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Nice scoop from the Noord Hollands Dagblad today. Rick Engelkes, the perpetually wobbly soap opera actor who learnt the trade as a successful producer at Joop van den Ende, devised a musical that was never performed because of coronasteun. It earned him millions. Read the story here. Tl;dr: Engelkes announced in 2020 that he was working on a musical to...
There has been quite a lot going on around Rotterdam's Arts and Culture Council recently. For instance, based on a ramshackle investigation, to say the least, the alderman had rather bluntly decided to abolish the independent advisory body. It is too self-serving for his officials. His decision was debated at length at a City Council meeting in late June. Redundant debate...
Voguing and religion in Yishun is Burning at Julidans Joke: A policeman from the US says he once got three armed drug dealers in handcuffs at the same time. A firefighter from England brags that he rescued 10 people from a burning flat. A Singaporean says he lives in Yishun. Everyone claps for the Singaporean. Yishun is the dystopian suburb...
Seven new, very different animated films coming to cinemas this summer showcase the richness and power of this genre.
It was announced today that the great theatre innovator Peter Brook has died. He was 97 years old. In those years, he became one of the world's most influential directors and theatre innovators. He sought world-wide stories and told them through actors who were as diverse as the stories he told. I visited his theatre a few times,...
Actually, it was too bad to persevere. Perhaps I should indeed have followed my impulse to walk away hard, but I stayed with Kein Licht. Indeed, this play, written by Elfriede Jelinek, composed by Philippe Manoury and directed by Nicolas Stemann, was technically quite good. Only that little dog, I so did not like that. Animals and...
4 million Dutch people have a brain disorder. The Brain Foundation comes up with that figure in a campaign to make people more aware of the consequences of brain injury. Often that injury leads to extreme sensitivity to stimuli. Then loud noise, bright light or sharp smell is suddenly a big problem. People affected by these can find it difficult to go outside. That is why ...
When he was appointed chairman of Rotterdam's Arts and Culture Council in December 2021, nothing seemed wrong. But less than six months later, he is virtually on the street now that Arts alderman Said Kasmi (D66) has decided to disband the Rotterdam advisory council. After 17 years. Gonçalves is baffled, certainly...
Moby Dick; or, The Whale is the latest gesammtkunstwerk by artist collective Moved By The Motion, Schauspielhaus Zürig and Wu Tsang. Her adaptation of the great American classic as layered as the book. Where Herman Melville uses accounts, scholarly sources and monologues, Tsang deploys film and music. In a collage of theatrical performance, dance, found footage, animation and documentation nature footage,...
On the day a group of Dutch climate scientists announce that we are not going to make 'Paris', A Play for the living in a time of extinction premieres. How do you make a play about the biggest crisis threatening us? How do you make sure you keep making theatre and not agitprop? Or maybe it's not so bad at all....
With a fine, precise pen, Israeli Zeruya Shalev (63) writes about human relationships. Her new novel Lot is about what binds and drives loved ones apart, and about the different faces of grief. Sentences that want to be written For some writers, a book begins with an image, a pressing question or a character that presents itself. For Zeruya Shalev, a...
"You know, I am just a little man, I want to introduce you my wife," France's Abd al Malik told the Holland Festival audience. Right he was, as his Moroccan wife Wallen was undoubtedly one of the queens of the French R&B world from 2001 to 2008. This set the tone, as the acclaimed singer shone 18...
Upon entering the Transformatorhuis on Amsterdam's Westergasterrein, we are blinded by a row of bright lights on the floor. A low tone produces a kind of pleasant unease, a sound of possibility. Then the light goes out and we are in pitch darkness, red half-moons from staring into the lamps still burnt on our retinas. The tone persists...
'My show touches, incites self-reflection and is already getting quite a lot of press attention; a substantive review was unfortunately not among them until now. After all, what reviewer comes to see a wildly unknown 58-year-old debutant?' Rata Kloppenburg- theatre maker, cabaret artist & cellist- immediately bursts out at her table in Zwolle. While I have yet to ask a question...
'We met only pleasant, committed people with their hearts in the right place for Rotterdam culture.' So reads the last sentence of a report by Utrecht-based consultancy Rijnconsult on the future of Rotterdam's Arts and Culture Council (RRKC). Based on that study, alderman Said Kasmi (D66) decided this week to replace the RRKC from 1...
In the beautiful but overcrowded office of the director of Kunstuitleen SBK Amsterdam, on the Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, paintings, etchings, gouaches, photographs were everywhere against the wall. And ceramics too. At the meeting table, the entire board of the Federatie Kunst Uitleen (FKU) with whom I had come to meet as intended external chairman. I walked, enthusiastically shaking everyone's hand, around the...
Today in Trouw a few useful tips to culture bringers. They are responses to the reader question from a few days back, about why the halls remain empty in our museums, concert halls and theatres. Five responses are included, and each one is excellent. They also show something, and that is that the eagerness, with which the halls are vacated by the directors...
Just for fun, name one literary or cultural classic Dutch work that you are sure people around you know about. And I mean a work, like a book or a play, that pops up every few years in the lists, on our stages, in our cinemas. Something that everyone, even now, is on...
Lack of roots and parental love marks a person for life, Marina Jarre shows in her autobiography Far Fathers. Well-deserved place in literature Why is Marina Jarre not considered one of the great writers of post-war Italy, except by some connoisseurs? That is what fellow writer Marta Barone wonders in the foreword to Jarre's autobiography....
Dolores Reyes' darkly suspenseful debut novel Earth Food will bring readers to the edge of their seats. Those who sleep badly from suspenseful films might want to avoid reading Earth Food, the penetrating debut novel by Argentine Dolores Reyes, just before bedtime. Because it is a macabre story that gets under the skin. The narrator is a girl...
A hard but also sensitive novel is Like a stone in the stream by Mauro Corona (72), and a reflection of himself. On a daily basis, the Italian writer and visual artist becomes more and more like the hedgehog in his book, which eventually drops all its spines. 'I try to bring out more of the softness that is hidden somewhere inside,...
The Volkskrant on 18 May this year carried a scoop about strikes and drop-outs among technical staff at the country's largest company: ITA. In Trouw on the same day, the united theatre directors (VSCD) sounded the alarm about the lack of technicians. It is even so bad "that performances have to be cancelled". Two reasons in particular are cited: technicians have...
From now on, can we agree to replace all DJs with real drummers? I mean, what I witnessed at the premiere of Eros, Schweigman&'s latest project, was so overwhelming, I can't imagine I've ever gone out of my mind on a drum machine. Two living drummers, splashing and at the same time individually starring at the...
In Flanders, or rather in its cultural capital, Antwerp, the theatre sector is faltering. The Toneelhuis, founded in the late 1990s as a merger between the legendary Blauwe Maandag Compagnie and city company KNS, is in crisis after the departure of Guy Cassiers. It is now losing more than half of its grant after a scathing opinion. The Flemish government is stopping...
Screen Daily brought the news a fortnight ago that the International Film Festival Rotterdam is going to restructure. Not surprising after two corona years: this has hit every festival, every cultural institution, hard. It became worrying when in recent days social media was full of reports of mass layoffs at the IFFR. All senior programmers were supposedly fired. Because...
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