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.
Last Friday, we reported on the rather mysterious and lacking in transparency surrounding the pilots to reopen theatres and museums. The questions we asked in that article have now been partly answered thanks to the efforts of 3 contributors to Follow The Money (FTM), and the answers they found are not reassuring. Just a recap:...
When Jeffrey Meulman (52) took office as director of the Theatre Festival in 2005, it needed to become more audience-friendly. Instead of a presentation of 'the most important theatre', the board that appointed him wanted to make a celebration of the most beautiful theatre. Meulman went to work, successfully, but the most important thing he did was to establish a 'fringe': an alternative...
Rather unexpectedly, it was announced this week that cultural and entertainment venues will be test sites for reopening society next month. It came rather out of the blue, as everyone was still working on petitions and other pleas to reopen cultural buildings. After all, they have their corona protocols in place there better than the Albert Heijn on my corner....
Stage poetry is usually held in lower esteem than written poetry. While stage poets can touch so powerfully. Only during the Night of Poetry, every year in Utrecht, do we honour the performers among the poets. Then it's back to the 'jokers' who can rhyme, as was recently written about Ingmar Heytze in a podcast announcement. Spoken Word, the...
What we feared at the beginning of the coronasteun appears to have become reality. The generous support money for culture should also reach the small self-employed in the arts via the institutions, but that is now happening too little. Of course, there are fine examples, such as the large subsidised arts institutions in Groningen and festivals like Boulevard and Holland Festival that have self-employed...
Do we need a new language, and are we at the mercy of the thought police of the Diversity and Inclusion Code? Or is that no thought police, and is Wijbrand in danger of turning into an old angry white man? It remains exciting. So in this podcast, we talk about the 'Guide to inclusive language' for the cultural sector drafted by Mounir Samuel....
Can anything general be said about a work of art? Do we see the same thing, and isn't a journalist giving a meaning also an act of exclusion for those who think differently? Questions that you actually have to deal with every day in the art journalism profession. Marijn Lems (NRC/Theaterkrant) and Wijbrand Schaap...
The United States of America has spent $18 billion (€15 billion) on coronasteun for the arts. That is more than any other country in the world and quite remarkable for a country not famous for arts funding. France is second, with an aid package worth $8.3 billion (€6.9 billion). hefty sums, where the 1.8...
The party may be the biggest loser in the parliamentary elections, but Melody Deldjou Fard is not sitting back. Now that is a bit the standard response of politicians when they face defeat, but Melody's enthusiasm is convincing. We invited her to the podcast, as she was a contributor to Culture Press before she turned...
Everyone balks. Let's put that first. And a lot of people are badly affected. Hospitality, retail, schoolchildren and especially students: everything that is not necessary for survival balks. So does the arts. Not all art, of course, especially larger institutions are coming through the corona crisis reasonably well so far. Quiet and closed, but not bankrupt. We can't take that from...
Marijn (NRC/Theaterkrant) and Wijbrand (Culture Press) disagree quite often, prompting another solid podcast about how to look at theatre professionally. This time, Wijbrand had gotten excited about the fact that stand-up philosopher Laura van Dolron performed a play for two invited guests each time, professionals mostly, and that they then wrote entire newspaper pages full of...
After Guido Weijers' Fieldlab turned out not to be a superspreading event, and nobody laughed hard enough at Dolf Jansen to infect others, now also good news from our relations in Poland: in the past month, since the reopening of theatres in Poland on 12 February, 55,000 people have already been to the theatre. Plenty of reason for enthusiasm, as it apparently...
The most recent bulk of cultural rescue money was distributed to municipal councils without the obligation to actually spend that money on culture. Indeed, that so-called 'earmarking' was too cumbersome and time-consuming, according to now outgoing culture minister Ingrid van Engelshoven. (Malicious people suggest that this way Rutte and Wiebes were willing to cross the bridge, because the money would not...
This episode, number 5 already in an increasingly well-listened-to podcast series, is about the future of theatre. A future after Corona, of course, but also the future as some theatre-makers and journalists dream of it. For example, Marijn Lems (NRC) and Wijbrand Schaap (Culture Press) talk about Milo Rau, the high-profile artistic director of NTGent (Belgium). Who came a few years...
Wopke Hoekstra, would-be boss of the Netherlands, stood on the ice of an ice rink closed to all but Sven Kramer last week. Because of Corona. The CDA frontman received a justified storm of criticism. After Grapperhaus, the country's second top executive who thinks his own rules only apply to others. Last week, Laura van Dolron, played...
The best works of art are failures, and it is up to the public to give them a meaning over which the artist has no control, argued comedian Micha Wertheim in an essay for De Correspondent. We thought that was a good topic for our fourth geek podcast. Marijn Lems (NRC,Theaterkrant) does sometimes clash with people who give him too much in his reviews,...
That Shakespeare is still relevant after four centuries doesn't even require putting him in modern clothes, but of course it helps. The worldwide success of Ivo van Hove and his 'Internationaal Theater Amsterdam' is therefore partly due to his Shakespeare adaptations 'Kings of War' and 'Roman Tragedies'. Marathons, hours of theatre with food in between. Valentine's Day 2021...
Today we are talking about youth theatre. A genre I myself first encountered in 1994, thanks to 'Mirad, een jongen uit Bosnië' by Ad de Bont, performed by Theatergroep Wederzijds. Marijn Lems got his love for youth theatre from his mother, who, like his father, was a librarian in Tilburg. What we agree on, in this podcast, the...
On social media, and in mainstream media for that matter, it is not helpful to be overly clever. The adage of my father, who was a journalist and taught me not to be afraid to ask stupid questions, has been elevated to a code of honour. You only have to watch 15 minutes of Op1, or WNL on Sunday, and you make...
'There is no other sector in the Netherlands that is as controlled and regulated as the cultural sector.' D66 MP Salima Belhaj sighed this towards the end of the debate organised by the assembled cultural sector lobby clubs on Monday 8 February. 'It takes an incredible amount of work, time and especially money. And the basis is distrust.' The most culture-friendly party of...
Maybe it's the snow, and my little dog that made me so happy. Maybe it's the sledding children in 'The Pit' of Lunetten, and maybe it's the lameness that creeps up on me after so many valiant attempts to keep up the fun of art in times of Corona. But I sat through the first minutes of VPRO's Onstage...
Critics by default have a different opinion than the average audience. That, says Marijn Lems, theatre journalist at NRC and Theaterkrant, is what this research shows. Reason for us to take a closer look at this in the Culture Press Nerd podcast on the deeper details of the art journalist's profession. Another three-quarters of an hour for anecdotes and exciting revelations about the private life of the...
For a while, not making performances as if nothing happened, but developing concepts, experimenting, boldly going where no one in this sector has dared to go so far (sorry, I watch a lot of Star Trek during the lockdown). That strikes me as an excellent use of grant money and could also bring back some momentum in these crappy times.
News arrived this week that Andreas Fleischmann, the highly esteemed director of Amsterdam's DeLaMar Theatre, has now officially become director-director of Stichting MusicalMakers, the foundation he had set up last year, a day before the deadline for grant applications for four-year state funding. And that is not allowed.
More than 1,500 hours were spent by theatre critic Marijn Lems last year in theatres, in front of TV and, most importantly, with games. That's a lot of time and it raises questions. Questions especially about how you organise your time as a journalist, and how you divide it between watching art for work and what we will call 'normal life'. That's what this podcast is about, for just under three quarters of an hour.
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