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'Shéda', insane chaos with a glimpse of genius @hollandfestival

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If after only the first 15 minutes, half of the middle row flees the auditorium, and you look at your watch, thinking, my god we still have over five hours to go, there is something thoroughly wrong with the performance. 'Shéda', by Congolese playwright Dieudonné Niangouna, is an insane tub of chaos of incoherent tirades. Declaimed screaming at a stretch by 12 hyperactive African and European actors, each with a fixed character, returning as gods to apocalyptic worlds, à la Mad Max, beating each other up with bizarre lyrics. Goodness, it is impossible to make sense of it all. Yet it continues to fascinate. Why?

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Meistersinger @HollandFestival convinces musically only

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Cowardly knight defeats untalented rule fetishist with help from wise cobbler and wins singing contest and the hand of coquettish goldsmith's daughter. Or: boy meets girl on the streets of Nuremberg and decides to enter the local version of Nuremberg's got talent. The judges send him away, but he gets the audience vote. Wagner wouldn't be Wagner, however, if he didn't take about five hours for this story.

Read More "Meistersinger @HollandFestival convinces musically only

Deep in the belly of the Icelandic cello @hollandfestival

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It's a tricky genre, which drone, or ambient. Or, what do you call the avant-garde cello experiments of the Icelandic Hildur Guðnadóttir (1982). Very slow, very repetitive, very minimalist. Abstract sound art that leans heavily on loops, resonations and buzzing, über syrupy tones that swell into a large, layered sound collage.

Read More "Deep in the belly of the Icelandic cello @hollandfestival

Two voices on Sunken Garden @HollandFestival part 2. Thea Derks: 'Guilt & penance before, after, with and in death'

Holland Festival Holland Festival

Amsterdam, 5-6-2013 - It is difficult to go uninhibited to a production that has already caused so much controversy as Sunken Garden by Michel van der Aa. This "first 3D opera" was slammed as "soporific" after its premiere at London's Barbican Theatre last April, but also hailed as "the future of opera".

Read More "Two voices on Sunken Garden @HollandFestival part 2. Thea Derks: 'Guilt & penance before, after, with and in death'

Two voices on Sunken Garden @HollandFestival, part 1. Henri Drost: "much more than 3D film opera"

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Forget all the fuss about the first ever 3D film opera, forget all the fuss in British newspapers. Michel van der Aa himself sighed in interview that, on reflection, he would have loved to have made the second 3D film opera. And perhaps he had

Read More "Two voices on Sunken Garden @HollandFestival, part 1. Henri Drost: "much more than 3D film opera"

Foto: Jurgen Koopmanschap

First children's book ambassador @jacques_vriens on the breach for reading pleasure: 'Frighteningly few Dutch children enjoy reading'

Since two months, the successful children's book author Jacques Vriens can call himself the first Children's Book Ambassador of the Netherlands. For much longer, he has been doing all he can to increase children's reading pleasure. International research shows that only ten percent of Dutch children really enjoy reading. That is shockingly little.'
Read More "First children's book ambassador @jacques_vriens on the breach for reading pleasure: 'Frighteningly few Dutch children enjoy reading'

Orchestre El Gusto lets sounds of Kashba Blues blow through @hollandfestival like warm desert wind

Holland Festival Holland Festival

They are gentlemen of age and therefore with a history. Grey or bespectacled or bald - or with a combination of all three. Their music has taken them everywhere. And now they are in a packed Carre: the Orchestre El Gusto. To their own delight, as they thank the audience for coming. The musicians from the kasbah of Algiers play the music as it is

Read More "Orchestre El Gusto lets sounds of Kashba Blues blow through @hollandfestival like warm desert wind

Jan Lauwers with musical folk theatre at @hollandfestival: 'It's forbidden to memorise lyrics'

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An explosion in a crowded market square claimed 24 lives, including seven children. When the village commemorates that tragedy a year later, a little boy falls out of a window and a girl disappears before

Read More "Jan Lauwers with musical folk theatre at @hollandfestival: 'It's forbidden to memorise lyrics'

A chamber opera blown up to impressive proportions at @hollandfestival

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,,The special thing about Quartett is that an intimate story between two people is blown up to impressive proportions. The characters find themselves in a room, which seems to float. In this seclusion, an isolated game between a man and a woman plays out. Giant video projections

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Peter Blok does a Don Draper

Tjitske Reidinga, our favourite actress, who is in the middle of her golden years, is coming up with a new summer comedy: 'An Ideal Woman'. The blonde who theatre people have known for a long time, but ordinary people only got to know through the TV series Gooise Vrouwen, gets to decide what she does at the New Delamartheatre for three years, and so she is now going for Mad Men.... 

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Minicourse Opening @HollandFestival, part 1: Total theatre on slippery communication

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This year's Holland Festival opens with a performance of the opera 'Quartett'. It is a piece with a story, which needs some explanation. Maarten Baanders gives a short course on this performance. Also interesting for those who didn't happen to be able to buy a ticket.
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Simon Stone adapts Ibsen for Australians: 'And why would you even go to the theatre if you live in Sydney?'

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Simon Stone (28) wrote a new play based on Henrik Ibsen's 1884 stage classic The Wild Duck. The Swiss-born Australian provided the Norwegian play with entirely contemporary language and dressing. The actors sit

Read More "Simon Stone adapts Ibsen for Australians: 'And why would you even go to the theatre if you live in Sydney?'

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