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Moniek Merkx bids farewell to Maas Theatre & Dance: 'I would grant it to any creator to have this audience in front of you once.'

Moniek Merkx will step down as director of Maas Theatre&Dans on 3 February this year. She co-founded this Rotterdam-based company that makes theatre for people from small to large in 2013. A forced merger with two other youth theatre houses from the Maas city, it developed under her leadership into one of the most successful and interesting theatre groups in our country. In our podcast, I talk to her for an hour about how that came to be.

The stuffiness from Maeve Brennan's stories is easy to spot at the moment

It is no coincidence that I am rereading The Twelve Year Wedding just now. Because the tightness in the story resembles the tightness of our own time. Like Delia and Martin Bagot, we are trapped in a suffocating existence. Shun contact with fellow human beings. Miss the fresh air of visits to cafés, museums, film houses and theatres. Dublin 1917 is the Netherlands 2021.

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'It's really starting to become something with me now anyway,' poems Vrouwkje Tuinman with healthy self-irony in the collection Lijfrente. In her case, you could say that - Lijfrente won the Great Poetry Prize last year. It's a beautiful line, well suited to mumble to yourself on occasion. Too inappropriate is the most fun: you... 

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It is stupid and pointless to start comparing suffering. There is always someone who had it shittier than you, usually even closer than you thought. But reinforcing the delusion that writers and poets can live off their royalties, when that is literally true for less than one per cent of professional literary authors, shows little empathy.

Catharsis under the Christmas tree - the 5 best films to end this terrible year with

Especially in a bizarre year like this, I need hot films: classics, found footage or children's film, all are allowed. As long as it deals with big emotions or offers the perfect escapism. Like every year, there is plenty to enjoy on TV. Not like every year, there is no option to seek refuge elsewhere, but streaming offers the solution. Five tips to get through Christmas.

Alaa al Aswani: 'Literature doesn't change politics, it changes people'

Four years ago at the Winternachten Festival in The Hague, we spoke about it with Egyptian writer Alaa al Aswani, who was disarmingly upbeat despite the fact that he can barely publish in his own country. On lack of freedom of expression and fiction in times of fake, this year's theme, Al Aswani could have a word. 'Freedom of expression is even worse now than under dictator Mubarak.'

Guilt helps no one. Philosopher and writer Jannah Loontjens took a closer look at her gnawing conscience

I have come to realise that guilt creates a distance. To others, I sometimes come across as cool and reserved; this is because I unconsciously shut down to suppress my feelings and desires. I don't want to get in the way of others with my emotions. But that also means I rarely let the other person get close.

Leading starts with yourself. Learn more about that in this podcast on LinC-Artistics

In this podcast, I talk to Marjolein Verhallen and Paul Adriaanse from Public Administration, Nanna Verhoef from Media and Iris van der Tuin from Philosophy, and artistic directors Lars Ebert and Jente Hoogeveen about what that is: leadership. And we talk about how you can learn it. 

No better time imaginable for Splendid Isolation. Personal initiative soprano provides unique concert in times of Corona.

Splendid Isolation is about the happiness of loneliness, but, Elgershuizen stresses, it is best experienced together. 'It needs to be performed, because as humans we need to be able to be together'.
If all goes well, it can be experienced on Saturday 19 and Sunday 20 December.

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