This edition of the Holland Festival contains at least 1 performance that will make you feel extremely uncomfortable as a man. Nevertheless, I challenge the male brethren reading this to go and see it. I did it too, went all the way to Brussels for it and got brain food for years to come in return. That's because the maker is a...
Is a dramaturge more valuable than a public relations officer? Not according to Eline Arbo, since this year artistic director of the badly battered Internationaal Theater Amsterdam. She talks about "the long lines of the company" just as readily with communications staff. After all, people who put their lives at the service of studying the repertoire, the psychology of the director and the zeitgeist know...
"As for the victims, it was mainly employees with managerial duties who experienced the cross-border behaviour. This seemingly contradictory result with the discussed hierarchy is explicable from the fact that the perpetrator of the transgressive behaviour in the majority of these cases is (a) board member(s) or other manager(s)." Ivo van Hove suddenly left as director last year
The 77th edition of the Holland Festival closed on 29 June with a minute-long standing ovation for Georgina Verbaan who showed a phenomenal acting performance in the The Second Woman, a performance by Anna Breckon and Nat Randall, in which she played the same break-up scene for a full 24 hours with a hundred most non-professional counterparts. The day before, Victor Pilon closed...
ITA, HOLLAND FESTIVAL AND NDT PRESENT BIBERATING PROGRAMS ONLINE, IN DIGITAL THEATER International Theatre Amsterdam, Holland Festival and Nederlands Dans Theater will present groundbreaking programmes online, in the Digital Theatre, during the Christmas holidays. In order to connect makers, companies and (inter)national visitors, the initiators choose a programme during the Christmas holidays. The ideal period to be together, to feel...
15 minutes of television. Theatre Maas, who used to be called Cornald, has managed to get Dutch theatre's biggest party back on kind of prime time television. On Monday 18 September, we saw his recap of this gala of Dutch theatre, which included awards, snippets of speeches and elated actors. I wondered if we could...
At the walk-in, several actors dribble across the bare stage. No set pieces, few lights, a little smoke from the machine. Slowly, the stage fills, and the actors line up at the front of the stage. The first scene is sung, a surprising choice. Then Diana, the high priestess of the Amazons, a brilliant role by Marieke Heebink, holds a...
Even though they are not yet members at ITA, let me pass on this press release. Because of its (inter)national importance. Coming: Ivo van Hove (1958) will end his role as artistic director of ITA on 1 September 2023. This means that he will then hand over his position as statutory director and artistic director. The Supervisory Board (BoS) intends to appoint Eline...
I saw Sid Vicious perform with the Sex Pistols at the illustrious Eksit in Rotterdam in 1977, more than 45 years later my teenage daughter toured Vicious's story in International Toneel Amsterdam's performance Hamlet and Ophelia. She still has a life to go, I immersed myself in memories. A (too long) look back According to the annals...
Assault and finally rape of a 14-year-old girl by a bonkers vet. An enjoyable evening at the theatre is different, until the applause of this arguably (once again) best Dutch theatre production of the year relieves you of the harsh struggle. Author Marieke Lucas Rijneveld and director Ivo van Hove emphasise that both 49-year-old vet Kurt and his minion, the farmer's daughter, are severely traumatised...
It shows either enormous guts, or boundless naivety, to make a musical in which a slave trader in Africa is converted by a song to a life of love and respect for fellow human beings. Yet Yemandja, the play that was performed in a setless performance at the Holland Festival, is actually just that. I could also explain...
Update April 2022: Turns out it's not an April fool's joke, so all the beats we were holding back at first turned out to be unnecessary. Since 2018, Toneelgroep Amsterdam no longer exists, as does the capital's Stadsschouwburg. Together they have since formed 'Internationaal Theater Amsterdam', because that better suits the global ambitions of Ivo van Hove's Amsterdam city theatre. It was thus...
We once started this series because we disagree horribly about some things, but in practice things turn out differently. In episode 14 of this fascinating series of insider conversations about theatre and whatnot, we talk about a few Holland Festival performances and look ahead to the festival summer. As it turns out, the...
De 74e editie van het Holland Festival sloot afgelopen weekend af met de voorstellingen Transverse Oriëntation van Dimitris Papaioannou, Age of Rage van ITA–Ensemble en Pierrot Lunaire van Marlene Monteiro Freitas. In het festival werd samengewerkt met twee associate artists, de Japanse componist Ryuichi Sakamoto en de Frans-Oostenrijkse theatermaker Gisèle Vienne. Drieëntwintig gezelschappen speelden honderdelfvoorstellingen in vijfentwintig dagen. Het festival presenteerde zeven wereldpremière… Je kunt nu inloggen…
In Electra, one of the finest tragedies handed down to us by the ancient Greeks, there is at least one piece of text that made history. It is the account of a horse race. You see nothing, but the language puts your imagination to work. 25 centuries later, they tried to turn the images described into real images for the...
Something about roots, and that they are cut off and that this is inconvenient. Or not, because it gives freedom. Something about men and women, but what exactly didn't quite become clear in Mailles, which I got to experience at the Holland Festival on Thursday 10 June, after another curious test-for-access episode. The great hall of the building that I just don't...
Whether we want to speak only of 's-Hertogenbosch from now on. Apparently, a last vestige of decency has bravely survived in the provincial capital of Brabant. Nazmiye Oral, master of ceremonies at a party at Den Bosch's citadel on 9 June, forgot right the first time. City marketers and old nobility fight hand in hand for a respected name to trump the vernacular....
Dutch museums, partly due to the recent digital Museum Week, have been able to retain a large part of their audience. There is - reports the Museum Association on its website - a slight turnover though. And the hitherto loyal public will not find their way to museums automatically and to the same extent. But the picture is that the...
That Shakespeare is still relevant after four centuries doesn't even require putting him in modern clothes, but of course it helps. The worldwide success of Ivo van Hove and his 'Internationaal Theater Amsterdam' is therefore partly due to his Shakespeare adaptations 'Kings of War' and 'Roman Tragedies'. Marathons, hours of theatre with food in between. Valentine's Day 2021...
For a while, not making performances as if nothing happened, but developing concepts, experimenting, boldly going where no one in this sector has dared to go so far (sorry, I watch a lot of Star Trek during the lockdown). That strikes me as an excellent use of grant money and could also bring back some momentum in these crappy times.
Yesterday, I finally saw 'Away with Eddy Bellegueule', the theatre hit of the previous broken and devastated theatre season, and saw that its creators had effortlessly bridged the gap between youth and grown-up theatre. The show is a nineties grunge concert with brilliant actors and intense visual direction by rising star Eline Arbo.
The VVD will not give away Mark Rutte's latest crown jewel, the arts subsidy cut, for free. The latest argument: suction effect.
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.
Whether the 'cry for culture' ten years ago was the best response to the cuts announced then, I don't know, but just like then, I feel the urge to do something now. In response to a spontaneous statement of mine on Facebook, a still modest group of people emerged this weekend willing to commit to an idea...
Fred Goessens has been dead, but is still alive. As uncompromising as ever. The Netherlands' most reliable actor makes an interim will after twenty-two years with Toneelgroep Amsterdam. 'I had shit on everything' This interview was published 10 years ago in TheaterMaker, the trade magazine for the theatre sector. As Fred Goessens is now leaving ITA, the company where he once...
English (UK) 
Nederlands 
Français