stance included in the coalition agreement, the Netherlands will cease its opposition to the 1.8 billion euro contribution to strengthening culture, which has now been approved by all other European member states.
We too retweeted it: "Germany increases culture subsidy by 100 million". And we thus fed a half-truth. That half-truth is, that Germany is a heaven for culture lovers, a haven for people fed up with the chilly austerity of the Rutte governments. Germany may seem nice, but, As Volkskrant correspondent Merlijn Schoonenboom noted in March this year, cuts are being made there at least as hard as here.
The discussion was and is endless, but now we have figures. Thanks to the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science's new 'key figures', we now know how much the state (all of us) are spending for the opportunity to experience art: per inhabitant, the state spends 38.90 per year on subsidies for dance, theatre, museums, youth theatre, opera and orchestras. So that's just over 3 euros a month. Indeed something to get into each other's hair about, we think.
The government has made little effort in recent decades to create a cultural scene getting off the ground. There are no workspaces. No galleries. Only a very large library and a "cultural palace". Both of which opened only five years ago. There are also a few small independent initiatives. In public spaces.
Minister Bijsterveld of OCW is going to ask the country for advice. A so-called internet consultation was launched this week on her ministry's intention to abolish Cultural and Artistic Education for Havo and VWO pupils. 'The Field' can now respond, so we suggest you make your views, and especially your substantive arguments known to the ministry, via this link:
This week, the curtain officially fell on the Theatre Emabassy, a club of inspired people who had Dutch artists collaborate with artists in developing countries such as Honduras, Bhutan and Congo. The resulting performances were only sporadically seen in the Netherlands, but every now and then a project made a broad impression here too, such as a 'On Hope of Blessing', played by real fishermen, but from Mali.
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