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Soldier of Orange

TOBIAS KOKKELMANS NEW DIRECTOR/DIRECTOR NEDERLANDS THEATRE FESTIVAL AND AMSTERDAM FRINGE FESTIVAL

by one of our members
19 August 2021
3 min read
ACTUAL, PRESS, SERVICE

Today, the Supervisory Board announced that Tobias Kokkelmans has been appointed as the new director/manager of Stichting de Theaterdagen, organiser of the Nederlands Theater Festival, Amsterdam Fringe Festival, NTFJong and the in-depth platform for professionals NTF-Pro, as of 1 September. In doing so, he succeeds Jeffrey Meulman, who in May this year left the Foundation after sixteen years for the Verkadefabriek....

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Dutch playwrights still have no idea about the quality of the stage work of their predecessors.

by Wijbrand Schaap
8 December 20208 December 2020
3 min read
HERITAGE, LITERARY, PODCAST, PODIUM ART, THEATER, APPRECIATE & DONATE!

Dutch theatre is thriving, despite frantic attempts by various Rutte cabinets to bring it down. And even though money is always short as a result: a lot of new theatre is being made. More than ever, even. But.

There is a but.

Culture Council: The Netherlands underestimates its own music theatre culture. (Why opera still seeks talent abroad)

by Wijbrand Schaap
15 January 201930 March 2022
5 min read
ACTUAL, For members only, OPERA, PODIUM ART

The Performing Arts Fund is failing to professionalise and make the music theatre sector sustainable. So says the Council for Culture in an advice leaked yesterday on the future of music theatre in the Netherlands. The advice presented today to the rest of the Netherlands therefore wants to transfer more different music theatre makers and companies from the Performing Arts Fund to the Cultural Basic Infrastructure. This partly...

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Playwrights and cultural exploration (3): 'Contemporary musical, a new tradition among writers?'

by Fleur Jansen
11 February 201829 March 2022
8 min read
ACTUAL, For members only, LITERARY, PODIUM ART

On 25 January 2018, the Musical Awards were presented with, as we are used to, many translated reruns and calibrated repertoire. Also notable was the appreciation for new Dutch work. Many a writer will have been cheering on the sofa when 'Was Getekend, Annie M.G. Schmidt' won the awards. Does that bode well for the future? Can today's (small)...

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Dear Minister @ivanengelshoven, my dream is that the Dutch government would have a real cultural vision.

by Benien van Berkel
15 November 201729 March 2022
5 min read
ACTUAL, For members only

'What do you desire from Ingrid van Engelshoven, the Minister of Culture?" asked Culture Press in a newsletter to subscribers. Good question! Especially after that first nod she made by generously pledging an extra 10 million to the Performing Arts Fund for the well-performing but not yet receiving anything, 'because the money had run out'. Very nice that band-aid, but...

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Tourbus Beatles (replica) Foto: Chris Samson CC.BY 2.0

You had one chance to sustainably improve arts subsidies

by Wijbrand Schaap
25 August 2017September 1, 2017
6 min read
ACTUAL, PODIUM ART, PREMIUM

The decision will be official in mid-September, but behind the scenes it has already been made. The Netherlands will have a very small basic cultural infrastructure for the performing arts, and a very large fund that anyone who wants to make theatre, dance, mime or music must apply to. I asked around a bit recently, and so that's what it's going to be. That way, politicians can't...

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Stefan de Walle en Joris Smit (foto Kurt van der Elst)

The reviewer, for anyone whose flesh is occasionally weak

by Frans van Hilten
19 January 201629 March 2022
5 min read
For members only, THEATER

Anyone who wants to credibly transfer a historical play to the present had better be radical, director Theu Boermans must have thought. And anyone who sees his adaptation of Nikolaj Gogol's The Revisor at the Nationale Toneel cannot help but agree with him. With references to asylum seekers, cubicle snoopers, data espionage and subsidy fraud, the play seems written yesterday. Yet Boermans remains...

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The figures are in. And they don't say anything at all.

by Wijbrand Schaap
10 September 201530 March 2022
4 min read
ACTUAL, For members only, THEATER, APPRECIATE & DONATE!

We had already announced it. This period is all about positive framing by the arts sector. Good news has to be spread, although people don't really know why. After all, there are no shareholders to be kept happy, only concerned art lovers. Enfin. On Wednesday 9 September, NRC journalist Daan van Lent presented the result of an investigation into the...

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The Hague takes the lead in rejuvenating theatre landscape: De Vroedt not going to Rotterdam

by Wijbrand Schaap
10 December 201411 July 2016
2 min read
ACTUAL, THEATER

Eric de Vroedt will succeed Theu Boermans at the Nationale Toneel in The Hague in 2018. The company announced this in a press release today. This puts an end to speculation surrounding the future of theatre-maker De Vroedt. Indeed, he had long been mentioned as Alize Zandwijk's successor at the ro Theater in Rotterdam,...

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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...

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Five things we learned from opera amuse Sweeney Todd

by Henri Drost
25 June 201430 March 2022
4 min read
ACTUAL, For members only, OPERA

What: A preview of the 'musical thriller' Sweeney Todd
Location: the biggest rehearsal room of the Dutch Travel Opera
Present: almost the entire cast, one hundred and fifty guests
Menu: bread, pastry, a dessert as pretty as it is tasty
Drinks: water, red/white wine ánd Bloody Mary's, complete with celery as a stirrer, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco, pepper (and salt, nowhere to go), lemon (should have been lime), prepare it yourself

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Nederlandse Reisopera with a musical. With Sanne Wallis de Vries. In Royal Theatre Carré.

by Henri Drost
17 February 201430 March 2022
3 min read
ACTUAL, For members only, OPERA

No, the company is not afraid of competition. Nor of cooperation, as evidenced by the jubilantly received Fairy queen with Veenfabriek and Combattimento, the orchestra led until recently by Jan Willem de Vriend.

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4 old cows in eternal Amsterdam theatre war cause Daamens oekaze?

by Wijbrand Schaap
10 December 201330 March 2022
5 min read
ACTUAL, For members only

How can a usually very ordinary, amiable theatre director suddenly come out with the notice That a few orchestras can go away and the National Ballet should be outsourced? We wondered so and headed to the car park at the Concertgebouw yesterday.

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Theatre photography in the limelight at small Amsterdam gallery

by one of our members
9 January 20128 July 2016
1 min read
ACTUAL

Theatre photographs are a profession in their own right. From an already staged subject, the professional photographer chooses the catchiest image. There are those who look down on them for that reason, there are those who admire the theatre photographer for that very reason. We are naturally more inclined towards the latter. But the profession is under pressure. From smartphones, from buyers who have no space and no money...

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