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.
How beautiful art for children can be when a real artist is involved. When themes like death, falling in love, loneliness and exclusion are made palpable in such a beautiful way that you step outside with a deeper feeling about life? With theatre-maker Moniek Merkx, you can. A year ago, she stepped down as artistic director of...
That you are suddenly back in 1996 at Black Snow, the television series in which actress Tamar van den Dop managed to hook an entire generation of viewers at the time. Since then, her raven-black curls have turned into a dazzling cloud of silver, but those who go to the National Theatre's Distress trilogy suddenly see that young Tamar again. A miracle of talent in...
Babeth Fonchi Fothchind. Remember that name, because she's going to be big, if she wasn't already, but out of my sight. Can happen, with all the bubbles and tick marks we make our way through life. Her debut collection will be released in June 2022, and then you can read it for yourself. I saw her on a Tuesday night during...
'For the first time in my life, I had the opportunity to play all the notes written by Chekhov. It was an intellectual and artistic challenge to really work with Chekhov. I could really let Chekhov be one of the authors of the play, which is very unusual for me. After all, I'm used to writing plays to...
On this website (and still read here), we posted a post that we had had artificial intelligence (AI) write all the way through for fun. The post looked real, had even included some relevant-looking information from the internet and made up some names that provided quotes. Brilliant, on the one hand, but also a bit scary. Rightly made...
Update April 2022: Turns out it's not an April fool's joke, so all the beats we were holding back at first turned out to be unnecessary. Since 2018, Toneelgroep Amsterdam no longer exists, as does the Capital's Stadsschouwburg. Together they have since formed 'Internationaal Theater Amsterdam', because that better suits the global ambitions of Ivo van Hove's Amsterdam city theatre. It was thus...
We always want to do the best, but usually fail horribly. Whether this is our habitual way of thinking, or whether we owe that idea to Ovid, we will never know. We can, however, say that the literary work 'Metamorphoses', published by Roman Ovid in the first year of our era, is the single most influential book of the...
Which sentence stuck with us? The question to the audience comes from Madeleine Matzer after the performance of 'Smart'. It is a rather loaded question, as the play is about very direct loss. When a child has just died in a stupid accident, every sentence you remember is worth gold. The blunt accident that the subject...
We can already chalk up Angélique Kidjo as one of the most disarming appearances at the 2022 Holland Festival. The Benin-born singer is this year's associate artist, together with German director Nicolas Stemann. On Wednesday 9 March, she performed as a commanding speaker at the press conference with which the Holland Festival opens its public relations offensive each year. It was a...
NBD Biblion, the world's largest online library, has announced that it is laying off all its human reviewers. Company spokesman Jonathan D'Angelo said the decision was taken to speed up the review process. "Using our new AI software, we can now review books much faster and more accurately than ever before," D'Angelo said. "So there are really no human...
Lena Rubashevskaya is a well-known film journalist and documentary filmmaker from Ukraine. She was working on a new film in Donetsk when Russian troops began their invasion of Ukraine. She had to flee headlong. Now, eight days later, she tells us her story from Warsaw. When you listen to her, you understand forever that fleeing war and violence is one of...
Susannah Elmecky and Emma Remmelts were in the third year of the Utrecht School of Theatre when Covid struck. Now they have both graduated and started careers on stage. In this podcast, they tell how they experienced the time of lockdowns. Also joining us is Victorine Plante, director of theatre group Aluin, where Susannah Elmecky is now playing a beautiful role in...
Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz. Remember that name. A writer who left us only two books, and whose life history reads like a twentieth-century horror novel. He wrote, in 1939, three years before his death by a torpedo in the Indian Ocean, 'The Man Who Took Trains', under his English pseudonym John Grane. This book, published in 2018 in the original German...
We like to play by the rules. That's quite OK if you're driving through a historic city centre in a tractor or truck combination, for instance, but it gets tricky when the rules stop obeying themselves one day. The actors of the rather physical theatre group Bambie, Paul van der Laan, Jochem Stavenuiter and Tessa Jonge Poerink, have worked with...
A rather voluminous (331 pages) report was published today by UNESCO, the UN organisation that deals with culture, development and education. In it, the organisation evaluates the extent to which the goals set by the 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of Cultural Diversity have been met. The picture is not rosy. Mainly because of Corona, job losses are...
Today, the Cultural and Creative Sector Taskforce sent yet another letter in draft form to the ministry of OCW. In it, the assembled umbrella of all creative and cultural organisations reiterates its earlier criticism of the relaxation of coronagraph measures, which brings no relief to the cultural sector and nightlife in particular. Special attention is given to DJs and...
In terms of religion, we are badly off with a single supreme and omniscient god who is also Love. Theologians and philosophers have therefore been earning a fat living for a couple of decades explaining all the misery in the world where God is only love. No. Then the classical Greeks. With them, free will ruled. Not...
Sometimes I dream of a subsidy system where artists can actually carry out their wild plans all the way, to the extreme. Or, indeed, are obliged to do so. That, for example, if you make a musical, you actually have to put a live band on stage, and are not allowed to use a studio recording. And that you then have to pay money for that...
Dear Library South-Kennemerland, I would like to apply for the position of 'Culture & Social Domain Programme Manager' that you published on the 'Cultural Vacancies' website. You see, I am a huge supporter of the idea that a library should associate itself with books as little as possible. After all, the clouds of dust are already smelling you up. Of course, you also knew all along that a bookcase...
'We are coming up with this heartfelt cry because we are genuinely concerned that the cultural sector is not overcoming the lockdowns of the past two years.'This is what the chairmen of the Supervisory Boards of a large number of cultural institutions are writing today in a letter to Ernst Kuipers, Minister of Health, Welfare and Sport, and Robbert Dijkgraaf and Gunay Uslu, Minister and State Secretary of...
By now, everyone with a modicum of fame in the Netherlands has participated in a show where secrecy is essential. This can range from the relatively innocuous concealment of the winner of De Slimste Mens to the extreme secrecy that is the subject of Wie Is De Mol (WIDM) and which ultimately leads to the strangulation contracts attached to talent shows like The...
I suspect that the decision to keep the museums, concert halls and theatres closed, while sports and Bijenkorf can open, was not born out of cultural hatred. A year ago, I would have doubted it. Now it is clear that those of you from the OMT do not actually want relief at all, but want to curb the biggest threat of civil disobedience. Sportsmen and middle-class people are more likely to throw...
It all goes into effect only in 2023, at the earliest, but the first gusts of fresh wind blowing through the Performing Arts Fund are stirring the treetops. Under new director Viktorien van Hulst, the Fund wants to put an end to the many subsidy schemes that in recent years, under the guise of 'customisation', have become a bureaucratic jungle...
These are the stories that stirred mouse arms and click fingers in 2021, and this is exactly the material from which Culture Press derives its raison d'être. It is the top ten most read stories, in a year that saw over 250,000 page views. Fear and trembling in the culture sector: the dark side of the 'trickle down' Ingrid van Frankenhuyzen did...
Marijn Lems has a hobby that coincides nicely with his work as a reviewer for NRC Handelsblad, Theaterkrant and Cultuurpers. After all, he plays countless games, sees bizarre amounts of television series and also goes to the theatre more than many colleagues can afford. Every year, he creates a top list, which he posts on Facebook. Once it was the...
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