Sometimes there is a gap in the strolling crowd in Groningen's Noorderplantsoen. Often this is due to a local resident with muscle-dog, who continues to make his daily round despite the crowds. It is one of those funny things that give Noorderzon its very own character, as the most Groningen-like of all summer festivals in our country. There is...
This edition, Theatre Festival Boulevard invited the audience to reflect on the two sides of identity: its immutability but especially its malleability. All this under the heading what you see is what you guess. If there is a performance to which this applies, it has to be Goat Song. A fascinating fifty-minute wordless performance by...
'Not a bad word about Lego or Knexx. But identity is the most exciting building kit.' So opens the preface to Theatre Festival Boulevard in Den Bosch. What you see is what you guess is the motto this time. It refers to the gap between how other people see you and how you yourself feel. Identity in its broadest form: from gender...
Usually when I speak to someone who calls themselves a playwright, they say they are 'only' a supplier of a 'half-product'. I never get that answer from a young actor, and certainly never from a director. It is they who make theatre out of the half-products supplied by writers. Actors and directors prefer to be addressed as 'theatre-makers'. Nothing wrong with that....
Speaking of bubbles. In the middle of Den Bosch, on the parade square, there are three mega-play blocks you can enter. They are mini theatres, brainchildren of designer Theun Mosk. In one of them, you come across a very large plastic bubble in which young, mostly naked, people move. The audience stands on either side of the bubble feeling uncomfortable. Partly because the naked young people...
It started three years ago. Guilherme Miotto, working as a dance maker in Tilburg, was asked by a good friend of his. Whether he wanted to come and have a look in Noord. There, in that rather notorious slum, there were some fantastic freestyle footballers running around. YouTube runs with them, and the best one, Nasser El Jackson, is even world champion. A ball wizard. That is.
About 18 years ago, while on holiday in the Auvergne region, my wife and I picked up a paraglider that had ended up rather unhappily in a meadow full of indignant cows. We were happy to do something. The paraglider looked grateful, although he was a little worried about the car in which we were going to take him back to...
We have sound from the opening. A speech, interviews with three of the four guides and lots of fine sound from a busy festival square in Den Bosch. Listen in, and above all, come and see for yourself. With your family, on an adventure or as a pearl diver. Or all at once. There is water for everyone, and air conditioning where needed.
If the weather holds up a bit, the upcoming edition of Theatre Festival Boulevard will be the most tropical in history. The smart ones among us, who opted for a staycation in West Balkonia this year, can indulge their cultural heart in Den Bosch. Not for nothing regularly called 'The Avignon of the Netherlands'. Theatre festival Boulevard is unpacking 2018 with a truly overwhelming...
"In the Netherlands, we are actually on holiday," say Daphne (40) and Ilja (26), laughing. They are travel experts, with Japan as their core destination. "I visit a few festivals every summer, but whether I'm really a festival-goer? Not so much, I think." Seven years ago, Daphne was last to Lakedance, now she is "getting up to age" and got to go for...
Pizza Napolitana is not going to taste the same again. After all, mozzarella can be anything. We owe this enrichment of our lives to De Warme Winkel, the anarchic theatre company hired by the Nederlands Kamerkoor to enhance their Holland Festival programme. We knew it. And you can go and check that out for yourself, because after that...
Occasionally it chafes at Playful Arts, an intimate festival that brings play and art together. It's all about interaction, doing it yourself, experiencing it. Some visitors have to cross a threshold. But then something does happen. Those dancers must be in really good shape," I hear someone behind me mutter reverently. On the other side of the street, a man points to...
It is the spatial arrangement that immediately impresses in The Way You Sound Tonight, choreographer Arno Schuitemaker's ninth performance. There are roughly 25 seats too few. The last Holland Festival visitors to walk onto the Rabozaal stage during the premiere have to find their own place on the still-scented wooden floor. Pijpela Schuitemaker has, to my...
Grandpa tells. In 1989, a committee of experts chose a different theatre course in my city, Utrecht. The just-risen festival Theater aan de Werf would get more money, the marching theatre would disappear from 't Hoogt and the rest would have to take care of the newcomer with fewer days of programming. Then we took to the streets against the so-called 'festivalisation',...
The trigger for this story is that relatively recently, the Council for Culture published its sector foresight. The summary opens with the words that 'Culture moves'. A rather euphemistic statement in my view. In this case, it means that the making, spreading and experiencing of culture is constantly changing. The second very obvious observation of...
'I once performed in front of a hall somewhere in the middle of nowhere, with a lot of old people. The performance was announced as cabaret. But my work does not fall within one particular genre. Because of the designation 'cabaret', the audience had expectations that I did not meet. People wanted a fun, entertaining evening. My performance was rebellious, energetic. I jumped all...
Especially for our regular readers and subscribers, temporarily available for everyone to view: the e-book with all the stories about Theatre Festival Boulevard 2017 listed. Members and subscribers can also download the book, and read it on their e-reader.
Wine tasting and listening to medieval music are usually things people only do with very serious faces. So it took five glasses, three drunken singers and a good hour before the mob in the sober Heilig Hart church in Den Bosch loosened up a bit. With a Frontignan to boot. You do start fantasising about the amazing dinner you had at...
The most beautiful end of the world is in Lars von Trier's Melancholia. Floating poplars, a woolly planet eating us in a wave of atmospheric mist. I'd sign up for it. Anything better than the sloshing slabs of earth full of screaming puppets in the failed 2012 disaster film. Then again, not as much fun as the end of times in The Hitchhikers Guide...
Industrial estates are weird. They lie souring on the outskirts of one city, only to seamlessly morph into the same site on the outskirts of another. Once they were A-locations, places of visibility and the incarnate dream of reconstruction. Now they are low-grade structures, halls with a front door, a visible office for the Dirk and a pathetic...
The prize for the longest and most artful kiss of 2017 has been given away and goes to Conny Janssen Danst. In a small tent on the square below Bossche Sint-Jan, this danced kiss forms the technical and dramatic highlight of Clarity. Two dancers, spinning pirouettes while keeping their lips connected, a video artist and the floating music performed live by iET were on Saturday ...
Heroes are not always the smartest people. Indeed, most acts that have gone down in history as heroes have been thoughtless actions. That happened to succeed. Pure luck. Against every heroic act, therefore, there is an unknown but not negligible number of senseless deaths of would-be heroes. The main character of the theatre play The Heroes, which I attended in Den Bosch on 4 August,...
Opening speeches. Every festival has one. Or two. You have to go through them. As a guest, but also as a host. Something should be found on it. Of course a point has to be made, a flag raised, a champagne bottle bang introduced. And also the sponsors should be thanked. In these times of a retreating government, there are more of them every year. And.
Would like your interpretation of the cover girl's look on the Theatre Festival Boulevard programme book. It may be projection, but I see a slightly overwhelmed desperation in those eyes, whose eyebrows have been replaced by two playfully placed arches of St John's, above: Den Bosch on my mind. Where to start, mostly. In the book, especially abundance. Glassily designed...
I held my heart. Patrick Nederkoorn and Oscar Kocken had been tempted by television to bring their brilliant gem 'Zomaargasten' over to the living room. NPO3 still. The channel targeting millennials. I had visions of channel managers, dramaturgs, audience specialists and gussied-up boys and girls well over forty that these two little artists would...
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