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.
White balls are quite in the news, lately. For instance, they molest compatriots as a holiday pastime. Or they shout 'Snollebollekes' at a black champion. So the fact that white balls can also be fine is news. You can experience it at Festival Boulevard, where in a small, narrow tent, thousands of white Styrofoam balls, driven by huge fans, give you a fine massage shower,...
For a year and a half, there was hardly any playing, festival tents remained in mothballs and artists were busy doing living room concerts or attic sessions on Zoom. Now everything is allowed out again and the discharge is just barely there. Unaccustomedness characterises the fresh start of Theatre Festival Boulevard, which has moved to a park south of downtown Bossche for the next few years,...
This podcast is recorded in English. For those who do not speak the language, or who do not have time to listen to the full podcast, here are some quotes. 'Originally I didn't have a title. Someone came up with 'Born to' and then I thought it would be nice to put 'manifesto' after it. After all, it is about appearing,...
The uncertainty of the events sector and cultural institutions, after 17 months of lockdowns and one-and-a-half-month openings, is not only disastrous for the mood of directors, artists and spectators. According to the Creative Sector Taskforce, much more is being lost. In fact, a 'Marshall Plan' is needed to get the cultural and creative sector back on its feet,...
Naomi Velissariou (1984) was actually supposed to be at the Bossche Festival Boulevard 2021 with more performances. This year, her entire trilogy 'Permanent Destruction' would be performed in a setting like club rave. Fierce musical theatre, based on playwrights Sarah Kane and Heiner Müller, and concluded with the more subdued work 'Pain against Fear'. All parts have received rave reviews from audiences and press, but...
Theatre festival Boulevard is going ahead this summer, just like last year. Everything is adapted to 'corona': safe at one-and-a-half metres, placarded, with registration for catering, but still just about a hundred performances. In this podcast, I speak to Nina Aalders and Tessa Smeulers, responsible for Boulevard's programming. They remained at the helm after the much-loved and...
Down to the union, the message was shared: outgoing culture minister Ingrid van Engelshoven had allegedly gone overboard with her diversity policy and now wants to ban non-diverse art from universities. It was big in the Telegraaf and former cabaret artist Hans Teeuwen got a few hundred thousand likes with it on Instagram. Meanwhile, it has also reached the columns of Het Parool thanks to 'artist'
On the day that Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of the world's Facebook, announced his launch to the 'Metaversum', in order to trounce his collegatechies Bezos, Musk and Branson, who had only had a little sniff of the Universe, I attended the performance 'Never work again' by the Nieuw Utrechts Toneel in Utrecht Leidsche Rijn. In these times of lockdown and...
With his opinion piece in the Volkskrant, he drew the ire of gein manufacturers like Bert Brussen and Hans Teeuwen. In no uncertain personal attacks, 'Suck My Dick Zijp' was accused of having a 'gender-neutral rotten head', which showed that 'woke' people had no humour. Reason for the woke nerds, Marijn Lems and I, aka the...
It is a great thing that there are comedians who keep a finger on the pulse of society. Hans Teeuwen, for instance, has once again made himself angry. He has joined the small chorus of (mostly) men who see the end of the world coming because of a rebuttal. That is the rebuttal that now comes via social media
Je Maintiendrai. Holland's motto of arms ('Ik zal handhaven') adorns the beautiful hall of Utrecht's old Post Office, now Library. The motto also watched over the premiere of the performance 'Solomon's Judgement' with which Ilay den Boer now returns to the public. After all, he was not here for a while. He worked for just under a year at the IND, the Immigration and Naturalisation Service,...
We once started this series because we disagree horribly about some things, but in practice things turn out differently. In episode 14 of this fascinating series of insider conversations about theatre and whatnot, we talk about a few Holland Festival performances and look ahead to the festival summer. As it turns out, the...
It is very easy not to dwell on things. For instance, I learned at school that we sailed to the East to get nutmeg and pepper. Stuff that just rolled off the trees into the boats there and that we could sell very expensively here. Sugar, another thing. That came to us from plantations just like that,...
In Electra, one of the finest tragedies handed down to us by the ancient Greeks, there is at least one piece of text that made history. It is the account of a horse race. You see nothing, but the language puts your imagination to work. 25 centuries later, they tried to turn the images described into real images for the...
There is a direct, inverse, link between musical talent and acting ability. The techniques needed to play a musical instrument are completely different from the registers you need - physically and mentally - for acting. So the better you master your instrument, the worse the acting. The musicians of Klangforum Wien master their instrument at the very, very...
'...this (final) image, in which really I saw what I never saw before. That was so insane where I started to doubt my own perception. Interesting sensation that for me is separate from interpretation.' I quote here a visitor I know from the performance Transverse Orientation, one of the toppers of this year's Holland Festival. She was sitting three metres...
In a legendary episode of the SF series Star Trek, The Next Generation, for fans like me, Captain Picard is hit by a strange light signal from an empty probe. We then switch to a village to which the captain seems to have been teleported and see how he leads quite a life as a village wise and gifted flute player. At the end, he dies...
Someone cried the other day that bands were dead. That in a world of digital convenience, loop apps and samples, there was no place left for boys and girls with a guitar, a rickety drum kit and possibly a piano. Last night, while real men were watching football, I sat in Amsterdam's BIM house watching a band. It made me overjoyed. Kukangendai, on...
Rotterdam and theatre, quite tricky. I should know, I was born there and it was a subject of several working groups during my Theatre Science studies in the 1980s. Since the last theatre reform, a merger in which independent performers would work together to provide all the special theatre in Rotterdam, but...
Those blessed with the surname 'sheep' not only know that they come from a rich and honourable lineage, but also know by heart all the proverbs, sayings and name jokes, offensive or otherwise. Up to and including comradely blathering chiefs of art. Then the fact that Flemish theatre company FC Bergman is producing a show titled 'The Sheep...
It is always nice to know that someone is waiting for you. Companies offering rare things, officials who have highly sought-after stamps to put up, all owe their happiness and income to people willing to wait for them. Waiting itself, of course, is also something you can build a life around. There are people...
After three centuries of colonial oppression and exploitation, it is now pay-back time. However, we, the progeny of the navy that came to get nutmeg there, are not so good at it. Because we come back to Indonesia with mass tourism, cheap clothing dyers and multinationals like Unilever. We do little else but drain the place further. Economically, but also culturally. This can be subject...
Something about roots, and that they are cut off and that this is inconvenient. Or not, because it gives freedom. Something about men and women, but what exactly didn't quite become clear in Mailles, which I got to experience at the Holland Festival on Thursday 10 June, after another curious test-for-access episode. The great hall of the building that I just don't...
Whether we want to speak only of 's-Hertogenbosch from now on. Apparently, a last vestige of decency has bravely survived in the provincial capital of Brabant. Nazmiye Oral, master of ceremonies at a party at Den Bosch's citadel on 9 June, forgot right the first time. City marketers and old nobility fight hand in hand for a respected name to trump the vernacular....
We are a bit done with sex, drugs & rock'n'roll in culture. At least, not in what is presented through our galleries, film screens and venues, but in how that comes about. Minister Ingrid van Engelshoven has asked the Council for Culture for advice, and the Council is going to set up a commission to do so. This was just announced via...
English (UK) 
Nederlands 
Français
You must be logged in to post a comment.