Things we do for members and partners.
Incandescent bulbs are also out of the question in theatres. Plays, musicals and concerts will soon all have to switch to "sustainable" lighting. And, just as this affects the atmosphere in the living room, it also affects the atmosphere on stage: sustainable light has completely different colour values than old-fashioned light. Lighting designers have been complaining about this for some time. But how...
Sir Simon Rattle is quite clear about it: "The entire musical world must be as horrified and puzzled as I am to see such a massive destruction of orchestral and choral institutions in Holland." (The entire musical world must be as horrified and puzzled as I am, at the sight of such massive destruction of orchestral and choral institutions in Holland)....
It was actually typically Dutch. After all, we have more awards to give away here in all parts of the creative sector than there are artists. Almost. And so all those awards have their own selection committees, juries, committees and you name it. Not only costs hands full of money, it's also cumbersome. Which is why there is now at least one sensible...
Ok, a few people might have been a tad disappointed. Who had hoped that Rotterdam's theatre would reopen with real bang, after the extremely successful upgrade of the interior by scrap artist Jan Versweyveld (suspended ceiling, marble and carpet on the stairs). But that, of course, cannot happen. After all, the Rotterdam Schouwburg only does bangers when International Choice boss Annemie Vanackere is there...
One of the most fascinating Dutch films to hit cinemas last year was Ditteke Mensink's Farewell. A romance in an airship flying around the world, and then constructed entirely from real archive footage. This miraculous and wonderful tour de force now has a chance of winning a Golden Calf for best feature-length documentary. This and other nominations for Golden Calfs were...
What she does is vulnerable to the point of confrontation. Theatre-maker Lotte van den Berg has such a personal view of the world that, outside the safe context of theatre, it can come across as absurd. Or alienating. On Sunday 26 September, she returned with the members of her Dordrecht-based location theatre company OMSK back from a four-month stay in the Congo capital Kinshasa. A full house at Rotterdam's Gouvernestraat then got to be there when they unpacked their bags a few hours after landing.
It is occasionally quite chilly on the Westergasfabriek grounds where three Fringe performances are on show. Thursday night, they are Levelless by Theatre Group WAK, Vivarium #3 by LORNA Collective and Kaat by Eva Knibbe, respectively. The cold, however, is no killjoy. The physical jokes in Levelless (or Recht not in Dutch) are a bit like...
The teachers recite it, a whistle sounds. The audience mimics it, like wax in the hands of the five Chinese on stage. Anyone who walks into the performance C'est du Chinois walks into a Mandarin language lesson. An effective language lesson besides, you understand the two small families-they have only been in the country for four months but plan to...
Een intiem huiskamercongres tussen levende kunstwerken. Zo kun je ‘House without a maid, een ‘gesprekken-, performances- en installatieproject’ van Jorge León en Simone Aughterlony in Huis Sonneveld het best omschrijven. In de voormalige garage van de modernistische villa uit 1932 is een select vrouwelijk gezelschap twee dagen bijeen om te discussiëren over het fenomeen dienstmeid. In andere vertrekken van het imponerende…
‘Dus, dokter Lacan, zijn vrouwen gevoeliger voor gekte? … Is de man vatbaar voor hysterie?’ In ‘Deserve’, onderdeel van het drieluik over de dienstmeid van Jorge León en Simone Aughterlony, graven de makers diep, heel diep. Ze volgen de intrigerende lijn van de grote ontmaskeraars in onze denkgeschiedenis: van Hegels meester-slaaf analyse via Marx en Freud naar de Franse psychoanalyticus Jacques Lacan. Kern van…
Where were the producers? On Tomorrow's Maker's Day, the Netherlands Film Festival screened 48 graduation films from the Film Academy and other art schools. So the hall should have been full of film producers to scout all that new talent, but no, exactly today the Film Fund had organised a meeting with those Dutch producers. Not so convenient. What did those...
Vandaag (vrijdag 24 september 2010) is in het Amsterdamse Debatcentrum De Balie de aftrap gegeven van de acties van de kunstwereld tegen de door het nieuwe kabinet van CDA en VVD, gedoogd door PVV voorgenomen bezuinigingen van 21% op de begroting van OC&W. Voor wie de berichten daarover nog niet heeft gevonden in de reguliere media: de sociale netwersite ’twitter’…
Het debatseizoen in Rotterdam is dit jaar geopend in de vernieuwde zaal van De Unie. De net opgeleverde ruimte doet prettig en intiem aan. Des te opmerkelijker de uitspraak van gespreksleider Natasja van den Berg dat vragen vanuit de zaal niet zijn toegestaan ‘omdat die toch nergens over gaan’. Dat klinkt niet echt als warm welkom in een debatcentrum. Weliswaar leverde het…
In places like this, things happen that cannot bear the light of day. We are deep in Rotterdam's container port, among the neon-lit transhipment yards and dark warehouses. In one of those raw warehouses are two truck trailers. One is set up as an illegal sewing workshop, the other is filled with earth and rubber tyres. They form the backdrop for Hungarian theatre-maker Kornél Mundruczó's performance 'Hard to be a god'.
The show tells the fairly inimitable story of Karoly, who wants to make symbolic torture porn to blackmail his father with it. That father once raped his sister and is now an MEP. Three women are lured to this sewing studio under false pretences to participate in those videos. Things do not end well for them, partly because the foreign film director has rather sadistic tendencies, damaging the ladies to the point of rendering them useless.
Kunstbezoekers opgelet: de gezamenlijke vakbonden en beroepsorganisaties in de cultuursector roepen vrijdag 24 september uit tot landelijke actiedag. Die dag kunt u als bezoeker dus geconfronteerd worden met sprekende muzakanten en dansers. Op de website ‘Stop de culturele kaalslag’ roepen tal van kunstenaarsorganisaties (van FNV Kiem tot de Art Directors Club) de Haagse opnderhandelaars op om af te zien van…
Over the next few days, the show Der perfekte Tag - Ruhrtrilogie Teil 3 by German director René Pollesch was due to play at De Internationale Keuze in Rotterdam. But unfortunately, the main actor, Fabian Hinrichs, broke his leg and the performance had to be cancelled. What are we missing now? In recent years, I saw a number of performances by René in Berlin...
Ze heeft 14 voornamen, omdat haar vader graag zijn hele familie wilde vernoemen en zij enigst kind was. Ze is een veelgevraagd actrice, maar Gonny Gaakeer is ook een meisje met een oma geweest. Een mooie oma, die in de laatste jaren van haar 95-jarige leven steeds vaker omviel en daar de lelijke wonden van droeg. Gonny vertelt haar verhaal, en…
At the Gala van het Nederlands Theater at the Amsterdam Stadsschouwburg last night, the most important theatre awards were presented. Kees Hulst won the Louis d'Or for the most impressive male leading role, the role of Jörgen Hofmeester in' Tirza' at the Nationale Toneel. Maria Kraakman won the Theo d'Or for the most impressive female supporting role, Orlando in Toneelgroep Oostpool's production of the same name. The play 'Oog om Oog', with Linda van Dyck and Victor Löw, among others, won the AVRO Toneel Publieksprijs.
A red carpet, lots of champagne and more hugging. It is a warm reunion for theatre country, the Gala van het Nederlands Theater in Amsterdam's Stadsschouwburg. An exciting reunion too, as the most important Dutch theatre awards will be awarded tonight.
With over 12,000 visitors and an average occupancy rate of 70%, the organisers of the Amsterdam Fringe Festival say they have reason for pride. In a press release, they report that 'they managed to grow the number of visitors without losing the intimacy and experimental character of the Amsterdam Fringe Festival. ' How exactly we should see that....
De multimedia show ‘Investment’ van de Amerikaan Davis Freeman doet in eerste instantie denken aan de PowerPointshow ‘An Unconvenient Truth’ van Al Gore. Drie performers en een projectiecomputer tonen het publiek zeer routineus en gedetailleerd een heel scala aan mogelijkheden om te beleggen. Aanvankelijk zinvol en duurzaam, maar als snel spelen hele andere motieven een rol. Pikant detail: iedereen uit het…
Snow has fallen, a thick layer of fresh snow. Fake snow admittedly, but real enough to imagine yourself in the middle of Russia. There, in the city of Sverdlovsk, or Yekaterinburg, once lived the man about whom the show 'Poets and bandits' is about. Boris Ryzhy (1974-2001) turned the raw realities of his hometown into poems. He left more than a thousand poems to the world. His breakthrough came at the Poetry International festival in Rotterdam, in the year 2000. A year later, he was dead. Boris Ryzhy, 26, had hanged himself.
Theatre group De Warme Winkel makes that link with Rotterdam if only because 'Poëten en bandieten' is played there. An old factory hall serves as a backdrop for the run-down working-class neighbourhood in which Ryzhy grew up. From behind a work table, actress Mara van Vlijmen calls Rotterdam residents. None of them are at home. But on their answering machine is now one of Ryzhy's poems, which must be a wondrous experience for the listeners. The Warm Shop does not show how the professor's son Boris ended up in that poor neighbourhood. Whereas he himself talks about an environment full of drab flats in his poems, the stage setting is more reminiscent of the outdoors, with all that vast snow. The atmosphere is cosy and warm. On a float decorated with candles, a folk ensemble comes on, singing Russian songs. Old-fashioned songs, and nothing pop or punk.
Gijs Scholten van Aschat was so convincing that casting director Hans Kemna was a bit scared of him. Van Aschat did an original wilderness speech and shock went through the audience. Since he now plays the villain of villains with Orkater (Richard III), convincingly delivering a hate speech reasonably is a piece of cake for him. Two true Wilders fans found...
Het Dodo Internationale Keuze-journaal, aflevering 3: Hans van Dam zag ‘Investment’ en sprak met maker Davis Freeman, over wat je allemaal met een ton kunt doen. Het roept associaties op met de fameuze TED-talks en doet denken aan de powerpointdocumentaire ‘An Inconvenient Truth‘, waarmee Al Gore de wereld trachtte wakker te schudden over de klimaatverandering. Wat Davis Freeman doet is kleiner, maar…
'He fears that the real thing may have come along a hundred times, but he missed it.'
'Exactly. And how old are you?'
'Twenty.'
'Well...'
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