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Laura van Dolron plays in front of 2 people and that's pretty ok. Nerd podcast #6 with Marijn Lems, Wijbrand Schaap and special guest Laura van Dolron

Marijn (NRC/Theaterkrant) and Wijbrand (Culture Press) disagree quite often, prompting another solid podcast about how to look at theatre professionally. This time, Wijbrand had got excited about the fact that stand-up philosopher Laura van Dolron performed a play for two invited guests each time, professionals mostly, and that they then wrote entire newspaper pages full of... 

Nerd podcast 3: Why is youth theatre often so much stronger than theatre for big people? (With Marijn Lems and Henri Drost)

Today we are talking about youth theatre. A genre I myself first encountered in 1994, thanks to 'Mirad, een jongen uit Bosnië' by Ad de Bont, performed by Theatergroep Wederzijds. Marijn Lems got his love for youth theatre from his mother, who, like his father, was a librarian in Tilburg. What we agree on, in this podcast, the... 

Nadia's revenge. VPRO's #onstage is the best answer to the cynics at the top of the NPO

Maybe it's the snow, and my little dog that made me so happy. Maybe it's the sledding children in 'The Pit' of Lunetten, and maybe it's the lameness that creeps up on me after so many valiant attempts to keep up the fun of art in times of Corona. But I sat through the first minutes of VPRO's Onstage... 

Marijn Lems (NRC) on doubt and loneliness of arts journalist: 'We are all highly educated, white and from the middle class. It could be more diverse from me.'

Critics by default have a different opinion than the average audience. That, says Marijn Lems, theatre journalist at NRC and Theaterkrant, is what this research shows. Reason for us to take a closer look at this in the Culture Press Nerd podcast on the deeper details of the art journalist's profession. Another three-quarters of an hour for anecdotes and exciting revelations about the private life of the... 

Marijn Lems: 'I write for people who don't shy away from the adventurous in art.'

More than 1,500 hours were spent by theatre critic Marijn Lems last year in theatres, in front of TV and, most importantly, with games. That's a lot of time and it raises questions. Questions especially about how you organise your time as a journalist, and how you divide it between watching art for work and what we will call 'normal life'. That's what this podcast is about, for just under three quarters of an hour.

Eddy Bellegueule live. Still impressive, but also makes you yearn for the real thing.

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.

Moniek Merkx bids farewell to Maas Theatre & Dance: 'I would grant it to any creator to have this audience in front of you once.'

Moniek Merkx will step down as director of Maas Theatre&Dans on 3 February this year. She co-founded this Rotterdam-based company that makes theatre for people from small to large in 2013. A forced merger with two other youth theatre houses from the Maas city, it developed under her leadership into one of the most successful and interesting theatre groups in our country. In our podcast, I talk to her for an hour about how that came to be.

Leading starts with yourself. Learn more about that in this podcast on LinC-Artistics

In this podcast, I talk to Marjolein Verhallen and Paul Adriaanse from Public Administration, Nanna Verhoef from Media and Iris van der Tuin from Philosophy, and artistic directors Lars Ebert and Jente Hoogeveen about what that is: leadership. And we talk about how you can learn it. 

No better time imaginable for Splendid Isolation. Personal initiative soprano provides unique concert in times of Corona.

Splendid Isolation is about the happiness of loneliness, but, Elgershuizen stresses, it is best experienced together. 'It needs to be performed, because as humans we need to be able to be together'.
If all goes well, it can be experienced on Saturday 19 and Sunday 20 December.

Greg Nottrot offers vision of a new future for theatre at the time of Corona with 'Graves'

Ok, the Mauerpark in the real Berlin is more grubby, but what they call the Berlinplein in Utrecht's new Leidsche Rijn centre has something in common with it. Of course, a frayed edge organised by the local government is a bit suspicious, with a megabios as its biggest attraction, but property developers, the biggest abusers of artistic frayed edges, can't do much else on... 

Halima El Ghamarti started her new job just before Corona: 'The new normal? That's my normal here.' (Podcast and video)

Barely three weeks into her job when the corona pandemic and lockdown came. So, for Halima el Ghamarti, who started as director of the Jongeren Cultuurhuis Kanaleneiland and Overvecht in mid-February, there is no other normal than the new normal: working from home, and doing so with an organisation whose main purpose is to connect young people in Utrecht with... 

'Sender Boulevard': a small-scale summer programme of theatre and more, from the makers of Boulevard

Under the banner 'Sender Boulevard', 25 performances, performances and installations are popping up in 's-Hertogenbosch this summer, especially in the second week of August. Their shared motto is 'Approach the other'. Because after months of isolation, appropriate distance and avoidance, the desire to get [a little] closer glows. Boulevard celebrates the resilience of makers and audiences in 2020 with a programme... 

'We're done with Zoomen for now'. Holland Festival looks back on 2020 edition with mixed feelings (with sound)

The three of them are back together in the office for the first time since the lockdown on 13 March. The interview, in which director Emily Ansenk, music programmer Jochem Valkenburg and theatre programmer Annemieke Keurentjes take stock of the first - and hopefully only - online edition of the country's most prestigious performing arts festival, takes place a day after the lockdown. There was no... 

Mattijs van der Woerd hopes to sing again one day, but is especially happy that Splendor is making music again

Musicians' society Splendor has survived the corona crisis so far, despite the fact that the two halls could not be used, rehearsal rooms fell and the bar could not open. Mattijs van der Woerd, baritone, talks about it in our podcast/video. How can that be, such a small concert hall standing so strong? The secret, which also keeps Culture Press afloat, and which this month also... 

Greg Nottrot is energised by the corona crisis: 'Let's enjoy the fact that there is finally room for experimentation again.'

'I did get startled at first by being so laconic under the lockdown. I thought: don't I care enough to step over it so lightly? I also fully understand that people are very sad that it's all off, but apparently I'm a bit more fatalistic about that.' Greg Nottrot, playwright and enigma maker,... 

'I don't see Le Guess Who happening on a grass field'. Johan Gijsen on postponement of critically acclaimed festival

'At the beginning of March we were still having a bit of a laugh about the virus, but a week later it became clear to me that we would be in serious trouble this year.' Johan Gijsen, director and founder of the Utrecht-based festival that brings together the most surprising artists from all genres of the international music world every November, is still visibly... 

Alexander Plooij argues for a different approach to lobbying the cultural sector: 'The artistic should be central, not creativity.'

'When the economic interests of involved parties outweigh the interests of the cultural sector, you end up getting movements like the ones we are seeing now in Brabant. Art makes itself more important than it is, and that sets off bad blood.' We have a conversation with Alexander Plooij, entrepreneur and once active in the cultural sector as a professional trumpet player, manager of music schools and... 

The Encounter, Complicit / Simon McBurney, photo: Alex Aitchison

Why you should listen to Simon McBurney with headphones on between 15 and 22 May

We are fairly bombarded to death with online theatre experiences. Frankly, I avoid them. I always thought theatre was something to be experienced live. Bobbing shoes are terrible, visible consumption when speaking is something I can't stand at the moment and the sound is always mediocre. I want live theatre, and nothing else. Leave TV to the TV makers, they have studied for that. Still... 

'For museums, a reservoir of deferred rent and taxes awaits' Paul Baltus of Amersfoort in C is working hard on a plan B.

'At some point, you get it again. then you just have to start paying again. Unless there will somehow be remission, but that is not the case for now.' For Paul Baltus, director of museum dome Amersfoort in C, a big challenge awaits if the intelligent lockdown will slowly be lifted. How can... 

'Bring all the venues in Amersfoort together in one management group.' Bernard van Gellekom has an unorthodox vision of cultural survival at the time of Corona.

'If you can put only a quarter, or even less, in a hall that normally holds 600 people, then the tickets do become very expensive, because your costs don't change. Then my popular heart starts beating again: should we really want something so elitist?' Bernard van Gellekom is an important figure in the Amersfoort pop scene. In his home... 

Culture Press Tonapodcast (19): Willemijn Mooij had to cancel the Matthew Passion: 'Leading from a distance is hard for me'

'Last (Silent, ed.) Saturday we ventured out to dinner at friends', my husband and I once again. We were tired of just talking about Corona. Then we agreed to have a music night. We all work in classical music, but agreed to listen to precisely no classical music. It became a... 

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