Festival Boulevard kicks off on 4 August. The traditional reason to come back from holiday in August has a fuller programme than ever this time. With lots of youth theatre. We'll help you get started in advance.
Champagne at BAK in Utrecht, deep disappointment at The New Institute in Rotterdam: the Council for Culture has spoken. Today, Thursday 19 May 2016, the first advice after the draconian art cuts by the first Rutte cabinet came out, and heads are rolling. Amsterdam loses prestigious presentation institution De Appel, in The Hague fellow institution Stroom has to redo its homework. The Orkest van het Oosten and the Gelders Orkest have to come up with merger plans within two years. In Utrecht, the city company Theater Utrecht will no longer receive funding despite artistic appreciation. Het Zuidelijk Toneel in Eindhoven Tilburg must make new plans and Opera Zuid must quickly raise its artistic quality. These are the main conclusions of the Culture Council's opinion.
As dramatic as some of this may sound, the advice is actually not, when you look over the whole battlefield. Thanks in part to
On 30 January, choreographer Erik Kaiel was presented with the prestigious Victor Award at IPAY, an international youth theatre fair in Canada, for his performance Tetris. "It's a kind of Buchmesse for youth theatre. If you get picked up there, you go around the world" says Kaiel. Kaiel (1973) has been working in the Netherlands since 2003 and has so far produced his work at...
The Lower House caused serious problems for culture in the Netherlands a few weeks back. In a noble attempt to save a few festivals and a youth theatre, SP, D66, CDA and PvdA caused chaos. They passed a motion instructing our culture minister to still set aside money for a few festivals and an extra...
'Young people can very well decide for themselves where they want to go or not go. And it just so happens that most of the time it is not to the theatre. So what? That will come naturally. Young people make their own choices, and that more often includes a house party than a play. Dragging them inside is counterproductive. And above all, no compulsory book-list performance,...
It is prize season again in the cultural sector and that always brings fuss. Suspicions of rigging, favouritism, bribery. It's part of it, as is everyone doing their best to tell you that the jury chose completely objectively and independently. There is also a Cultural Governance Code for a reason, to prevent the small art world from having too little...
It was world news in 1997. In one of the first building sites of Vinex district Leidsche Rijn, archaeologists found remains of a Roman boundary line, walls of forts, a cargo ship and all kinds of utensils. Digging it up and building houses was no longer an option. In 2007, it was decided to build a cultural park: a castellum. A modern version of a Roman fort bringing together various functions....
Nederlandse Reisopera, Madama Butterfly (opera), 3 September to 10 October Dutch sopranos are like footballers. They fly halfway around the world, but are only rarely seen in their own country. Take Annemarie Kremer, nominated in Germany as 'Sängerin des Jahres'. The Nederlandse Reisopera is taking her all over the Netherlands in the role that brought her world fame: the title role of Madama ...
Last year, theatre festival Boulevard launched a competition giving young creators the chance to create a performance. Requirements: the target audience (young people aged six and over), the length of the performance (roughly 20 minutes) and the theme (Vincent Van Gogh). This weekend the first two winners could be seen, next weekend the other two. Above all, the first performances showed the two faces ...
Watch Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf by the Dutch Comedy in 1964, or Live, the 1979 video ballet by the Dutch National Ballet. You can now do so at the Theatre Encyclopaedia. Thanks to the crowdfunding campaign Being/Not Being. For some time, the Theaterencyclopedie had wanted to put videos of some of the crown jewels of Dutch theatre performances on the internet. A nice start has now been made on that. Through a Voordekunst action, even more money has been raised...
Every company 50,000 euros more. Youth theatre in the Netherlands should be very happy with the letter culture minister Bussemaker sent to the chamber last Monday. After years of squeezing under Halbe Zijlstra, finally more air for the makers. But the investment of 4 tonnes a year turns out to be a cutback. In fact, Bussemaker is only giving a gift to eight companies. Company...
The repair of cultural subsidies by more than 18 million, announced by culture minister Bussemaker on 8 June 2015, mainly concerns a perpetuation of earlier patchwork. That patchwork was necessary in recent years to smooth the crudest consequences of the cuts by her predecessor Halbe Zijlstra. That predecessor is now in the chamber as a coalition partner, to ensure...
A beauty list. The Dutch Theatre Festival's official jury selection cannot be described any other way. Neatly divided into large- and small-screen productions, with a mime and a location production as well. At the same time, the selection makes no sense at all. Because yes, the Theatre Festival admits that it looks mainly at theatre. And after all, aren't there all kinds of awards for opera, youth theatre,...
There is too little money for two travelling opera companies. Quality is at risk, something must be done. But the Culture Council does not offer a solution.
Last weekend, we thought we were on the safe side with our list of best-read stories on Culture Press. True to old media laws, we thought the days between Christmas and New Year's would be quiet. Aber nein. It turned out there was another list on the way, which turned the whole thing upside down. Instead of 235 thousand interested readers...
It's raining annual lists and we're merrily joining in. As subjective as anyone, after all, no one sees everything, and opinions on taste can always differ. Of course, also in this list many performances in or from the Randstad, but half of them were not yet shown there. And all genres mixed together. As long as it is theatre. With the only limitation: no repeats, apologies Ring and Lohengrin (DNO), St John Passion (NRO). And no dance, because for that our partner dance audience.
Ten per cent fewer performances and ten per cent fewer visitors in Overijssel headlines RTV Oost. Bam! That chops it. Into the bin, that jubilant press release by Jet Bussemaker. And if there is one province that does not need to apologise to Halbe Zijlstra, it is Overijssel. Well, we reported earlier that apologies are not necessary anyway, but as a province...
Two corpses. Despairing bystanders. A blood-red photo. The cover of the Exploration, released by the Amsterdam Arts Council, makes one fear the worst. A massacre has been committed. Even if it is a scenic photo of a performance by Toneelgroep Amsterdam. Or is it all different? Are only two dead, and the rest live on? Something about shows that on must go?....
Wijbrand Schaap: 'Now on the role of cities. One of the reactions on our site is about the role of the randstad in cultural policy. Melle Daamen puts the primacy in the randstad, and goes further than the council in this.' Joop Daalmeijer: 'The council has no position yet.' Wijbrand Schaap: 'But there is something in the Culture Outlook. Cities form...
With all the critical coverage of Russia that Putin and his supporters provoke, we would almost forget that we are in the middle of the Netherlands-Russia year sitting. A screening of Paul Verhoeven's war film will take place tonight at the Pioner Gorky Park in Moscow Black Book, as a kick-off to
The discussion was and is endless, but now we have figures. Thanks to the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science's new 'key figures', we now know how much the state (all of us) are spending for the opportunity to experience art: per inhabitant, the state spends 38.90 per year on subsidies for dance, theatre, museums, youth theatre, opera and orchestras. So that's just over 3 euros a month. Indeed something to get into each other's hair about, we think.
Yet money for the National Academy of Visual Arts, money for an orchestra merger in the south of the Netherlands and 4.7 million for a knowledge institute for amateur art. The clear-cutting of the Dutch cultural sector has become a little less extreme thanks to a second advice from the Council for Culture. Besides the aforementioned positive assessment, there is also money for a knowledge institute for the creative sector
On Wednesday 1 August 2012, the Performing Arts Fund will announce the results of the lottery that granting arts subsidies has now become. Huge cuts are looming: companies and creators that by now seemed to be a permanent part of the Dutch arts landscape will disappear. Exactly what it will look like, we know
After the presentation of the Rotterdam and The Hague arts recommendations, and a few days to weeks before the harsh judgements of the Council for Culture, and a few months before the devastating reports of the Performing Arts Fund, it is starting to become clear how drastically the Dutch cultural sector is being hit
The cut-away Metropole Orchestra is getting some air from the minister. She is willing to use the necessary friction costs to support the transition over the next four years from the Media Budget, provided it stays there. That is, the orchestra may use its own severance payments to be independently 'on the market' from 2017. As much as it shows...
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