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 was already mentioned for a very long time as Alize Zandwijk's successor at the ro Theater in Rotterdam, but there the arrival of senior uber-general Johan Simons threw a spanner in the works.
With the announced appointment of the relatively young De Vroedt, Theu Boermans is now breaking the atmosphere in theatre land, which was slowly starting to become a bit rebellious towards the incumbent generation of directors. Apart from himself (Soldier of Orange, Anne, Nationale Toneel) of course Johan Simons, who had a megafusion company will lead in Rotterdam and Ghent and doing a few festivals in the meantime, and also Ivo van Hove, who, according to some, as boss of Toneelgroep Amsterdam gave directing ambitions of young creators like Jacob Derwig too little chance, but in the meantime of course put Dutch acting on the map worldwide.
De Vroedt obviously had to go somewhere, and the director who caused a furore on the small-screen circuit with his political series 'Mightysociety' was the logical man to succeed one of the big three. That Theu Boermans now seems to allow this so generously is a credit to the man who once said to the younger generation: 'Then knock me off the throne!', after which the younger generation did not.