Dance and ballet, theatre with gory atrocities and clattering emotions, imaginative lighting, set and costume effects and, above all, enthusiasm bursting forth. HNTjong's 'biggest production ever' with 30 actors for 50 roles is overwhelming. Thanks also to the corona crisis: the National Theatre had to postpone the performance for a year and a half and lift it over two summer holidays, with all the misery...
With Orkater, I grew into theatre as a student. In the house here is the DVD box with Alex van Warmerdam's first seven delightful films, which I still watch back regularly, now together with the youngest generation learning and enjoying. Then daily the spines of his curious books smile at me, such as the fine collection of poetry 'I created the world'....
'Him, dammit. Do I need to be any clearer?' With those words from the irascible photographer Alessandro Pavia, who appoints orphan boy Antonio as his new assistant, a new life begins for the protagonist of the novel Antonio's Eye by Raffaella Romagnolo. Antonio Casagrande, already almost 12 and blind in one eye, had almost given up hope of ever making orphanage Pammatone...
Hope for liberation during a dark period of war threat and political oppression; a masterpiece by Beethoven sublimely expressed in dance by Toer van Schayk. Everything gets into an uproar Creating an abstract and layered classical ballet for a large ensemble of a top company to a Beethoven symphony: few can do it and Toer is one of them. His ballet stems...
Admittedly, I was never a fan, but how I hated those planes last night. I was walking through a dark, nocturnal forest between Lage Vuursche and Hilversum. Where, in the silence, I could have listened extra carefully to creaking twigs, shuffling insects, whispering trees and the occasional owl, I heard above all how happy we all are that after corona we have another...
'It really is the case that at some point the dead come back to look for you, and then you have to have dinner with them.' Italian writer Marta Barone (34), who records these words in her novel Sunken City, experienced this first-hand when she lost her father Leonardo, now a decade ago. Barone grew up at...
There are some people, who would prefer to tinker all day with soldering irons and circuit boards. I once had such an uncle who sometimes did not entirely safe things with a 220-volt electric train, so I limited myself to battery-powered Lego. That you can also do something with electronics and music was, of course, already known, but what I saw in...
Plays often end in chaos. An overturned liquor cabinet, a blood blade among royals, we're used to a few things. Jetse Batelaan's latest play, baroque and sharper than he showed before, also ends in beauty, but then that is actually the beginning. Indeed, the ending is sterile and stripped of any life. But that is where the performance begins. The artistic director of...
Art should challenge. The National Theatre explores the limits of virtual child pornography with The Nether: can you live 'without consequences'?
According to Linde van Schuppen, philosopher and linguist, medics do not really listen to people with psychosis. At least, they do listen to someone suffering from obvious delusions, but that is to establish that the person is indeed off the track. 'But, how then?" is the question a psychiatrist or neurologist is not trained to answer, she argues. That is why she is doing her PhD.
If you get the urge to run your finger through the candle flame for a moment, then a VR installation is already almost successful. Not just because of the technical feat, but also because it convinces as a place to bivouac for half an hour. I am standing at the bar of a seventeenth-century Amsterdam pub. There is murmuring, music, a barman who is...
One of the very best things about Festival Boulevard is the variety of programming. Theatre, dance, music, youth performances, mime, comedy, it all mixes together. And the festival offers just as much space to young makers as to the old hands. So you get a good overview of what the up-and-coming generation of theatre makers has to offer....
The permanent site of Boulevard's festival centre has largely turned into a construction site this year. This forced the organisers to move to Zuiderpark. Although this is a bit outside the city centre, it is much more spacious and green than the Parade square. It gives the festival a nice feeling of air, space and proximity to the...
Bosses start to look like their dogs. Or vice versa. Or owners like dogs who look like them. Or vice versa. Either way. If you want proof of this statement, rush to Theatre Festival Boulevard where John Buijsman plays the gem 'Cosmic Cowboy', assisted by Kees, a labradoodle. Or something that should pass for that. John Buijsman is one of the...
I have seen a lot of genre mash-ups in my lifetime. But I think a danced documentary about a musician was a first for me. The focus of choreographer Jan Martens in his new dance solo Elisabeth Gets Her Way is the famous harpsichordist Elisabeth Chojnacka. The Polish left for Paris at the age of 23. There she set her sights on...
One of the things that make Boulevard so special in the Dutch festival landscape is its generous focus on Belgian performances. Where Dutch theatres programme less and less work from across the southern borders, Boulevard continues to offer a stage to a large number of Belgian makers. Learning to live together This produces very varied work again this year. At the heart of the festival is...
There is a huge amount happening in theatre, this summer, as many summer festivals have special corona editions where they show a lot of what was made in attic rooms last year during the forced closure of theatres. One such show was Die Hexe, by Club Gewalt, a fresh point theatre band/theatre collective that is/was showing at Theatre Festival Boulevard this summer. Nerd...
Better to die standing than to live kneeling. The statement is fresh in memory after the murder in the Lange Leidse Dwarsstraat, as a mantra in praise of Peter R de Vries, his fearlessness, non-conformism, straightforwardness and honesty. This same statement jumps out even from the first paragraphs of the introduction to the biography of poet Jef Last, written by Rudi Wester.1....
Think Pussy Riot, think Rammstein, maybe think Nina Hagen before she found Jesus and mix that up nice and fierce. Then you get something that is basically an insane festival act. Raging female punk in a beer- and smoke-soaked nightclub, ferocious moshpits full of people who really have something to dance out of their souls. It's all in there...
We don't look upward enough. Maybe we do a quick glance at the horizon to see if that shower is really going to ruin our terrace afternoon, but that's not looking for the sake of looking. And I was able to do that thanks to the people of BLOOS. In Bossche Zuiderpark, they have a...
White balls are quite in the news, lately. For instance, they molest compatriots as a holiday pastime. Or they shout 'Snollebollekes' at a black champion. So the fact that white balls can also be fine is news. You can experience it at Festival Boulevard, where in a small, narrow tent, thousands of white Styrofoam balls, driven by huge fans, give you a fine massage shower,...
For a year and a half, there was hardly any playing, festival tents remained in mothballs and artists were busy doing living room concerts or attic sessions on Zoom. Now everything is allowed out again and the discharge is just barely there. Unaccustomedness characterises the fresh start of Theatre Festival Boulevard, which has moved to a park south of downtown Bossche for the next few years,...
On the day that Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of the world's Facebook, announced his launch to the 'Metaversum', in order to trounce his collegatechies Bezos, Musk and Branson, who had only had a little sniff of the Universe, I attended the performance 'Never work again' by the Nieuw Utrechts Toneel in Utrecht Leidsche Rijn. In these times of lockdown and...
Je Maintiendrai. Holland's motto of arms ('Ik zal handhaven') adorns the beautiful hall of Utrecht's old Post Office, now Library. The motto also watched over the premiere of the performance 'Solomon's Judgement' with which Ilay den Boer now returns to the public. After all, he was not here for a while. He worked for just under a year at the IND, the Immigration and Naturalisation Service,...
It is very easy not to dwell on things. For instance, I learned at school that we sailed to the East to get nutmeg and pepper. Stuff that just rolled off the trees into the boats there and that we could sell very expensively here. Sugar, another thing. That came to us from plantations just like that,...
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