All about politics, policy, society and how those things relate to culture and art.
September, the month of the Dutch Theatre Festival and the Fringe Festival full of old and new performances you must see. But a lot is also happening in the rest of the country at the start of the new theatre season. Five must-sees. Toneelgroep Maastricht, Eyes wide shut (theatre) 'The new Shakespeare' he has been called, I already called him 'devil's advocate'. Fact...
Her book The Sexual Life of Catherine M. took the world by surprise and made her world-famous overnight. Since then, Catherine Millet has been one of France's most widely read writers. In her most recent novel A Dream Life, she returns to her childhood in Bois-Colombes. A Quattro Mani went with her to the seeds of her authorship. Back to...
Recently, Lidy Blijdorp (* 1986) took over the cello of well-known cellist Anner Bijlsma (* 1934). It was his wish for the instrument to be played by her from now on. Via the Netherlands Music Instruments Fund (NMF), the instrument came to her. The maker of this cello is not known. However, it is certain that it originated from...
One of the most beautiful museums in the Netherlands can be found in Tilburg, a city still seen by some as the frayed edge of the Netherlands. This central part of Brabantstad also receives relatively little funding from the government. So how can one of the best museums in the world be located here? Museum De Pont, like Huis...
The summer period is a fine time for catch-up reading - books from recent times that you still wanted to read but didn't get around to before - but we also got a glimpse of a few upcoming titles. That made for a fine, varied crop this month. Eifel adventures Since The Detour, there hasn't been a new novel...
In these election times, it is just how you put it and calculate it. That 24 million extra for culture, which Pechtold triumphantly mentioned with the addition that 'the journey through the desert is over after 2016', has, for the time being, as much value as Rutte's illustrious 1,000 euros: first see, then believe. And since Pechtold gave no further explanation,...
When you go to a concert, you think about the music, the ensemble, the soloist and/or the conductor. Maybe you look up something about the composer but you never think about the programmer who made the concert possible. Astrid in 't Veld is someone who thinks about the range of concerts on offer years in advance in order to help you with...
Brexit has given an extra charge to many programmes at the Fringe. But what is British anyway, and where do you belong?
'At the time, under the influence of the populists, we perhaps went too far in our attack on art subsidies.' So declared Jeroen Hatenboer, VVD member and culture alderman of the municipality of Enschede, during the annual Paradiso debate at the end of the Uitmarkt 2016. In the context of the current cabinet's sorry campaign, quite an interesting footnote, and entirely appropriate in the upcoming...
In Dance Around The World, ex-dancers Jan Kooijman and Ish Ait Hamou travel the world. Because dance connects. That makes for television that is more fun than you think. The programme, now being trialled in 3Lab, is a kind of cross between Top Gear and Looking for God. Were you already bombarded to death with celebrities looking for religion...
First there was Arthur Schnitzler's book. Then Stanley Kubrick's film. And now the play. From 27 August, Toneelgroep Maastricht plays Eyes wide shut. After his wife confesses her sexual fantasies, a man searches feverishly for his own deepest hidden desires against the backdrop of carnival celebrations. "I always wanted to make psychologised drama once," says Servé Hermans, artistic director of...
What is a memory worth? A first kiss, for example: how much poorer are you if it is forgotten? In hard euros. Such questions Greg Nottrot likes to ask his audience, and we, his grateful listeners, gladly join in his money thought experiments. The man who, with Oscar Kocken, came up with the revolutionary concept of the live talk show Order of the Day, now makes,...
It took a while, but soon Jan Wolff (1941-2012), founder of the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ, will get his well-deserved tribute. On Monday 22 August - his dying day - the concert hall will conclude its tenth anniversary celebrations with the unveiling of the interactive sound installation Huil van de Wolff. It was designed by composer Martijn Padding and realised by Johan...
Two very different forms of political theatre at the Edinburgh Fringe: feminist varieté and an immersive mode at the Maidan. You'll be throwing bricks before you know it.
Retrospectively, I proclaim last Monday night, 15/8, as the opening of my cultural season. Viavia I ended up, in fine company, at the Crazy Goat. A music cafe that might as well have been in New York, Paris or Berlin. This is in The Hague: an ini-mini stage in a building where the money is not spent on chipped-up old school benches,...
The Amsterdam Fund for the Arts would love a central 'vibrant dance venue' in Amsterdam. But surely such a Dance House has just been torpedoed? It was striking: in the Introduction to Dance to the grants awarded by the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts (AFK) for the 2017-2020 grant awards, they note an "ardent need" for a "dance house": a central place for development, production and the...
10 days of Festival Boulevard. I threw myself into it. I saw 14 performances, saw a lot of corners of Den Bosch (and Tilburg) up close and experienced more different theatre than usual in six months. I also ate more chips than is good for me, drank more beer than usual and enjoyed eavesdropping on conversations of...
That US athletes are also dominating these Olympics no surprise. And especially after the suspension of many Russian athletes due to the biggest doping scandal since the former GDR and ahead, Lance Armstrong, no more than logical. That those American athletes are also highlighted in the NOS daily talk show is therefore justified. Putting them on screen with the...
Tim Honnef is one of the few Dutch with a performance at the Fringe. How did he end up here?
Since its inception, the NJO Music Summer has spread its wings. It started in 2001 as a summer course for music students who were allowed to work with internationally renowned musicians, composers and conductors. Since then, the NJO Music Summer has grown into an unmissable, audience-friendly festival, covering the entire province of Gelderland. On Friday 19 August, it takes a step across the border to Overijssel,...
Jetse Batelaan is one of the greatest theatre innovators of this still young century. His star rose in 2003, with a show in which five unique actors made reality theatre, and vice versa. Now, 13 years later, Batelaan has been the boss of one of the country's best youth theatre companies for some time, pushing the boundaries of that industry once again. And that...
It has been eagerly awaited for weeks: the Night of Poetry. For the thirty-fourth time next month, poets and audience gather around the stage for a night of verses and music. Regular presenter Piet Piryns, now fused with the event, looks back and ahead. He remembers it well, his first...
How to avoid choice stress at the Edinburgh Fringe bursting at the seams on all sides? We conduct an experiment: a day on the flow of flyers.
Let's talk about breasts (m/f). Or, if that's a bit too confrontational: the tendency of young up-and-coming acting talents to get naked on stage. And then do something with juice. Of fruit mostly, or just water, or oil and glitter. At Festival Boulevard yesterday, for the third time in a week, I had...
Being the best at your craft, and then not in one craft, but in three or so. That, too, is what makes an artist an artist. Ben Duke is a great artist. He is a gifted dancer, a phenomenal actor and a cum laude graduate in English literature. It is therefore logical that he wrote the greatest poem in British history, the...
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