It appears that your browser has JavaScript disabled. The SecSign ID login requires your browser to be JavaScript enabled.SecSign Support

Please donate!

We invest in our journalism. We are independent. Thanks to donations from readers like you!

Donate

Choose a payment method

Would you like to share your details with us?

No Yes

Name

First name

Surname

E-mail (not compulsory)

Confirm E-mail (not mandatory)

If you are human, leave this field blank.

ntgent

Yves Degryse (Berlin) on the return of the legendary show 'Zvizdal' at #Theaterfestival Boulevard: "This really took me by my jacket"

by Wijbrand Schaap
2 August 20232 August 2023
35 min read
ACTUAL, Boulevard, DOCUMENTARY, FILM, PODCAST, SPECIALS, THEATER

Yves Degryse is one of the people behind the extraordinary Flemish company Berlin. Between 2011 and 2015, Berlin worked on the performance Zvizdal, largely shot in the 'forbidden zone' around the exploded Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. I saw the performance in 2016 in Den Bosch, during Festival Boulevard, and was 'blown away'. This year, it returns to Boulevard

Read More "

Nerd podcast #5: on the future of theatre, Milo Rau and the power of the critic

by Wijbrand Schaap
25 February 2021
1 min read
PODCAST, PODIUM ART, APPRECIATE & DONATE!

This episode, number 5 already in an increasingly well-listened-to podcast series, is about the future of theatre. A future after Corona, of course, but also the future as some theatre makers and journalists dream of it. For example, Marijn Lems (NRC) and Wijbrand Schaap (Culture Press) talk about Milo Rau, the high-profile artistic director of NTGent (Belgium). Who came a few years...

Read More "

Milo Rau at opening Theatre Festival: 'Maybe we should deliver a little less and listen a little more'

by Wijbrand Schaap
4 September 20204 September 2020
4 min read
ACTUAL, INTERNET, PODIUM ART, THEATER, APPRECIATE & DONATE!

Things need time and distance to become a story. Good, then, that in his 'State of Theatre,' the traditional opening of the theatre season, Rau did not take the floor himself, but handed it over to people who are now in the midst of the confusing time of austerity, coronasteun and political turmoil. Because the 100 international makers he asked for a book entitled "Why Theatre?" could not come because of the pandemic, six Dutch makers were invited.

Boulevard opens with great ambition. It will be exciting regardless.

by Wijbrand Schaap
2 August 201930 March 2022
4 min read
Boulevard, PODIUM ART, SPECIALS, THEATER, BECOME A MEMBER

The Theater aan de Parade is slowly but surely starting to become the blot of cultural politics in Den Bosch. The outdated theatre has too low ceilings, too much plush, asbestos and past to still be a credit to the Brabant provincial capital. Viktorien van Hulst, director of the now 35-year-old Theatre Festival Boulevard, made a point of saying during her opening speech on 1 August that the...

Read More "

The uncomfortable truth of the paraglider. What I took away from the opening performance of @tfboulevard

by Wijbrand Schaap
3 August 201830 March 2022
4 min read
For members only, Boulevard, PODIUM ART, SPECIALS, THEATER

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...

Read More "

Stef Aerts directs 3D show JR at @hollandfestival: 'To go from 700 pages of real literature to a manageable stage text doesn't just happen.'

by Wijbrand Schaap
5 April 201820 April 2018
11 min read
Holland Festival, PODIUM ART, SPECIALS, SPONSORED, THEATER

Listen to an atmospheric impression and the full interview with Stef Aerts here. Children have the ability to turn adults' worlds upside down. Eleven-year-old JR is really getting into it. On a school trip, he learns how the stock market works and then turns it to his will. In doing so, unhampered by a prefrontal cortex, that part of the brain...

Read More "

BOT by Firma MES: delightful theatre for laughers and thinkers

by Frans van Hilten
14 December 201530 March 2022
3 min read
ACTUAL, For members only, THEATER

'KUT TONEEL' has been spray-painted over BOT's poster. Another features penises and a clown's nose. Does Firma MES' new show arouse so much aggression? In any case, the young theatre company from The Hague promises us a play about "unkind people". But that doesn't quite pan out. On the flat floor of Theater aan...

Read More "

Joop Daalmeijer Marathon (5) "All balls on Amsterdam", I'm not into that at all.

by Wijbrand Schaap
22 September 201429 March 2022
11 min read
ACTUAL, For members only, VISUAL, MUSIC, THEATER

Wijbrand Schaap: 'Now on the role of cities. One of the reactions on our site is about the role of the randstad in cultural policy. Melle Daamen puts the primacy in the randstad, and goes further than the council in this.' Joop Daalmeijer: 'The council has no position yet.' Wijbrand Schaap: 'But there is something in the Culture Outlook. Cities form...

Read More "

Johan Simons to Ruhr, Rotterdam, Den Bosch, Vienna, Ghent. And Varik.

by Wijbrand Schaap
16 August 201430 March 2022
4 min read
ACTUAL, For members only, THEATER

He is the greatest director in the Netherlands. But also the least honourable theatre-maker we know: Johan Simons. The man whose star has been rising since the 1980s is now in Munich. But he is not staying there. After putting the local company Kammerspiele even more firmly on the map internationally, he is looking for new challenges. Den Bosch earlier reported...

Read More "

Johan Simons receives 150,000 euros: 'I thought, that must be for Elsie'

by Wijbrand Schaap
17 April 201411 July 2016
2 min read
ACTUAL, THEATER

This year's Prince Bernhard Culture Fund Prize goes to Johan Simons. At the announcement, in a meadow below Utrecht, the director was surprised: he suspected the prize was meant for his wife, Elsie de Brauw, widely regarded as one of the best actresses in the Netherlands and Belgium.

Read More "

Selection Theatre Festival 2013 marked by audience-friendly performances

by Wijbrand Schaap
11 May 201329 March 2022
3 min read
ACTUAL, For members only

De Verleiders, last season's big theatre hit, heads the jury selection of The Theatre Festival 2013. The by a group of actors and cabaret artists, including Pierre Bokma and

Read More "

Nearly dies Wunderbaum's Detroit Dealers from an overdose of ideas, but survives through unexpected musicality #HF12

by Daniel Bertina
16 June 20128 July 2016
4 min read
Holland Festival, SPECIALS

In Detroit Dealers, Wunderbaum mixes a personal family story with the decline of Detroit, once one of the most influential industrial cities in the world, and philosophical musings on the car, as a romantic metaphor of progress and the American Dream. The show swings in all directions. Detroit Dealers is part documentary film, jazz concert, performance, spoken word poetry, rap battle, and theatre. This overdose of...

Read More "

Jacob Derwig and Elsie de Brauw receive 2011's top drama awards

by one of our members
11 September 20118 July 2016
3 min read
ACTUAL

On Sunday evening 11 September, the VSCD Drama Awards, the VSCD Mime Prize, the VSCD Youth Theatre Awards and the AVRO Toneel Publieksprijs 2011 were presented at the Gala van het Nederlands Theater. And that you then know that VSCD stands for the Association of Theatre and Concert Hall Directors and AVRO for General Free Radio Broadcasting. The award for the best male lead of the past...

Read More "

Ten theatre performances you should not have missed according to the jury of the Dutch Theatre Festival. Agree?

by one of our members
14 May 201130 March 2022
2 min read
ACTUAL, For members only

Of course, you were all lining up for that legendary Richard III by Orkater with music by Tom Waits. Or you had locked yourself in for Oostpool's small-room gem 'Till the fat lady sings', or you just didn't want to miss an episode of O O Cherso and The Voice of Holland. Anyway: now you know what you...

Read More "

Jelineks Rechnitz impresses Holland Festival visitors #hf10

by one of our members
11 June 201029 March 2022
3 min read
For members only, Holland Festival, SPECIALS

Image by Andrew B47 via Flickr Photo: Chris Vanderburght It was time for a real theatrical hit at the Holland festival, after the rather lukewarmly received British-American Shakespeares of Sam Mendes' Bridge Project. And clap it did with Rechnitz by Elfriede Jelinek dooor the best actors of the Münchener Kammerspiele. Karin Veraart of De Volkskrant was deeply impressed: ...Not...

Read More "