Anything for which people enter a stage.
We spend much of our lives saving our asses. You'd better be a bit cheerful about that, because life isn't manufacturable anyway. These are no small life lessons that René Geerlings, the new boss of Rotterdam-based Maas Theatre and Dance, deploys in his first play as artistic director. Still...
Dance and ballet, drama with gory atrocities and clattering emotions, imaginative lighting, set and costume effects and, above all, enthusiasm bursting forth. HNTjong's 'biggest production ever' with 30 actors for 50 roles is overwhelming. Thanks also to the corona crisis: the National Theatre had to postpone the performance for a year and a half and lift it over two summer holidays, with all the misery...
Theatre and film have close ties. Many classic plays have been filmed. One of the merits of Ivo van Hove and Jan Versweyveld is that they have reversed that relationship. Film as the starting point for their performances. Their radically innovative work is the starting point for the exhibitions - designed by themselves - about theatre about film about theatre. In 13 venues...
Last Monday, 20 September, the Nederlandse Reisopera presented its programme for the upcoming season. The speaker was Josef Fuchs, who was introduced as the company's new artistic director by its general director a.i. Nina Hiddema. A festive occasion, which caused slight surprise in the small gathering (a few journalists and some colleagues). In an interview (below...
Hope for liberation during a dark period of war threat and political oppression; a masterpiece by Beethoven sublimely expressed in dance by Toer van Schayk. Everything gets into an uproar Creating an abstract and layered classical ballet for a large ensemble of a top company to a Beethoven symphony: few can do it and Toer is one of them. His ballet stems from...
Admittedly, I was never a fan, but how I hated those planes last night. I was walking through a dark, nocturnal forest between Lage Vuursche and Hilversum. Where, in the silence, I could have listened extra carefully to creaking twigs, shuffling insects, whispering trees and the occasional owl, I mostly heard how happy we all are that after corona we have another...
FOODCHAINZ is an intermedial project and evening-long programme consisting of a tomato dinner with special guests from the food chain, the exhibition HARVEST FROM THE HOOD, the audio tour From Farmer to Plate and the theatre performance FOODCHAINZ! To be seen on 7, 8, 9, 14 and 15 October at Plein Theater in Amsterdam Oost! Tickets include dinner and bonus programming and are available at...
Festival Circolo takes place from 22 to 31 October in Tilburg. With the festival centre in the Leijpark and various satellite locations in the city, it will be one big circus party in Tilburg for ten days. Although, ten days... This year, Festival Circolo has secretly added six days. Because Les Choses de Rien's show L'Absolu - in a towering...
There are some people, who would prefer to tinker all day with soldering irons and circuit boards. I once had such an uncle who sometimes did not entirely safe things with a 220-volt electric train, so I limited myself to battery-powered Lego. That you can also do something with electronics and music was, of course, already known, but what I saw in...
November Music 2021 starts ticket sales and presents the programme. The festival cuts across musical genres with 90 concerts in 10 days with 20 commissioned works and 25 premieres. November Music will take place from 5 to 14 November 2021 at various venues in 's-Hertogenbosch, including the Bosch Requiem 2021 composed by Hawar Tawfiq, festival composers Rebecca Saunders and Kaija Saariaho, Brad...
'As for many people, the theatre festival really does mean something. Like the Fringe, it is impossible to imagine without it. I've been able to make artistic friendships there, I've been able to have arguments there, I've met people who I thought were adversaries who turned out to be comrades-in-arms. Because there are not only performances, there is...
Plays often end in chaos. An overturned liquor cabinet, a blood blade among royals, we are used to a few things. Jetse Batelaan's latest play, baroque and sharper than he showed before, also ends in beauty, but then that is actually the beginning. Indeed, the ending is sterile and stripped of any life. But that is where the performance begins. The artistic director of...
Those who fear - by virtue of being white men or women - that the descendants of enslaved people are coming to punish them for being grossly at fault for the consequences of the now infamous VOC Mentality, can sleep a little more peacefully again. During the first day of the Dutch Theatre Festival, Thursday 2 September in Amsterdam, surprisingly conciliatory noises rang out when it came to...
'We thought it would be a good idea, after a year and a half of misery, not to start immediately with the most critical perspective, but rather to emphasise how good it was to be together again.' In this podcast, Marijn Lems and Wijbrand Schaap look back with Guy Weizman at his 'State of the Theatre', the traditional opening of the...
Yes, it is true, also this year's tryout of the New Year's Eve conference at Concordia.
If you want to navigate in unfamiliar waters, it is good to take a map with you. My father was a fisherman, he hardly read, but that's what he told me. Now that I come to Amsterdam, that is also the first thing I do: make a map. What museums are there, is there a cool restaurant, is there new architecture?
Art should challenge. The National Theatre explores the limits of virtual child pornography with The Nether: can you live 'without consequences'?
We're talking about the non-attending theatre. Because it was all about it last week at Theatre Festival Boulevard and then on social media following this post. One who spoke out very strongly about it was theatre and screenwriter Jan Veldman (a.o. Theatre Group Jan Vos). 'I think thinking theatre is an elitist idea, and at least...
According to Linde van Schuppen, philosopher and linguist, medics do not really listen to people with psychosis. At least, they do listen to someone suffering from obvious delusions, but that is to establish that the person is indeed off the track. 'But, how then?" is the question a psychiatrist or neurologist is not trained to answer, she argues. That is why she is doing her PhD.
One of the very best things about Festival Boulevard is the variety of programming. Theatre, dance, music, youth performances, mime, comedy, it all mixes together. And the festival offers just as much space to young makers as to the old hands. So you get a good overview of what the up-and-coming generation of theatre makers has to offer....
The permanent site of Boulevard's festival centre has largely turned into a construction site this year. This forced the organisers to move to Zuiderpark. Although this is a bit outside the city centre, it is much more spacious and green than the Parade square. It gives the festival a nice feeling of air, space and proximity to the...
The vast majority of Dutch adults never go to the theatre. Interestingly enough, the question among theatre people is never really about why people don't go to the theatre. After all, our arts sector is a supply market. At an art school, you are not trained to please the public, but to express your most individual emotion. And then preferably...
Bosses start to look like their dogs. Or vice versa. Or owners like dogs who look like them. Or vice versa. Either way. If you want proof of this statement, hurry to Theatre Festival Boulevard where John Buijsman plays the gem 'Cosmic Cowboy', assisted by Kees, a labradoodle. Or something that should pass for that. John Buijsman is one of the...
I have seen a lot of genre mash-ups in my lifetime. But I think a danced documentary about a musician was a first for me. The focus of choreographer Jan Martens in his new dance solo Elisabeth Gets Her Way is the famous harpsichordist Elisabeth Chojnacka. The Polish left for Paris at the age of 23. There she set her sights on...
One of the things that make Boulevard so special in the Dutch festival landscape is its generous focus on Belgian performances. Where Dutch theatres programme less and less work from across the southern borders, Boulevard continues to offer a stage to a large number of Belgian makers. Learning to live together This produces very varied work again this year. At the heart of the festival is...
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