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THEATER

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Five quarters of an adolescent brain. Jetse Batelaan makes growing pains hilariously palpable at Theatre Festival Boulevard.

When you make theatre for children and young people, you tell stories to children and young people from your adult existence as an adult. You can do that. You can get funding for that. Artemis, previously named the second-best theatre company in the Netherlands here, is such a company. But, because this youth theatre company is led by Jetse Batelaan, Artemis likes to do things differently. Stronger... 

Read More "Five quarters of an adolescent brain. Jetse Batelaan makes growing pains hilariously palpable at Theatre Festival Boulevard.

Why youth is the future and fake art does not lead to real art at Theatre Festival Boulevard.

Bossche Theatre Artemis is, after International Theatre Amsterdam, the best theatre company in the Netherlands. The company owes this to an illustrious past (Pauline Mol!!) and to Jetse Batelaan. This director recently received the prestigious Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale for his disruptive oeuvre. This consists largely of performances in which children take power, without... 

Read More "Why youth is the future and fake art does not lead to real art at Theatre Festival Boulevard.

In search of pleasure and secret spots, you sometimes stumble upon very special things during Festival Boulevard

The central character in theatre-maker Marijn Graven's Lo Lie Taa was there early. At least, so he tells the mirrored floor and the audience in his monologue Lo Lie Taa. As a nine-year-old, he was already madly in love with his mother and not long after, his life was defined by pursuing as many splashy results of his... 

Read More "In search of pleasure and secret spots, you sometimes stumble upon very special things during Festival Boulevard

White wine and black pain at finely diverse Theatre Festival Boulevard

One of the benefits of advancing secularisation is that beautiful buildings are becoming vacant in more and more places. You can do things with those buildings. With art, for example. So this week, Studio Orka from Belgium did something beautiful in the Maria Church in Vught. They turned the empty neo-Romanesque building into, yes, an empty church.... 

Read More "White wine and black pain at finely diverse Theatre Festival Boulevard

Boulevard opens with great ambition. It will be exciting regardless.

The Theater aan de Parade is slowly but surely starting to become the blot of cultural politics in Den Bosch. The outdated theatre has too low ceilings, too much plush, asbestos and past to still be a credit to the Brabant provincial capital. Viktorien van Hulst, director of the now 35-year-old Theatre Festival Boulevard, made a point of saying during her opening speech on 1 August that the... 

Read More "Boulevard opens with great ambition. It will be exciting regardless.

The Netherlands' Flemishest festival. Theatre festival Boulevard sees artists searching for a way forward

'As programmers, we are more often in Ghent than in Amsterdam,' says Viktorien van Hulst, director of Theatre Festival Boulevard. The Bossche arts festival, which this year takes place from 1 to 11 August under the Sint Jan and at unexpected locations around the North Brabant capital, has for years stood out for its close ties with our southern neighbours. 'The Dionysian artists are sitting... 

Read More "The Netherlands' Flemishest festival. Theatre festival Boulevard sees artists searching for a way forward

Colonisation is not a relationship. But we still need to establish that relationship, this Holland Festival showed.

Post-colonial criticism and reflection ran like a thread through this year's Holland Festival programme. Not only William Kentrigde and Faustin Linyekula, the associate artists with whom the festival's programmers collaborated, their work addresses the devastating effects of centuries of Western European trade and commerce. In reframing political and social history and reclaiming... 

Read More "Colonisation is not a relationship. But we still need to establish that relationship, this Holland Festival showed.

Pity the Poles! Intense suicidal sadness in stage adaptation of Kafka's 'Trial'.

You must be a Pole. That, as the Dutch premiere of 'Process' at the Holland Festival showed, is no laughing matter. This performance, an adaptation of Franz Kafka's famous novel of the same name, conveys that feeling very poignantly. Five hours long, interrupted only by two half-hour intermissions, during which a mackerel sandwich can be eaten. Or a bowl of mixed nuts. Observant... 

Read More "Pity the Poles! Intense suicidal sadness in stage adaptation of Kafka's 'Trial'.

Tryptich by Bryce Dessner is just a little too perfect to really hit home

The Americans have a word for it: production value. By this you can indicate that a performance is technically perfect. The sound is right, the stage setting is excellent, the costumes are all right, the lighting brilliant and the actors, singers and musicians: top notch. Even the extras are at their best. So a show with high production value can rely on little... 

Read More "Tryptich by Bryce Dessner is just a little too perfect to really hit home

ITA's Cherry Garden delivers neat play in theatrical no man's land

It must have started with a big plan in Simon McBurney's head. The Brit, a master of mathematically precise text theatre full of technical gadgets, saw the amazing floor of the Rabozaal of Amsterdam's Stadsschouwburg and his brain started working. Something about a backcloth covering the full width of the hall, something about a doll's house, something about... 

Read More "ITA's Cherry Garden delivers neat play in theatrical no man's land

'Congo' is another highlight of one of the most meaningful Holland Festivals in years.

'I think they understood.' Faustin Linyekula says it, very quietly, a little apologetically almost, to his fellow actor at the end of the performance Congo. A slightly relieved laugh can be heard in the main auditorium of Frascati, where Princess Beatrix is also seated. Shortly before, Daddy Moanda Kamono had erupted in an increasingly desperate tirade against our shared past.... 

Read More "'Congo' is another highlight of one of the most meaningful Holland Festivals in years.

Does blood have to flow then? (How much art you can make about art not hurting)

Why do we actually want to see blood so much? That's what I wondered during the performance Roughhouse. This American-German piece is showing in the Holland Festival (Wednesday 12 June still) and in it there is no blood. That's also what it's about. That blood no longer flows anywhere, in the media, in art. That everyone always gets up again, that... 

Read More "Does blood have to flow then? (How much art you can make about art not hurting)

Why, as a total layman, I did three days AUS LIGHT. And came out as a different person.

Music critics were unabatedly enthusiastic. And even opera lovers came, saw and were pleased. Of course, there was the chorus of monuments, led by a Flemish antiquity, who liked Maria Calllas better seventy years ago, but its members are only the necessary minority needed for something as unprecedented as AUS LICHT, the Magnum opus of the 72nd Holland Festival. Beforehand, it seemed... 

Read More "Why, as a total layman, I did three days AUS LIGHT. And came out as a different person.
Crash Park, la vie d'une île - Philippe Quesne. Photo: Martin Argyroglo.

Until the laughter dies down. Crashpark stages the downfall of the world as a beautiful landscape full of partygoers

Crash Park - La vie d'une île (2018) by French director Philippe Quesne performs 19th-century values in their 21st-century elaboration. The elitist explorer has become a modal tourist, moving in well-organised groups to every corner of the world in search of ultimate experiences, provided they don't get in the way of a return ticket western... 

Read More "Until the laughter dies down. Crashpark stages the downfall of the world as a beautiful landscape full of partygoers

Angélica Liddell's screams are particularly interesting in The Scarlet Letter

The much nudity and sex in Angelica Liddel's adaptation of Hawthorne's famous novel are a bit old-fashioned. The Spanish language is the real attraction. In his review of Angélica Liddell's play 'The Scarlet Letter' on this website, Wijbrand Schaap calls the scene with a naked black man "a painful low point". According to Schaap, the man is treated by Lidell as... 

Read More "Angélica Liddell's screams are particularly interesting in The Scarlet Letter

Eight by Michel van der Aa: hallucinatory mixed reality at Holland Festival. - But don't forget to take off your pumps

Slightly nauseated and with shaky legs, I leave the corridor in which I have just experienced Eight by Michel van der Aa. 'Did you follow the circuit in those high heels?' a Holland Festival staff member asks incredulously. Indeed I had better leave my pumps at the entrance. The mixed reality project Eight will have its world premiere on Tuesday 4 June at Muziekgebouw... 

Read More "Eight by Michel van der Aa: hallucinatory mixed reality at Holland Festival. - But don't forget to take off your pumps

Los Incontados: a bizarre terrarium of small-human suffering in a cloud of cocaine and confetti.

Colombia's biggest export not only allows Urk fishermen to work long hours, or Amsterdam Zuidas lawyers to keep up with the global 24-hour economy. The white gold also dissolves the nasal septum of the cream of world culture, and costs thousands of lives in the country itself. That had to lead to a theatrical performance, and it did 

Read More "Los Incontados: a bizarre terrarium of small-human suffering in a cloud of cocaine and confetti.

What a broken-down bus has to do with liberation and feminism. Dancer Djino Alolo on Piki Piki at the Holland Festival

Djino Alolo Sabin (1990) sits there, relaxed, in the morning at the hotel in Brussels. The night before, he has danced his solo Piki Piki for the first time, which will also be shown at Theater Frascati during the Holland Festival. The performance touches on many intense themes, but is anything but melodramatic. Rather, it expresses a relentless optimism.... 

Read More "What a broken-down bus has to do with liberation and feminism. Dancer Djino Alolo on Piki Piki at the Holland Festival

'I'm not the discrimination police.' Romana Vrede on her role in Gloria Wekker's team on SPOT-LIve.

'How do I make the world a little more beautiful? That's what I ask myself in everything I do.' Romana Vrede, award-winning actress with Het Nationale Theater, 'table lady' on De Wereld Draait Door and Summer Guest, likes to look positively into the world. So will her contribution to SPOT-Live, the performing arts symposium taking place in Rotterdam on 28 May, be optimistic... 

Read More "'I'm not the discrimination police.' Romana Vrede on her role in Gloria Wekker's team on SPOT-LIve.

Naked men and black bronzing under philosophical veneer. Is Angelica Liddell overshooting the mark with The Scarlet Letter? (Why the Holland Festival can expect a riot)

That you cannot shamelessly treat a black man as a rutting primal beast and a faceless object for your unlimited lust fantasy as a white woman? Seems logical to me, but for Angélica Liddell, world-renowned performance artist, it is typical of the new puritanism that threatens free art. She now brings The Scarlet Letter to the Netherlands, a theatrical performance that is rather... 

Read More "Naked men and black bronzing under philosophical veneer. Is Angelica Liddell overshooting the mark with The Scarlet Letter? (Why the Holland Festival can expect a riot)

How bad is the suicide of a blow-up doll? Chilean girls play themselves free in Paisajes para no colorear at the Holland Festival

'I was harassed twice on my way to school last year.' The young actress, barely 15, says it with considerable anger in her voice. It is the morning after the Berlin premiere of the Chilean play Paisajes para no colorear, in which she plays along, with eight peers. That anger was there the previous evening, during the performance that 14... 

Read More "How bad is the suicide of a blow-up doll? Chilean girls play themselves free in Paisajes para no colorear at the Holland Festival

New audiences for subsidised theatre? The Netherlands is working against that.

Together with two 12-year-old kids, I go to a theatre performance. To a theatre performance labelled 'adult performance'. Tickets cost 25. Discount for students. Discount for CJP. No discount for children, excuse me, youngsters, because yes, those two bridge students are already 12. Is this performance made for children? No. It is made for the curious, open viewer, for... 

Read More "New audiences for subsidised theatre? The Netherlands is working against that.

Vis à Vis versus Almere (2): civil service finds building land too expensive for culture

A fortnight ago, we reported that the unique open-air theatre group Vis à Vis had started a petition. Reason: the Almere city council was reportedly planning to convert the company's permanent site on Almere beach into a residential area. This would go against an earlier promise made by the alderman. Since that alderman has since ceased to be an alderman, it would... 

Read More "Vis à Vis versus Almere (2): civil service finds building land too expensive for culture

PODCAST! Beware the one-armed piano teacher. Bellevue presents comic show about Paul Wittgenstein.

Playing the piano without hands is quite difficult. With one hand it is already almost impossible, although Paul Wittgenstein came a long way. The pianist - and elder brother of the famous philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein - lost his right arm in the First World War trenches. He set about training his left arm with some dogged determination and was able to... 

Read More "PODCAST! Beware the one-armed piano teacher. Bellevue presents comic show about Paul Wittgenstein.

Crash Park: Armageddon is child's play. At the Holland Festival, Philippe Quesne cheerfully lets us survive any disaster.

'I am not at all optimistic about the planet. Nor am I optimistic about the optimism with which the people in my show keep finding a solution to live on despite the calamity that befalls them.' Philippe Quesne has turned that despair into a beautiful play. Full of non-cynical survivors who turn everything into an adventure. How he does that... 

Read More "Crash Park: Armageddon is child's play. At the Holland Festival, Philippe Quesne cheerfully lets us survive any disaster.

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