In Electra, one of the finest tragedies handed down to us by the ancient Greeks, there is at least one piece of text that made history. It is the account of a horse race. You see nothing, but the language puts your imagination to work. 25 centuries later, they tried to turn the images described into real images for the...
Whether we want to speak only of 's-Hertogenbosch from now on. Apparently, a last vestige of decency has bravely survived in the provincial capital of Brabant. Nazmiye Oral, master of ceremonies at a party at Den Bosch's citadel on 9 June, forgot right the first time. City marketers and old nobility fight hand in hand for a respected name to trump the vernacular....
These actors sit at their kitchen table and we fly through space with them. Art can be that simple, because we, the viewers, actually make the story.
Alum plays classics 'unplugged' once in a while. That means no fuss, just the story and the players. With Bakchanten, 2,500 years old but never surpassed in eloquence since, they have gold in their hands.
In the days when Europe was still a loose collection of city-states and duchies, where groups of men, for want of football, went on raids a few times a year to burn houses and rape women, a language emerged in the marshlands of the Rhine delta. We know this because plays were written in that language, which is among the earliest preserved...
With much fanfare, Netflix's The Witcher was announced. Except for some comments about Superman in a white wig, there was and is a lot of interest in the film adaptation of Andrzej Sapkowski's fantasy book series. Successor to Game of Thrones. With the way that one ended? No thanks! I'm not familiar with the books or the games myself, but Netflix's description...
Deadwood was one of the best television series ever. Despite its many awards, HBO pulled the plug after only three seasons. After the abrupt stop, HBO promised to end Deadwood in an appropriate way through two TV movies. However, despite fans' requests and actors' insistence, the promises never materialised. Until...
'What we so often forget is to just talk about our love for theatre.' Eric de Vroedt, artistic director of The National Theatre, wants to talk about substance for once. And then with the entire performing arts sector. Soon there will be SPOT-Live, the renewed Congress of Performing Arts, and there he wants to talk about love. 'Quite by chance, it happened a month ago....
'During performances or book signings, people often come up to me and tell me: "I wasn't a reader, but your book made me experience the pleasure of reading and now I really enjoy reading." I don't say that because I think my books are now so good, but because it shows that once someone experiences...
Anne Lister. This 19th-century lady was a pioneer in many fields: she climbed mountains, travelled far away on her own and was successful in business. However, she gained fame mainly through her private life. Anne Lister has been called Britain's first modern lesbian. During her lifetime, she kept several diaries, in which she recorded her erotic escapades with ladies in...
It was just missing the heavy music and gothic storm images in the Game of Thrones trailer whose lyrics Thierry Baudet uttered on the night of Wednesday 20 to Thursday 21 March 2019. 'And so here we stand, at the eleventh hour, among the debris of what was once the greatest and most beautiful civilisation the world has known. A...
The premiere of the second season of Westworld takes place next week. I got to watch in advance. In case it doesn't ring a bell; Westworld is currently HBO's most popular series after Game of Thrones. Short synopsis: The show is set in the fictional Westworld: a technological Western theme park where the population consists entirely of synthetic androids, which are also...
'Good literacy is a prerequisite for functioning - now and in the future - in our information society and knowledge economy.' This was stated in the press release sent out by KVB Boekwerk last week. The occasion was a SCP study which showed that we in the Netherlands are again spending less time reading than a decade ago. It listed impressive percentages. 'Over...
If you're reading this, I assume you know what Game of Thrones is. Who Daenerys Targaryen is, and Jaime Lannister and Sansa Stark. Ramsay Bolton? We are never going to talk about that again. Nor am I going to explain that it is one of the most successful TV series of all time, based on the book series 'A Song of...
In King's Landing, the dust is still slowly settling. And in my head, too. Now that most Game of Thrones nerds, freaks and enthusiasts the imposing season finale of the sixth season, it is high time to take stock and look ahead. It seems almost needless to mention that this entire article is riddled with SPOILERS. Those who have not been binge-watching the infamous series in recent years: read along, and sympathise with the nerds.
Finally, it was not quite literal, but he was clearly referring to it: Richard III. Geert Wilders, himself not too culturally savvy, quotes Shakespeare in his umpteenth plea to get the Netherlands out of the EU with pot-covered borders. In the second chamber. I saw it on Nieuwsuur, and you can watch it back. At 39′:49″ minutes into the broadcast he is in debate with his great friend, the VVD's Halbe Zijlstra.
How far can you go in using Shakespeare's name for a theatre production? Or rather, when does an adaptation of a classic stop being an adaptation, and when should you just come out and say that you have written your own play? And then, if you've reported in your four-year plan that in 2016 you will be doing a Shakespeare...
I wrote about it a while ago. About all those people who are now barely sustaining themselves on a minimal grant amount from the Performing Arts Fund, and that they have all done a fan-tas-tic job. This is what director Henriëtte Post told me in a conversation sometime this winter. 'Based on their performance, none of the current institutions can get out of...
Power and leadership, can one exist without the other? Toneelgroep Amsterdam presented a sampling of three types of leaders on Sunday 14 June at the Holland Festival with 'Kings of War'. Three historical plays by Shakespeare about the struggle for power between the Houses of Lancaster and York together provided the fuel for this performance. With large black letters on a white...
The 2014/2015 Film Yearbook pays attention to the rapprochement between cinema and television.
In Rome, they have known what good food is for 20 centuries or so. Bloodletting is everything. Seneca, a Roman of the better sort, wrote plays in which bloodshed was elevated to an art. Audiences feasted on them, just as they feasted on Seneca's recipes in Shakespeare's time, 1,500 years later, and as we feast on Game of Thrones on TV now. It can't be gory, can't be cruel enough. We like that.
Saturday, June 14, went off in a flood of evening gowns, dinner jackets, Dutch celebrities and Gooische Tanks War Horse premiered. A play about a war in which the Netherlands was neutral, and of which there are memorial stones in every village in the rest of the world. You can go and see it. Or not. We have listed six arguments.
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