There is no such thing as the perfect human being. We are all crooks. Or is there a way to get it right? Ilay den Boer and the actors of De Utrechtse Spelen / De Warme Winkel each explore in their own way at the 26th edition of Festival aan de Werf. Wasn't my grandfather just an asshole? That...
Margret Sara Gudjonsdottir explores the unequal power relationship between spectators and dancer. And goes very far in doing so. Uncomfortable' is still the mildest description for the work 'Soft Target'. Which is not at all the case for a conversation in private.
A shy, unassuming man, who transforms on stage into a brilliant clown and artist at the same time. You can't get more typically British than choreographer and dancer Jonathan Burrows. He has achieved cult status in the dance world, and it is actually strange that his performances do not reach a wider audience. Although he himself says he has no shortage of audience members,...
I am not a connoisseur of the performance practice of Bach's St John Passion and know that other piece, the St Matthew Passion, mainly from a few TV excerpts and far-flung arrangements like the one by Platel's Pitié. So don't expect me to pass judgment on how good the version, which was seen and heard at the Concertgebouw on 5 April 2011, was, comparatively...
Reports of the collapsing music industry have been rife. Apparently, as a musician, you no longer survive on the basis of record sales (alone). In niche genres, however, it is easy to survive. So proves the band Current 93, which performed in Stadtgarten, Cologne, last week. Playing live a lot and selling merchandise seems to be the golden rule for...
Sometimes this is not about hard news, subsidy stress or downplaying for a while, but about other matters of art. Director and writer Erik Snel sent us the following sigh, now made topical again by
We already thought something was wrong when Mark Rutte, in his much applauded show of strength in Buitenhof, spoke of 'all those empty halls with 10 people in the front row'. Ok, he hadn't been there himself for years, but according to his State Secretary Halbe Zijlstra, at least in The Hague, the emptiness was glaring, Rutte knew....
The Rutte government is defending the VAT increase on admission tickets to theatres and concerts, claiming that it will straighten out an exception for the arts. However, this does not appear to be true, according to a response from the Order of Tax Advisers to the proposal. "The Bar Association additionally points out that the explanatory memorandum notes that for the performing arts on...
Irrepressible, funny, touching Fast Car Ray. A boy whose head is never still, who does not sleep, to whom everything comes in and who just cannot manage to love himself. His illness, Tourette's Syndrome, makes him delusional and desperate. Tick-tock. On and on, on and on. Like a racing car.
What she does is vulnerable to the point of confrontation. Theatre-maker Lotte van den Berg has such a personal view of the world that, outside the safe context of theatre, it can come across as absurd. Or alienating. On Sunday 26 September, she returned with the members of her Dordrecht-based location theatre company OMSK back from a four-month stay in the Congo capital Kinshasa. A full house in Rotterdam's Gouvernestraat then got to be there when they unpacked their bags a few hours after landing.
It is occasionally quite chilly on the Westergasfabriek grounds where three Fringe performances are on show. On Thursday night, they are Levelless by Theatre Group WAK, Vivarium #3 by LORNA Collective and Kaat by Eva Knibbe, respectively. The cold, however, is no killjoy. The physical jokes in Levelless (or Recht not in Dutch) are a bit like...
Things happen in places like this that cannot bear the light of day. We are deep in Rotterdam's container port, among the neon-lit transhipment yards and dark warehouses. In one of those raw warehouses are two truck trailers. One is set up as an illegal sewing workshop, the other is filled with earth and rubber tyres. They form the backdrop for Hungarian theatre-maker Kornél Mundruczó's performance 'Hard to be a god'.
The show tells the fairly inimitable story of Karoly, who wants to make symbolic torture porn to blackmail his father with it. That father once raped his sister and is now an MEP. Three women are lured to this sewing studio under false pretences to participate in those videos. Things do not end well for them, partly because the foreign film director has rather sadistic tendencies, damaging the ladies to the point of rendering them useless.
The Dodo International Choice journal, episode 2: Wijbrand Schaap came, saw and was overcome by Kris Verdonck's seven installations about plighted people. It should have ended with terrible bangs, a canned fireworks display a few metres from the spectators. But that's not allowed in the Netherlands since Enschede. And certainly not with Belgian fireworks. Theatre-maker, installation artist and video jockey Kris Verdonck ended up...
In suits, wearing animal masks, five actors pose on stage. They represent a bear, rabbit, deer, rooster and monkey. From this 'freeze', they start making animal noises and moving around. A rhythmic performance follows. Fascinated, but confused, the audience watches the alienating dance. What do these animals have to do with the war in Iraq anyway? Just when you start to wonder if you are in the right audience, the actors take off their masks and answer: 'Have you ever wondered what the war in Iraq has meant to the animals there? We never hear anything about them in newspapers or on TV.'
There is no notion of time when you take your seat. It is dark. The room looks like a café, with four tables and chairs around them. Don't expect a sit-back performance, as everyone is part of the play. The intriguing Iris Brunette doesn't let you be a spectator, but gives you a role. Do not fear that you will suddenly have to take the stage. From your seat, you are influencing the play. Actress Melanie Wilson lets you choose which way to go. Do we wait here or walk on? Do we go left or right? Do we trust this person or not? The space you're in feels safe. Fortunately. Because there is no exit; walking away is impossible. A maximum of twenty spectators witness this story that takes you through time. Wilson narrates and involves you in the story in the best possible way. A more intimate performance is hardly possible, I think.
"I am fifty-eight." Plumply, Saskia Lemming (Oda Spelbos) reveals her biggest secret to husband and jaded folk singer René Lemming (Peter Bolhuis). He married her 12 years ago, thinking she was a young blonde. In turn, he reveals that he actually wrote 'You are the cream of my crop', his number one hit, for another woman. The bomb bursts on reality show 'The Lemmings'. Or rather: on stage at De Balie, where Hadewich Minis, Peter Bolhuis, Oda Spelbos and Yorick Zwart compete in Night guests. A three-hour improvisational 'jam session'.
Invisible forces, described as angels, speaking through a Jewish woman to her friends at the time of the Holocaust in Hungary. A mysterious and true story, translated by American actress Shelley Mitchell into the one-woman performance Talking with Angels. A huge success in America. Yesterday on stage for the first time in the Netherlands.
The Russian soul. So there is something about that. And you get something from that when you see a Chekhov play (if done well), or read one of his short stories. Or when you read the works of Tolstoi, Dostoevsky or any other inhabitant of that vast nothingness east of Poland. Or seeing the paintings, which a few...
The Marathon Effect is well known: put spectators together in a theatre for half a day or more, preferably on uncomfortable seats, and hand them over to a couple of actors with a play. Success seems assured, and the ancient Greeks already knew that. So that there would be no discord surrounding the monster project I Demoni, the Dostoevsky adaptation of Peter...
After a 12-hour theatre marathon, what can be said? That it was good? Good. It can. That it was rare? Also true. That it takes a director in his 70s to stage a Russian novel with such calmness, and that it takes such phenomenal actors to keep the audience hooked for 11 hours to the not-very...
Valhalla. Someone called it, and indeed: Valhalla. I don't mean the Teutonic version of the Eternal Hunting Fields then, but Miss Asterix and Obelix. Egyptian style. You may colour in the picture yourself with dark curls, unimaginably flawless skin made of very creamy milk chocolate, and that then set on a pair of hidden heels and strapped into a corset that accentuates everything of value. So Amal Maher is one of those women for whom a man is happy to put his chimes at the disposal of science, if it gives him the privilege of being around her for a few moments.
English (UK) 
Nederlands 
Français
You must be logged in to post a comment.