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.
Machteld Kooij sees at least three or four people she has trained pass by every night on the news or the big talk shows. She calls herself The Secret Weapon of Hilversum and now there is also a book: The Monster with the Golden Eyes. We all have to deal with it from time to time: stage fright. And Machteld Kooij has excellent tips ...
An online party with a few close friends, and that you then invite a musician to perform live there. It can be done, and Deborah Jacobs would think it a fantastic idea. The musician, music teacher and lyricist from Breda had just about got her act together when Corona struck. All at once, all performances were cancelled and the...
‘Blijf zoveel mogelijk je dagelijkse routines doen, als er een ramp gebeurt.’ Willem Jaap Zwart is directeur van theater, filmhuis en kunstencentrum Concordia in Enschede, en hij weet waar hij het over heeft. Als inwoner van Enschede maakte hij de vuurwerkramp mee, en ook toen was het devies: toon veerkracht, en blijf dicht bij jezelf: ‘Op de dag dat het…
Gisteren las ik deze update van Madeleine Matzer op facebook: ‘Twee jaar geleden koos ik dit uitzicht. Zo mooi. Zo stil. Zo sereen. En zo goed passend in het hectische en dynamische leven dat ik normaal gesproken leid. Waanzinnig zinnig werk met prachtige en inspirerende collega’s, een groot en heerlijk sociaal netwerk, en dan ook nog al die kansen op…
Leon Giesen, ook bekend als Mondo Leone, heeft al een tijdje geleden het reguliere theater gedag gezegd. Hij bespeelde – tot Coronoa toesloeg – steeds vaker op meetings en seminars, waar het publiek massaler en aandachtiger is. Maar nu is die markt weggevallen, en heeft Leon iets nieuws bedacht. Luister naar het verhaal van deze rasverteller in onze podcast in…
'Like asking after a play or a concert which seats they had in the auditorium.' According to Gerrit Heijkoop, it is not interesting to know what software you can use to share knowledge online, or organise video chats. 'You can go to Facebook, to YouTube, and then there are all kinds of programmes. If you want to communicate, it goes...
‘Het was heel raar om hier weg te gaan. Zo’n plek die altijd aan is, waar het altijd druk is, waar het altijd licht is, dat was nu gewoon zwart.’ Lieke Timmermans, manager Marketing en Communicatie van TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht kan het nog steeds niet helemaal bevatten. Donderdag 12 maart 2020, na de persconferentie van de regering, moest het programma…
When he started for himself in 2006, the CoC's question was not, how Oscar Kocken would later deal with a global pandemic of apocalyptic proportions, income-wise. This is just to point out what a stooge our minister of economic affairs is, and how we can yet gain some understanding of the wall of misunderstanding where the...
UPDATE Friday, March 13, 9:30 a.m.: After the Culture Council sounded the alarm on Thursday night, the Lower House passed a motion urging a support package for the affected cultural sector. The text of the motion, tabled by D66, Groen Links, PvdA, Partij van de Dieren, Denk and 50Plus, reads as follows: 'The Chamber, having heard the debate, whereas meetings with...
Fred Goessens has been dead, but is still alive. As uncompromising as ever. The Netherlands' most reliable actor makes an interim will after twenty-two years with Toneelgroep Amsterdam. 'I had shit on everything' This interview was published 10 years ago in TheaterMaker, the trade magazine for the theatre sector. As Fred Goessens is now leaving ITA, the company where he once...
Talent ontwikkel je vaak dankzij forse tegenwerking. Rodaan Al Galidi kreeg talent voor het leven dankzij meer tegenwerking dan een witte, voormalig blonde Nederlander als ik ooit zal ontmoeten. Hij ontsnapte uit Irak en bracht vervolgens jaren door in het vagevuur van de IND en het COA, de afkortingen die de grens van Nederland bepalen. Hij schreef op wat hij…
I have often resisted thinking of the Netherlands as a business. After all, a country cannot lay off people, or divest unprofitable sectors to make more profit. So anyone who speaks of the BV Nederland has not understood it. There are no competitors that you can fight out of the market while being entrepreneurial on those few square kilometres of polder land,...
There is something incredibly cosy about it. While outside the storm is howling through deserted, boarded-up shopping streets full of demolished mini houses, baking pasties against the malady. But so it does work. On the side of The Kop, the most famous stand at the Anfield stadium on Liverpool's Oakfield Road, Dutch artist Jeanne van Heeswijk established a neighbourhood cooperative in 2012, when megalomaniacal urban renewal plans...
After all, we did spend just under three hours on something completely nonsensical. Stupid, of course, because we had already written ourselves on 27 November 2019 that today's little debate in the Troelstra Room of the Lower House would be totally pointless. Everyone already knew that too, not least the movers of the motion, including Lodewijk Asscher ...
When a Dutchman thinks of art, he thinks of buildings that cannot support themselves, played by, or hung with work by, people who cannot sustain themselves. So money must be added, and we call this subsidy. In this way, art subsidies become a suspicious form of welfare, more suspicious than the billions in income support that wealthy...
A real estate agent once confided in me that a bookcase in the living room saves thousands of euros in the resale value of a house. In a negative sense. This fact always does well at parties, and book lovers (my network is full of them) grudge it. On a tour of Manchester Central Library, the head librarian proudly told us that the café...
Travelling makes you a better person. Everyone thinks so, and it is a great favour to be able to travel. A privilege to be able to do it. If you go to England by train, the last few minutes before you disappear under the Channel at Calais, you see more and more fences appearing. And we are not talking about the average...
While I was walking around Manchester with some cultural sector leaders, minister Ingrid van Engelshoven sent a letter to the House, telling it how much it would cost to enable state-subsidised arts organisations to get fair pay at the current offer. So that letter contained quite a few omissions: the minister was silent on the role played by regional and...
Toen ik laatst aan middelbare scholieren probeerde uit te leggen hoe weinig de orkestleden betaald kregen die bij het Eurovisie Songfestival de muzikale verrassingsact verzorgen, keken ze me verwilderd aan. Immers, het was meer dan je als 16-jarige verdient als vakkenvuller bij de gemiddelde grootgrutter. Dus wat was eigenlijk het probleem? Daarom nu maar even een andere rekensom, dankzij de…
That in the Netherlands the government's distrust of citizens has reached bizarre proportions is proven by the hassle with benefits at the tax office and the state of affairs at the UWV. Or your average housing landlord where you want to report a leaky tap. Thanks to a politics influenced by false entrepreneurialism and rabid populism that treats citizens as fraudsters...
Fascinating front-page news and headliners for all talk shows: Matthijs van Nieuwkerk quits DWDD after 15 years. Obviously a disaster of national proportions. The book industry proclaims the end of the world, bands can no longer break through, and the successor to De Correspondent can never again meet its crowdfunding target in six minutes. An institution disappears, and everyone panics. Who...
There are people who have a voice with which you can quiet a crowd in a whisper. Bill T Jones, choreographer and this year's associate artist of the Holland Festival, is one such person. Apart from that beautiful, heavy and full voice, he also has a presence with which he can quiet the cogs with a single hand movement. But all that would be nothing if...
What. Have. We. Terrible. Much. Too. Learning. If there is 1 thing the musical Tina makes clear, it is that. Especially at the stormy premiere, Sunday 9 February, a few hours before storm Ciara blew the last bubbles out of the Utrecht champagne glasses. An almost completely white auditorium, in Black Tie, that is, with only a few people from...
Those who want to be musicians have to bleed. Earlier, we reported that the highlight of the Dutch edition of the Eurovision Song Contest was going to be performed by professional musicians and conservatoire students who would receive 100 euros a day for it. Outrageously little, when you know that full days of work were going to be involved anyway, for eight days. Well: it's even worse than...
In april 2020 stopt de Persgroep, tegenwoordig DPG Media omdat dat internationaal beter bekt, met regionale kunstbijlages in zijn kranten. Geen kunstreportages en interviews meer, nauwelijks recensies. Lokale boekwinkels verliezen hun podium in alle Nederlandse regio’s, want de uitgever van Volkskrant, Trouw en AD heeft een regionaal monopolie. Het bericht, gebracht door een verslaggever van het Eindhovens Dagblad, viel op…
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