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ACTUAL

All about politics, policy, society and how those things relate to culture and art.

As long as the government sets a bad example, citizens will give nothing

Marketing strategist Halbe Zijlstra has failed. His valiant attempt to use a 'Giving Act' boosting donations from small individuals to arts institutions has backfired. Since 2011, contributions made by ordinary households to cultural institutions fell from 32 euros, to 28 euros on average in 2014. This is according to the survey 'Cultural institutions in the Netherlands: Changes in giving behaviour, donations, fundraising and income between 2011 and 2014', which was presented in a small gathering on Friday 10 June.

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Tantalising intimacy porn in 'Privacy' raises relevant questions #HF16

Wine Dierickx ( Wunderbaum) and Ward Weemhoff (The Hot Shop) are an artist couple and we will know it. Engaging and with humour, they take us into their private lives or that which we think that is their private life. Know after all, we don't do it.

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McBurney's The Encounter points visitor #HF16 to a different way of life

The Encounter, a large-scale solo performance by British multi-talent Simon McBurney, had its Dutch premiere at the Holland Festival on Thursday. The Encounter combines the dramatic power of a Hollywood blockbuster with the polished simplicity of 20th-century, stripped-down, edited - call it Brechtian - theatre.

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Now Live: Aase Berg, Luis Chaves, Sinéad Morrissey at Poetry International

Aase Berg from Sweden, Luis Chaves from Costa Rica and Sinéad Morrissey from Northern Ireland read their full selection of festival poems. Translations into Dutch and/or English will be projected directly along. The readings will be preceded by an introduction to the poets' work. Presentation: Feline Streekstra. Ever since her first collection Hos Rådjur (1997), Aase Berg has been writing direct, hard and compressed poetry full of... 

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Is stage poetry inferior, or do we then exclude large groups? #pifr

Report on a hidden battlefield. Poetry International in Rotterdam has moved into a new, informal venue. The home of the Ro theatre in William Boothlaan, just over basic than the Theatre on that strange square. And the terrace between roaring motorbikes is lively, full of old and young lovers of poetry. Or of spoken word, or from slam. Anyone who might think Poetry International is an elitist poetry festival will be deceived on this sunny Thursday afternoon. A stenographic report.

Read More "Is stage poetry inferior, or do we then exclude large groups? #pifr

Education, education, education. But with an ideological basis.

No, the culture debate on 8 June in the province of Overijssel was not uplifting. The Cultuurnota 2017-2020 was adopted unanimously, except for two votes from the SGP. No fireworks about, for instance, the forced cooperation between the Orkest van het Oosten and Het Gelders Orkest. No hefty investments to fix national and provincial cuts. All spokespersons came up with predictable monologues, comparisons were made with other regions and, above all, they looked enviously at the Randstad, but there was no debate. The Christian parties are worried about empty churches, and the PVV, which is of course actually against subsidies, made some obligatory remarks about safeguarding the Overijsselian identity.

Which identity?

Read More "Education, education, education. But with an ideological basis.

Secrets of Karbala: The Crusades in oriental light and glass marionettes #hf16

How can you rewrite an intensely complicated history from a different perspective? By using grotesque glass puppets and not actors. This revolutionary invention was shown at the Holland Festival on 8 June, and can still be experienced there 9 June. In that film, Egyptian artist Wael Shawky takes us back to bygone centuries and shows us... 

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The Walking Forest is performance you definitely want to watch twice (HF16)

Brazil's Christiane Jatahy was already with the play last year What If they went to Moscow at the Holland Festival. She came, saw and conquered. This year, she comes with the final part in the trilogy of stage adaptations, The Walking Forest. The title refers to the three witches in William Shakespeare's Macbeth, who foretell his rise and fall. The play was the starting point for a performance with four video screens, a bar, an actress, a dead fish and, oh yes, an audience.

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Anneke Brassinga, Jeet Thayil, Laura Accerboni: now live at Poetry International

The poetry readings are at the heart of Poetry International festival. Anneke Brassinga, Laura Accerboni and Jeet Thayil read all the poems they have brought for the Poetry International Festival. The translations into Dutch and/or English will be projected simultaneously with the reading, so you won't miss a word. Prior to their readings, the poets will be briefly... 

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Opening night Poetry International showcases sprightly poetry #PIFR

Perhaps the first words man ever uttered were poems. In any case, man will have sung first, before using words. If we can at least describe the primal sound expressed at the time to indicate that that dove is really yours after all as singing. The fact remains, Poetry International the festival that had a wonderful opening night yesterday, is dedicated to one of the oldest art forms in the world: poetry. But just how sprightly is that art?

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Holland Festival goes Nuclear: Atomic by Mark Cousins

Anyone who can remember the fall of the wall has grown up with the threat of nuclear attack. And with that comes the idiotic government advice to get under the table in case of a nuclear explosion, preferably with a colander on your head. And to keep plenty of canned food and water on hand.

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Vik Muniz 'faked' Mona Lisa's buttocks

Once, Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen had the Mauritshuis built with money earned in Brazil, including in the slave trade. Now a Brazilian is exhibiting in that same Mauritshuis with perfect 3D replicas of the backs of famous paintings. He made five new ones especially for this exhibition. Four well-known masterpieces from the Mauritshuis, but also a painting relating to the Brazilian adventures of the time.

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Documentary on Remco Campert gets preview at Poetry (PI16)

It promises to be a beautiful portrait, the film director John Albert Jansen is making about poet Remco Campert. Poetry International (from 7 to 11 June in Rotterdam) is already screening a preview. 'I find it moving to see that there is still a certain shyness in Remco, as if the little boy is still hidden under the surface. That comes across very nicely.'

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Harrison Birtwistle: from shocking to guttural musical theatre

In his youth, Harrison Birtwistle (1934) was one of the Angry Young Men of English music, now elevated to the peerage and going through life as 'Sir Harry'. He trained as a clarinetist and composer at the Royal College of Music in Manchester, where he was annoyed by the conservative climate. Together with John Ogden,... 

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This is more than a review of the opening of the Holland Festival

On Saturday 4 June 2016, I attended the royal opening of the Holland Festival and was able to attend no review write about, because I was sitting in the front row of the Amsterdam Stadsschouwburg. As the stage was elevated, I was looking against a black wall, above which only the front actors were visible. The back and lower half of the stage were completely eluding me.

Me wrote that on, and the Holland Festival generously offered me the opportunity to go and see the performance again, from a better seat. At the same time, the organisers told me that the first three rows of the Stadsschouwburg would be compensated at this performance. So I went to Amsterdam one more time, on Monday 6 June.

Before the performance, while not eating a blackened hamburger in theatre restaurant Stanislavski, I heard from the neat people at the little table next to me that the front seats were offered at a sharply reduced rate, and that people like them who had already bought tickets had the choice of thus getting a partial refund or going on the waiting list for a seat with better sightlines. Whether they eventually managed to get one of the spots with better visibility, I don't know. The performance

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Emscher art: substance enough for discussion on public participation in artworks

On the same day that in Arnhem our king opened Sonsbeek 16, there was also a party around the Phoenixsee in Dortmund. Namely, Emscherkunst 2016 opened there, and for those who have never heard of it: it is the continuation of previous art events in the Ruhr region, the former industrial heart of Europe. I went there once myself, six years ago, and had mixed feelings: is investing in art really an appropriate method to save an area abandoned by the economy?

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This is not a review of the Holland Festival opening (HF16)

So you can get too close to a work of art. I don't even know if it really applies to paintings, that toxic fumes can rise from them, as some claim, but it certainly applies to theatre art. During the opening of the Holland Festival 2016, I was sitting in the front row of the Amsterdam Stadsschouwburg. Normally already not the best place for those who want to keep a bit of an overview of what is happening on stage. For the occasion of 'Die Stunde da wir nichts voneinander wussten', the stage had also been raised by half a metre, which meant I spent about four-fifths of the time watching actors' heads bounce over a light rail.

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'Poetry is always political'. Poetry International explores 'framing'

Is the language of poetry still free from ideology and manipulation? Or is it nonsense to think that poetic language escapes framing, the ideological loading of words? That is the main theme of this year's Poetry International poetry festival, which kicks off on Tuesday 7 June.

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Meg Stuart at Holland Festival: 'The sacred theatre is gone, but the expectations remain.'(HF16)

The show Sketches/Notebook (2013), which has its Dutch premiere at the Holland Festival on 6 June, is virtuosic, radical and extremely gentle. Choreographer Meg Stuart loves small scale, even when she occupies the biggest stages with partners like the Volksbühne (Berlin), Théâtre de la Ville (Paris) or the Münchner Kammerspiele. Details win out over big lines and often play a leading role in pieces that scrutinise human behaviour incredulously.

Sketches/Notebook stands out

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Dutch champion wins bronze at World Poetry Slam Championships

Ivo van Hove is America's best theatre director. The Nationale Opera recently picked up an Oscar for International Opera of the Year and now Carmien Michels, the Dutch Poetry Slam champion, has reached the third step of the podium of honour at the Poetry Slam World Cup. And this in the year when dyed-in-the-wool Girowinners are falling into the snow, racing drivers on their way to... 

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Suzanna Jansen on Pauper Paradise: 'Poverty still leads to isolation'

The garish signs KEUKENHOF keep on whizzing past café Foolish Business, on a very sticky Tuesday morning. Hordes of tourists throng behind them, ready to spend money on picturesque pictures and unique experiences. My interest today is in the opposite, the desolate 19the century colonies in Drenthe, then called 'Dutch Siberia'. To me, Drenthe is known as ' a cyclist's paradise' but writer Suzanna Jansen wrote the 2008 bestseller The Pauper's Paradise about, in which she meticulously traced her family's history back five generations.

She is wearing a summery blue dress and is in transit to the 'crime scene' of our conversation, Veenhuizen, to drive past her 'favourite places' with RTV Drenthe. This is a tad ironic, since she knows Drenthe mainly through her ancestors, who lived and died under miserable conditions in the colonies.

15 June 2016 goes there in Veenhuizen theatre show The Pauper's Paradise   premiered in the courtyard of the Gevangenis Museum, about 'one of the most dramatic hidden histories in the Netherlands'.

Pauperbeeld zonder tekst

As many as 1 million Dutch Descend from Veenhuizen clients[hints]From the registers reveals that Ruud Lubbers, Geert Mak and Alexander Pechtold, Thea Beckmann, Anton Pieck and Bert Haanstra, among others, are related to paupers from the 19th-century poor colonies[/hints].

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Art in the pincers. Why theatres do have to come up with jubilant figures.

A week ago, the theatres affiliated to the VSCD presented beautiful figures. Although the number of performances fell, average attendance had risen again. Many in the industry frowned, and after some arithmetic, Wijbrand Schaap, after initially good news to the conclusion that it was entirely not is going so well with the performing arts. And again, that message can be criticised; the VSCD does not include all theatres, some have merged etc. Another day later, Jeffrey Meulman explained in his blog the finger on the sore spot:

Read More "Art in the pincers. Why theatres do have to come up with jubilant figures.

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