Things we do for members and partners.
200 military personnel and JunkieXL are expected to cause a spectacle on the A2 motorway near Utrecht on 13 April. The roof of the new tunnel trench will be the stage for a battle of medieval proportions, in which peace will be conquered by our army over something with a wall and 'war' on it.
Once upon a time, subsidised theatre was a left-wing hobby. Now, two years on, subsidised theatre has effortlessly conformed to the prevailing, much more right-wing trend.
Writers like to talk, and people like to talk about, with and through writers. As much as that may be reason to organise a literature festival, it is also why
At 1 strip or 1,000 words blogger and columnist Peter Breedveld spoke with three influential illustrators, Barbara Stok, Peter van Dongen and Thé Tjong-Khing using projected images from their beautiful work. The relaxed conversation was a breath of fresh air among the other ferocious debating violence at the festival.
Whether Tahmina Akefi is a good writer, I dare not say. The Afghan beauty can at least glue sentences together, and knows how to add an erotic layer on top. But whether this means she surpasses the average penny novel, or whether she has nothing to offer but oriental soft porn anyway? Tricky.
"We don't use social media because it's cool," says Tunisian internet activist Sami Ben Gharbia. "But in a dictatorship, it is the only way to inform people about what is really going on. To fight the demons in society. I am not a techny Became because it's fun. I just needed useful knowledge about internet codes, to improve my civic activism possible."
We spoke briefly at Writers Unlimited 2013 with the woman who has been giving workshops in poetry to schoolchildren for a few years now. And we wondered again if rap wasn't enough for them, those kids. No. So it turns out. And she explains it clearly.
John de Mol is doing good business in the Arab world. He acts rather dismissively about this, according to Hassnae Bouazza. According to her, the television producer talks publicly mostly about the many restrictions on his formats because of Islam and the sentimentalism of TV in the Middle East in general. That De Mol's success number The Voice of Arabia during the final in
With a jam-packed programme like Writers Unlimited 2013, it sometimes happens that, even as a professional journalist, despite everything, you end up dropping in somewhere too late, and then just catching a glimpse of something really great. In this case, after the tour de force of Amos Oz and Adriaan van Dis, was that Kenyan Ngwatilo Mawiyoo's spoken word performance. Mea culpa for that.
How many male genitalia Yasmine Allas had weighed in her hand. For a while, that was the question during Writers Unlimited's most shameless programme to date. This latenight talk show addressed the question of how shameless writers actually dare to be these days. Kristien Hemmerechts, always good for a few firm statements, met her peers in
And then, just like that, you can miss the highlight of the first Winternacht because you don't pull it together with a presenter. Flemish author Bart van Loo, according to many a twitterer, seems to have uttered beautiful sentences in the programme 'Daar geef ik mijn leven voor', but that was well after midnight and I was already
During the kick-off of Winternacht 1, publicist Bas Heijne brought the two literary giants Amos Oz and Adriaan van Dis closer together. What remains of their former idealism? Oz's barrage of wonderful one-liners proved difficult to tame and made for a hilarious but somewhat unbalanced conversation.
Lebanese writer Hanaan Al-Shaykh (Beirut, Lebanon, 1945) opened Wrtiters Unlimited on Thursday 17 January with a blazing argument against Arab culture of shame. This, according to the writer whose books The story of Zahra, Women between sky and sand, Beirut blues and Only in London have been translated into Dutch, so deep in
Writers Unlimited Special - One of the important guests at Writers Unlimited is Roland Colastica. This Curaçao author made his debut in 2012 with the children's book 'Fireworks in my head'. The book was enthusiastically received, and has since grown into a modest bestseller. Major strength of the story is its colourful and rhythmic style, but just as important is
As the government has killed the entire circuit of production houses and further education, seven theatres have jumped into the gap. They are joining forces to enable a number of 'young' makers to develop their work after all. By offering a number of performances in advance
We received this via Facebook: "During the night of Friday 11 to Saturday 12 January at 1.30am, a group of about seven young men destroyed a large canvas hanging on the facade of Theatre Kikker on the Ganzenmarkt in Utrecht. The canvas, which
Everywhere, arts attendance is falling dramatically, except, for now, in Rotterdam. There, the Rotterdamnse Schouwburg managed to keep the number of paying visitors the same, or even increase slightly to over 147,500, in its first real cultural disaster year 2012. In its own press release, the management (currently in the hands of Jan Zoet) attributes this to sharper programming and revivals of successful productions, and an increase in the number of concerts:
Perhaps the biggest surprise of the 2012 cinema year was that two completely different films were the biggest crowd-pleasers. First, the new James Bond Skyfall, of course, with almost 2 million visits. But that the number two (1.2 million) is a
Three hundred years ago, the Treaty of Utrecht was signed, bringing an end to both the War of Spanish Succession, and the War of Queen Anne. Remarkably, this peace treaty was not negotiated on the battlefield, but at the negotiating table. It took a year and a half for the many parties to come to an agreement, and the treaty counts as the beginning of...
With paper, you never know ('0.3% of newspaper readers read the reviews on the art page'), and with TV it's always a bit of estimating and extrapolating too, but the internet is rock hard. We know how many times you read one of our pieces, and how long you lingered at our videos. Well: we were already proud last year, now we are well over 200,000
Unrest in poetry land. By a error 'ambiguity' in the website of the National Turing Poem Contest several hundred poems disappeared from the competition probably for the wrong reasons. Alexis de Roode, herself a multiple prize winner, raised the issue on facebook.
Fifteen years after Peter Delpeuts Felice, Felice the International Film Festival Rotterdam gets another Dutch opening. The 42nd edition of this leading event will kick off on 23 January with the world premiere of The resurrection of an asshole by Guido van Driel, festival director Rutger Wolfson announced this afternoon.
We are just reporting the press release in full. For your information. Every now and then, more news like this comes along. We don't post them all, because that would make the world very bleak. The world as many people knew it, and which they thought was the pride of the Netherlands, is coming to a squeaking halt to make room for. Well. We will report on that in the years to come. Of what comes in its place.
A sound engineer making deafening sounds on stage with wads of paper. Puppetry that flows seamlessly into film projections and singers dubbed by actors. A primitive stage on stage that is, however, high tech. A performance in one of the largest halls in our country, but reminiscent of a flat-floor performance. A flat floor that can move in all directions, though, and could just as easily be a slope or a ceiling, that is.
Amsterdam, 10-12-2012 - Last weekend the Babelfestival began at the Ostade Theatre, an initiative of the Diamond factory. Founded two years ago, this production group offers young creators the chance to develop small-scale musical theatre. This weekend sees the premiere of Black Perfume, by Russian composer Anna Mikhailova and the Dutch director Annechien Koerselman, to the story Morphine by Mikhail Bulgakov.
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