Writers Unlimited could hardly have chosen a more appropriate theme for this year's literary festival Winternachten: Is this the real life? That question will be on many a mind when the new president of the United States is inaugurated on Friday. Fortunately, some eighty writers who do have something meaningful to say about the state of...
Gerard de Kleijn is leaving on 1 February after six years as director at Museum Gouda. The flamboyant, eloquent and erudite director leaves behind a financially and artistically healthy Museum for his successor Marc de Beyer. De Kleijn made the museum more accessible to Gouda residents and art lovers from outside the historic city. In 2016, the museum attracted around 40,000...
A usually reliable source reports that the winner of the New Year's Eve lottery wants to dedicate a significant part of her prize to culture. In this way, she wants to undo the cuts made by Rutte I. Six million will go directly to the Dutch Travel Opera. Another four million is earmarked for a new integral performance of Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen. Also scheduled is a revival of Tristan und Isolde...
Johan Gijsen has been elected Utrechter of the Year. The organiser of the Le Guess Who? Festival succeeds FC Utrecht owner Frans van Seumeren (2015) and athlete Dafne Schippers (2014). The election for Utrechter van het Jaar was held by the AD Utrechts Nieuwsblad. Six columnists selected ten nominees who could be voted for. Gijsen founded Le Guess Who? in 2007....
De vijf genomineerden voor de CCD Award 2017 zijn Hamlet van ZEP Theater Producties, Festival Mundial, Ongekend Bijzonder Festival 2016, Project Old Skool van Stichting Gebouw 52 en het Van Abbemuseum. Het publiek kan vanaf nu tot 18 januari 2017 haar stem uitbrengen via deze link. De jury neem de publieksstem mee in haar afweging. CCD Award 2017 De prijs van…
We Had Love, We Had Guns by Christine Otten is about black resistance fighter Robert F. Williams, who fought for black equality. In the theatre adaptation of the same name, white actors - including Huub van der Lubbe - play black characters and vice versa. Double talk about personal sacrifice, skin colour and connection. Idlewild It is a remarkable coincidence. America is taking...
As a boy, I loved visiting the Egyptian department of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden. Half in the twilight, the mysterious mummy coffins there stared at me. We are now several decades and exhibits further on. Since this week, the newest Egypt display has been open. Even in brilliant light, the collection appears to retain its fascinating power. At the same time, the museum tells in Queens...
In 1975 organiseren de jazzmusicus Misha Mengelberg en de kunstenaar Wim T. Schippers Een behoorlijk kabaal in het Amsterdamse Mickery Theater. Een week lang onderzoeken ze in ‘onnavolgbaar muziektheater’ de verschillende betekenissen van een concert. Jacqueline Oskamp koos het als titel van haar recent verschenen boek waarin zij de Nederlandse muziekgeschiedenis van de afgelopen eeuw beschrijft. Treurige conclusie: er is…
'I have a hundred wishes, and if I think carefully maybe a thousand,' writes Toon Tellegen in Het grote taartenboek, published to mark his seventy-fifth birthday today. 'But one wish is my dearest wish, and that is to sit among the animals on the riverbank one afternoon in early summer....
It no longer hums, buzzes, sings, saws and buzzes in the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ. The cello caravan has left. The sixth edition of the Cello Biennale Amsterdam is over, leaving the thousands of cello and music fans with a feeling of emptiness. Nowhere else does such an amazing festival of cello take place in ten days, where the audience feels like...
This week saw the publication of Nobel Prize winner Herta Müller's autobiography, My Homeland, an Apple Pit. A few years ago, A Quattro Mani had an exclusive interview with the Romanian writer, when her first collection of poetry collages was published, The Skirt-chaser and its sly aunt. We spoke to her at her home in Berlin, she revealed how her poetry collages are created, and the making...
The jury of the ECI Literature Prize has brought criticism upon itself with an idiosyncratic choice for the shortlist. In choosing Connie Palmen with Jij zegt het [You say it], Bert Natter with Golberg, Marja Pruis with Zachte riten [Gentle rites], Tonnus Oosterhoff with Op de rok van het universum [On the skirt of the universe], Arnon Grunberg with Moedervlekken [Mother stains] and Martin Michael Driessen with Rivieren [Rivers], the jury ignored...
The 70th audition of the Gaudeamus Music Week ended Sunday 11 September in TivoliVredenburg with the presentation of the Gaudeamus Award. Director Henk Heuvelmans presented the prize for composers under thirty to American Anthony Vine (1988). The prize money of five thousand euros is intended for a new composition, to be performed during a subsequent edition. The jury, consisting of...
With an average of two novels a year, the Flemish writer has built a huge and unique body of work in over thirty-five years - he turns 63 this week, but the number of books he has written far exceeds that number. Interview with the man who writes faster than his shadow, in ten quiz questions. 'Well, I don't appear to be a connoisseur of my own work, do I?'
What is a memory worth? A first kiss, for instance: how much poorer are you if it is forgotten? In hard euros. Such questions Greg Nottrot likes to ask his audience, and we, his grateful listeners, gladly join in his money thought experiments. The man who, with Oscar Kocken, came up with the revolutionary concept of the live talk show Order of the Day, now makes,...
Amazing how more than a thousand performers at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival are willing to try their hand at the most difficult genre: comedy
"Things happen, and then they happen again, but not the same way, not quite; such is the logic of the biennial. And then there are things which have never happened before, and which happen now and in a time that seems somehow out of time, or takes our 'now' out with it." [hints]"Things happen, and then they happen again, but not....
Diversity in the Amsterdam art world is not yet flourishing. The Amsterdam Fund for the Arts, which announced its grant awards today, is getting a bit tired of it: "Across most disciplines, committees note that cultural diversity of audiences, staff and governance is disappointing, as are efforts to change this. Outside the specialised organisations for which cultural diversity is a core business, ambitions are still not high, despite two decades of cultural policy in this area. If the ambitions are there, organisations do not always manage to give them hands and feet. There often seems to be a certain discomfort or 'not knowing how'."
So to start with the good news: Marmoucha grows 398 per cent compared to the previous grant round. The capital's producer and promoter of performing arts in the field of North African and Middle Eastern arts and culture in the Netherlands was severely cut back in 2013, but the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts found its work over the past four years to be so good that the grant has been more than deserved. In the new round of awards which became known on 1 August they rise from 25,070 euros to a tonne, adding that perhaps they should not be so ambitious.
It came anything but naturally, writing his collection of short stories The Pier Collapses. Mark Haddon, made famous with The Miraculous Incident with the Dog in the Night, novels come a lot easier. 'I've been trying to write short stories for a long time, and I knew I should be able to do it, but I never succeeded. It was like a...
On Thursday 9 June 2016, Marieke Rijneveld received the Netherlands' highest poetry prize: the C. Buddingh Prize.
On Saturday 4 June 2016, I attended the royal opening of the Holland Festival and was able to attend no review write about, because I was sitting in the front row of the Amsterdam Stadsschouwburg. As the stage was elevated, I was looking against a black wall, above which only the front actors were visible. The back and lower half of the stage were completely eluding me.
Me wrote that on, and the Holland Festival generously offered me the opportunity to go and see the performance again, from a better seat. At the same time, the organisers told me that the first three rows of the Stadsschouwburg would be compensated at this performance. So I went to Amsterdam one more time, on Monday 6 June.
Before the performance, while not eating a blackened hamburger in theatre restaurant Stanislavski, I heard from the neat people at the little table next to me that the front seats were offered at a sharply reduced rate, and that people like them who had already bought tickets had the choice of thus getting a partial refund or going on the waiting list for a seat with better sightlines. Whether they eventually managed to get one of the spots with better visibility, I don't know. The performance
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