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 stage awards will be awarded tonight.
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...
'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...'
In suits, wearing animal masks, five actors pose on stage. They represent a bear, rabbit, deer, rooster and monkey. From this 'freeze', they start making animal noises and moving around. A rhythmic performance follows. Fascinated, but confused, the audience watches the alienating dance. What do these animals have to do with the war in Iraq anyway? Just when you start to wonder if you are in the right audience, the actors take off their masks and answer: 'Have you ever wondered what the war in Iraq has meant to the animals there? We never hear anything about them in newspapers or on TV.'
Wuthering Heights is often mentioned in the same breath as other nineteenth-century classics such as Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice, but Emily Brontë's book is infinitely darker than those other coquettish girl books. Heathcliff and Cathy's big, dramatic passion actually connects surprisingly well with emos who are Twilight, True Blood and devour other contemporary vampire stories.
Adaptor Jeroen Olyslaegers and director Floor Huygen were well aware of this when they adapted the novel for the stage into Fierce heights, restless souls, a co-production of Dutch youth theatre company Artemis and Flemish Antigone. The show garnered high praise, can now be seen in TF, but was also nominated for two Gouden Krekels, the awards for youth theatre.
Sanja Mitrovic has won the BNG New Theatermakers Prize 2010. She receives the prize of 45,000 euros for her performance 'Will You Ever Be Happy Again'? In which she took care of both directing and acting. She can spend the prize money on a new performance next season.
'Butt-fucking at extra cost.' 'Do they also do blow jobs without a condom?' 'That one sucked my cock once and then she was nauseated all night. In the morning she puked in my bed.' Continuously, they do suggestive dances and constantly look into the room, with fixed smiles that are somewhere between amused and sneaky. The six actors of About Animals are challenging and relentless. Susanne Kennedy's direction of Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek's play is unprecedentedly bleak and arrives as a punch in the gut.
Jelinek's wrote a text about prostitutes and their clients, partly based on eavesdropping tapes from an Austrian escort agency, in which the men talk about women as if they were animals, or more precisely, like farmers talk about their cattle. In her direction, Kennedy places great emphasis on the viewer's gaze. 'The woman is being watched and is always an object, the man is watching and is the subject. Looking is not innocent,' She said in an interview. The three men, in foul light blue show suits, talk over the women; the women, in dresses on which little subtle emphasis is placed on their nipples and crotch, obligingly talk after them. They look at us defiantly, making us complicit in the humiliating situation.
She has just returned from a long holiday in her native Norway and, although many Norwegians find Ibsen boring these days, she herself loves his work. Maren Bjorseth is a third-year directing student at the AHK. Her Dutch is flawless; it is hard to believe she has only lived here for two years. Maren is one of four directing students chosen to take a master class from German director Thomas Ostermeier, artistic director of Schaubühne Berlin. Last year, the Stadschouwburg showed his Hamlet (starring a nasty, rather fat Hamlet) and in December, Ostermeier will direct Ibsen's Spoken at Toneelgroep Amsterdam.
The master class is a collaborative project of TF with the AHK and actors from ACT. It is the first day of school for the students and, as Maren says, they were immediately thrown into the deep end: 'It was very short and intensive, we worked from ten to three and Thomas Ostermeier came to watch twice. So it really is a work in progress.'
"I am fifty-eight." Plumply, Saskia Lemming (Oda Spelbos) reveals her biggest secret to husband and jaded folk singer René Lemming (Peter Bolhuis). He married her 12 years ago, thinking she was a young blonde. In turn, he reveals that he actually wrote 'You are the cream of my crop', his number one hit, for another woman. The bomb bursts on reality show 'The Lemmings'. Or rather: on stage at De Balie, where Hadewich Minis, Peter Bolhuis, Oda Spelbos and Yorick Zwart compete in Night guests. A three-hour improvisational 'jam session'.
"We are artists. Acting is a vocation. Not everyone understands that. Sometimes it's a lonely existence." Understanding, almost motherly, Shelley Mitchell addresses a group of Dutch actors at De Balie. The American actress and founder of The Actors Centre of San Francisco introduces them to 'method acting' during a three-day master class. Not pretending, but becoming one with your character. A way of acting that has won many famous actors an Oscar. Think of Robert De Niro, Juilette Binoche, Al Pacino and Kate Winslet.
Invisible forces, described as angels, speaking through a Jewish woman to her friends at the time of the Holocaust in Hungary. A mysterious and true story, translated by American actress Shelley Mitchell into the one-woman performance Talking with Angels. A huge success in America. Yesterday on stage for the first time in the Netherlands.
'It is a wonderful thing, for instance, that every day, my body exhibits the same eager desire for a keigoeie kappoetzjino. That every 24 hours the desire to 'want to taste' is born in me and wants to hit me again. And I don't have to do anything for that, that desire drags me into the shower and saliva starts foaming...
Ola Mafaalani. That's a very fierce one. So you can never ignore that. The human is so full of passion and emotion that all her stage work, because she is a director, cannot possibly leave you cold. At least, so it was until recently, with me personally finding her last play at Toneelgroep Amsterdam 'Hemel boven Berlijn' the most beautiful, because it was also the most...
On 2 September 2010, actress, writer, theatre and television producer Joan Nederlof opened the Dutch Theatre Festival with a speech that was as entertaining as it was provocative. As it was her turn to pronounce the annual 'State of the Theatre', Nederlof, born in 1962, seized the opportunity to call on her own generation to take a stand in the social debate. She did so in her own relatable way, known for her roles on TV (Deer Park) and in the theatre (Inside Out):
Hannah and Martin by Mugmetdegoudentand is not only a heartwarming performance, played by one phenomenal actress and one inimitable theatre personality, it is also a brainteaser. Trouw reviewer and theatre scholar Robbert van Heuven felt challenged to write a short essay in response to this performance.
Everyone wants to kiss him for a moment. Hans Kemna, shining centre of the 'book ball for actors', has just won the very first ACT Award. The award was presented at Amsterdam's Stadsschouwburg, during the ACT gala, the prologue to the Dutch Theatre Festival.
We had completely forgotten about the environment. While the streets in the Netherlands are flooded and some Dutch people are already talking about Pakistani conditions, here the talk is mainly about looming austerity measures and disintegrating Christian Democrat power blocks. 'Artists of today must relate to environmental issues' is therefore a comment we do not expect to hear from an artist in the Netherlands. We...
In This is my father, young theatre-maker Ilay den Boer (1986) literally puts his own father in the spotlight. He does so by giving his father the lead role in a performance that is all about him. This results in intimate and voyeuristic theatre.
The destructive power of war and hatred
Writer Wajdi Mouawad (b. 1968) fled his native Lebanon at the age of nine. At the time, a brutal civil war had been raging there for years. Together with his family, he ended up in Canada via France.
There, he develops into an internationally renowned playwright. His work is now performed all over the world. The Ro Theatre introduced Mouawad to the Netherlands for the first time this theatre season.
Director Alize Zandwijk chose the play Fires and puts on a bold and convincing version. Assisted by a talented cast of actresses and actors. You see the mother Nawal Marwan and her twins Jeanne and Simon. Nawal is dying.
The Dodo has had its baptism of fire. We now know what the basics are, and therefore what can be improved. and of course there will be others with even more suggestions. We're going to take all that into our tents this July, think and sleep on that and then go with the new insights....
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