Skip to content

Wijbrand Schaap

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.

Fewer audiences, but fuller halls for @hollandfestival 2013

69,500 visitors, at least 5,000 fewer than previous editions, but the halls were fuller. With 82% audience occupancy, the Holland Festival organisers are satisfied with the 2013 festival. Whether that higher occupancy rate, apart from the smaller number of performances (14 fewer than last year) is also due to smaller halls, is impossible to find out from here, but the fact that the large Theater Carré, with its many unsellable low-visibility seats, was also hardly used this year will certainly have helped.

Read More "Fewer audiences, but fuller halls for @hollandfestival 2013

Martin Wuttke makes Berlin museum night worthwhile at @hollandfestival

Holland Festival

There are those who spend nights queuing for a ticket. After all, the Berliner Ensemble is mythologically big. As big as the Royal Shakespeare Company in England, or La Comédie Française in France. Monuments to cultural history, dedicated to one writer, like Brecht or Shakespeare, or to an entire history, as the French are used to. We Dutch have

Read More "Martin Wuttke makes Berlin museum night worthwhile at @hollandfestival

Art breaks the rut of Hoog Catharijne in Call of the Mall

You don't really give it much thought, how weird standing still in a shopping centre like Hoog Catharijne is. At least: if you are not standing still with your head towards a shop window or your fingers in a bowl of fast food. The code for floating through a shopping mall with glassy eyes is so common that even for yourself, it takes getting used to when something forces you to suddenly really look. The art event Call of the Mall achieves that effect in a very short time. Before you know it, a screamingly lit shoe discounte...

You can now log in to continue reading!

Welcome to the Culture Press archive! As a member, you have access to all, over 4,000 posts we have made since our inception in 2009!

(Recent posts (under three months old) are available for all to read, thanks to our members!)

Become a member, or log in below:

Two concentrated chickens and something with Chekhov at @hollandfestival

Holland Festival Holland Festival

Seagull, an early play by Anton Chekhov, is about drama in the same way that his equally famous play Cherry Garden is about cherry growing or real estate fraud. Not so. It seems to be a mistake that playwrights often make and that Chekhov made in his 115...

You can now log in to continue reading!

Welcome to the Culture Press archive! As a member, you have access to all, over 4,000 posts we have made since our inception in 2009!

(Recent posts (under three months old) are available for all to read, thanks to our members!)

Become a member, or log in below:

Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo disappoints with storm painting at @hollandfestival

So there is figurative music. Music that, like a figurative painting, offers a fairly accurate depiction of reality. Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo's composition 'Hurricane Transcriptions' is such a picture: 17 strings from the rather peerless ensemble Kaleidoskop do a nice impression of Hurricane Sandy that hit New York last year, and Lee Ranaldo sings a song to go with it.

Disappointing? Pretty much. Actually as disappointing as the performance of...

You can now log in to continue reading!

Welcome to the Culture Press archive! As a member, you have access to all, over 4,000 posts we have made since our inception in 2009!

(Recent posts (under three months old) are available for all to read, thanks to our members!)

Become a member, or log in below:

Call: please share your views on Bussemaker's vision

Ah, what the heck. We can, of course, study the piece ourselves first and then come up with a peppery response and interpretation to it, and that will certainly come. But why delay the pleasure when you can have it now? Therefore: also read for yourself the arts vision of Jet Bussemaker, the first culture minister in years who appears to have actually thought about her field of work in terms of content.

If at all, should an opinion intrude, which should definitely come out: don't hesitate to respond. And if you think you ...

You can now log in to continue reading!

Welcome to the Culture Press archive! As a member, you have access to all, over 4,000 posts we have made since our inception in 2009!

(Recent posts (under three months old) are available for all to read, thanks to our members!)

Become a member, or log in below:

Jan Lauwers with musical folk theatre at @hollandfestival: 'It's forbidden to memorise lyrics'

Holland Festival Holland Festival

An explosion in a crowded market square claimed 24 lives, including seven children. When the village commemorates that tragedy a year later, a boy falls out of a window and a girl disappears into a dungeon for 76 days. That leads to a series of acts of violence ...

You can now log in to continue reading!

Welcome to the Culture Press archive! As a member, you have access to all, over 4,000 posts we have made since our inception in 2009!

(Recent posts (under three months old) are available for all to read, thanks to our members!)

Become a member, or log in below:

Social media and art connect people, but Egypt stays away for a while #vvu

Treaty of Utrecht

Experiments may well have a different outcome than you hope for beforehand. The Community Arts Lab is now discovering through the Face to Face project that the world of the internet still has to deal with real borders. A project in which ordinary people in Egypt would create a work of art with ordinary m...

You can now log in to continue reading!

Welcome to the Culture Press archive! As a member, you have access to all, over 4,000 posts we have made since our inception in 2009!

(Recent posts (under three months old) are available for all to read, thanks to our members!)

Become a member, or log in below:

Simon Stone adapts Ibsen for Australians: 'And why would you even go to the theatre if you live in Sydney?'

Holland Festival Holland Festival

Simon Stone (28) wrote a new play based on Henrik Ibsen's 1884 stage classic The Wild Duck. The Swiss-born Australian provided the Norwegian play with entirely contemporary language and dressing. The actors sit

Read More "Simon Stone adapts Ibsen for Australians: 'And why would you even go to the theatre if you live in Sydney?'

Selection Theatre Festival 2013 marked by audience-friendly performances

De Verleiders, last season's big theatre hit, tops the jury selection of The Theatre Festival 2013. Conceived and created by a group of actors and cabaret artists, including Pierre Bokma and George van Houts, the show about real estate fraud was a tremendous success in theatres. So it is also rightly included in the festival, which since 1987 has annually showcased a selection of theatre performances from the previous season. Another hit that also received great media attention is the ...

You can now log in to continue reading!

Welcome to the Culture Press archive! As a member, you have access to all, over 4,000 posts we have made since our inception in 2009!

(Recent posts (under three months old) are available for all to read, thanks to our members!)

Become a member, or log in below:

Research shows: nothing so immutable as the art public

More people go to popular art than 'high' or 'canonical' art. Researcher Andries van den Broek has researched this. Therefore, there are now figures explaining the word 'popular' and 'elite'. So if you thought: popular automatically means more people go to it: that's true. The Sociaal Cultureel Planbureau has figured it out.

Completely meaningless, however, is the study on the audience reach of the arts recently presented by the Social Cultural Planning Bureau, which we also...

You can now log in to continue reading!

Welcome to the Culture Press archive! As a member, you have access to all, over 4,000 posts we have made since our inception in 2009!

(Recent posts (under three months old) are available for all to read, thanks to our members!)

Become a member, or log in below:

NSB officer Tobie Goedewaagen and subsidies: the faulty founder of a good system

The Dutch system of art subsidies was set up in 1942 by NSB leader Tobie Goedewaagen, who also founded the Kultuurkamer. Typical of a fact that had been known for a long time, but which people preferred not to talk about. Benien van Berkel, art marketer with a past at Theatre Carré and the Holland Festival, obtained a PhD in 2012 on a study into the life of the cultural NSB Goedewaagen. On 24 April 2013, the book resulting from that research was presented: 'Tobie Goe...

You can now log in to continue reading!

Welcome to the Culture Press archive! As a member, you have access to all, over 4,000 posts we have made since our inception in 2009!

(Recent posts (under three months old) are available for all to read, thanks to our members!)

Become a member, or log in below:

Minister finds important advice from Culture Council too pricey

The Council for Culture, recently reinforced with new members with a lot of management talent and business acumen, has to accept a defeat. This is because Culture Minister Jet Bussermaker is disregarding a key pillar of the Council's latest advice. In a letter to the room, she reveals that she is looking for alternatives to the Council's proposal to protect 'Objects of National Importance' through the designation of a 'Core Collection'. Instead, Bussemaker says: "My starting point ....

You can now log in to continue reading!

Welcome to the Culture Press archive! As a member, you have access to all, over 4,000 posts we have made since our inception in 2009!

(Recent posts (under three months old) are available for all to read, thanks to our members!)

Become a member, or log in below:

Wishful thinking in press and politics? "Cultural subsidy saves Iceland's economy"

It is as persistent as the message that everything is better in Germany. Infatuated lovers of culture who still (and rightly) resent the breaking up of the status quo by Rutte I's hate policies often shout it. We wrote before that the German miracle is disappointing to say the least, and now have to report here that Iceland's creative sector boom is not obviously the salvation of the Icelandic economy.

Source of the success story is a rather WC Duck-like situati...

You can now log in to continue reading!

Welcome to the Culture Press archive! As a member, you have access to all, over 4,000 posts we have made since our inception in 2009!

(Recent posts (under three months old) are available for all to read, thanks to our members!)

Become a member, or log in below:

Help! England is also going to cry out for culture

The Scream for Culture with which the Dutch cultural world launched its opposition to the scrapping of art subsidies in 2010 was, in retrospect, a publicity disaster. Perhaps not as unfortunate as the naming of the 'March of Civilisation', but it did not generate much goodwill either. Yet people think differently across the North Sea. This month, a new campaign was launched there entitled: My Theatre Matters. In that campaign, people are urged 'to shout abo...

You can now log in to continue reading!

Welcome to the Culture Press archive! As a member, you have access to all, over 4,000 posts we have made since our inception in 2009!

(Recent posts (under three months old) are available for all to read, thanks to our members!)

Become a member, or log in below:

Private Membership (month)
5€ / Maand
Subscribe
For natural persons and self-employed persons.
No annoying banners
A special newsletter
Own mastodon account
Access to our archives
Beste Keuze
Small Membership (month)
18€ / Maand
Subscribe
For cultural institutions with a turnover/subsidy of less than €250,000 per year
No annoying banners
A premium newsletter
All our podcasts
Your own Mastodon account
Access to archives
Posting press releases yourself
Extra attention in news coverage
More details in the welcome email
Large Membership (month)
36€ / Maand
Subscribe
For cultural institutions with a turnover/subsidy of more than €250,000 per year.
No annoying banners
A special newsletter
Your own Mastodon account
Access to archives
Share press releases with our audience
Extra attention in news coverage
Premium Newsletter (substack)
5 trial subscriptions
All our podcasts
More details in confirmation email!

Payments are made via iDeal, Paypal, Credit Card, Bancontact or Direct Debit. If you prefer to pay manually, based on an invoice in advance, we charge a 10€ administration fee

*Only for annual membership or after 12 monthly payments

en_GBEnglish (UK)
nl_NLNederlands fr_FRFrançais en_GBEnglish (UK)