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His voice is low, and when he talks, he does so calmly and thoughtfully. He regards his humour - very British - as a side effect that is more accidental than intended. This makes Helon Habila a perfect guest for the opening night of Writers Unlimited, the Hague literature festival better known as 'Winternachten'. The Nigerian can tell stories, but...
He is now a publisher, and the man who was director of the Dutch Foundation for Literature until last year will be quite happy with that. As director of the Bezige Bij, one of the country's largest publishing houses, he will surely never again have to submissively toast the sarcastic State Secretary for Culture Halbe Zijlstra. At least the relief was audible in Pröpper's...
She now lives in Norway, after she had to leave her homeland Iran for her own opinion. She was detained for five days, and in Tehran's notorious Evin prison, that is an eternity. Now Asieh Amini is free in a foreign land, and Oxfam-Novib is presenting her with the PEN Award. A great opening for the Writers Unlimited Winternachten Festival, which, with this presentation,...
Writers Unlimited The Dodo is coming back to life. On 19 January already. That's when we plunge into The Hague writer's life. The four-day festival Writers Unlimited, formerly known as Winternachten, but thus changed its name because of the weather (not, but nice joke) will have a real dodo, but then again differently. We will LIVE BLOG. That means we will be there....
That frightens us quite a bit ourselves. We knew that the Cultural Press Agency was doing pretty well, but we didn't really think a reach of more than 100,000 people was possible. After all, we had done nothing in the way of marketing. Just posting content and not giving away free tickets. And only once something with a bare female breast in it. Enfin....
An alternative scene for classical events outside the ice palaces of classical music is growing. Last month, you could 'classical clubbing' at the Yellow Lounge at the Westergasfabriek venue. The club was sold out, indeed with a large
'I will never go to anything undergrounds again,' sighs a lady as she leaves the auditorium. She looks pained, after more than an hour and a half of Neutral Hero by director Richard Maxwell and the New York City Players. The paper description of the show may therefore lead a potential visitor astray. A 'country opera' sounds far too...
Director, actress and theatre designer Sarah Moeremans is holding office in the lobby of the Rotterdam Schouwburg for a year. Titled "My First Camp", she has moved into the front hall to be more in touch with the various users and visitors in the building and the world around it. Has the public space become a wilderness, which...
Can a plastic rag be sad? It does in the hands of a puppeteer in a performance by Lotte van den Berg. With a few pieces of tape and a lot of well-aimed buttons, the plastic rag has been transformed into something with four limbs and a head. And the plastic rag mourns in its performer's hands dozens of similarly knotted...
"We are blind to the big changes in the world and meanwhile we are arguing with one-liners on Radio One." These words, penned by reporter Robbert van Heuven from the mouth of writer Abdelkader Benali during the Choice Debate on Tuesday 20 September perhaps best captures what The International Choice was all about. Artistic director Annemie Vanackere...
Een stoet felrode en groene fietsen slingert langs de Maas, bereden door mensen die nieuwsgierig om zich heen kijken, met elkaar overleggen en zich elk moment afvragen of ‘dit er nou bij hoort’. Het toegangskaartje van Parfum de BoemBoem in hun zak is het bewijs: het gaat hier niet om een gewone fietstocht, maar om een met theatrale verrassingen. Gids Sereh geniet van de vragende blikken en leidt de groep naar de eerste locatie: de afvalverbrandingsinstallatie in Rotterdam-Zuid.
Listen here to the podcast/work in progress by Jowi Schmitz who attended the event with chef Natasja Postma: Fantasising about 2020 in International Choice 2011 Liposuction fat. Blood. Vomit. 'You can look at it that way too!' says the Appetitheque's food designer excitedly. It doesn't bother her that her thin-walled jelly pudding, processed cola and her yellow-white lumps of beef salad are still...
It is the most frequently asked question to actresses: whether it is difficult, crying on command. And invariably Carice van Houten or Halina Reijn then replies to Matthijs van Nieuwkerk or Jeroen Pauw that there are all kinds of tricks for that. For crying. Just think of something nasty, tiger balm, onions, and Vaseline. Now, however, it turns out there is something where even...
Spain and God. The two have had something in common for a long time. And to outsiders, not always in a positive sense. Spaniards invented the Inquisition and converted the entire native population of South America to the eternal hunting grounds. When artists delve into the relationship between supreme being and Spaniard, it also quite often produces confrontational works. Take...
It takes guts: walking down Rotterdam's Kruiskade with a big wooden cross and shouting "Mason was a fish!" shouting. The drug-addicted residents of St Paul's Church, the dishwashers at Chinese restaurants and waiting passengers at the tram stop look on in bewilderment. Sandro Lima shouts lyrics about Mason the saviour like a possessed religious maniac. Moments before, we are at...
Far more people waved at the Queen on Princes Day than stood on Malieveld a day earlier to protest against austerity. Why are we unable to revolt? And what can we learn from the Tahrir Square uprising. These were some of the questions that came up during 'Lessons in revolt', the debate...
Opinion pollsters take note: "People give the moderate answer to most questions they are asked in life. The characters in 'This is not a love story' are very ordinary, very average. In that, it clicks between those two. It's an ending where you feel an enormous satisfaction." Enthusiasm prevails after the opening weekend of The International Choice of the...
What is your relationship with whales? A. Totally not interested in it. B. Somewhat interested. C. Very fond of whales.
You don't often hear such a question in everyday life. It appears in 'This is not a love story', a narrated, danced and musically performed 'Swedish road movie' by choreographer/filmmaker Gunilla Heilborn. A journey Heilborn took with dancers Johan Thelander and Kristiina Viala from Tromsö to Lisbon provided the material for this performance.
For the opening night of The International Choice, the Rotterdam Schouwburg was briefly transformed into Berlin's Volksbühne. The same black plastic rags on the walls, the same ugly yellow front curtain and - most strikingly - the seats in the auditorium have been replaced by white beanbags. Those beanbags, by the way, are widely despised and mocked in Berlin. They should...
Vreemd hoe snel de geschiedenis zich losmaakt van je herinnering. We waren hier zo langzamerhand gaan denken dat de campingopstand op het Tahrirplein in Cairo een soort summer of love was. Dat iedereen er samenzingend rozen in kanonslopen propte en dat de hele wereld slechts bedoeld was om elkaar liefde en hugs te geven. Tijd voor een lesje in opstand.…
Often, publicity texts conjure up an inappropriate image of the performance they refer to. "The air base as a no man's land: a military state wiped out and where nature has taken over the area," is one such. The text belongs to Welcome in the human zoo, an experiential theatre performance created by Suze Milius and Bram Jansen. Such a sentence evokes associations....
"You are my sunshine," sings a woman very softly. Meanwhile, the audience sits in pitch darkness. We are trapped. Banished to a shelter that, it seems, suddenly has no exit. It is a real shelter in which theatre-maker Davy Pieters holds her performance Helium. Shelter 313 at Soesterberg Air Base once served as a refuge for personnel. Via...
Soesterberg Air Base is full of large hangars, sheds and other massive buildings. All dream locations for theatre-makers, it seems. Director Ilmer Rozendaal made a different choice for her performance Thousand Yard Stare. She placed the solo in a small, airy oak forest containing an old and dilapidated bunker. The timelessness of this place turns out to be ideal for her small and human...
A clearing in the forest. It could be idyllic, but from the forest come suspicious noises. Men are singing and pulling tractors. The echoes of explosions echo. It's all just fake. It's just theatre - which nevertheless inspires fear. Daria Bukvic, a newly graduated director from the Maastricht Drama School, created a play about her mother. Who...
Art at Soesterberg airbase is almost by definition a paradox. So is the natural site that was a military base. And that is why visual art finds a perfect home here. For festival De Basis, artists from five countries were asked to enter into a dialogue with this absurd, until recently forbidden terrain. This results in beautiful contrasts. First of all in...
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