Cultural discomfort is Artemis\u2019s trademark. In the latest festival production by the Den Bosch-based youth theatre company, that discomfort soars to unprecedented heights \u2013 where, incidentally, it\u2019s quite a pleasant place to be: it\u2019s not an unpleasant kind of discomfort. It keeps things exciting. \u2018Arty Farty In The Playground\u2019 is a delightfully subversive commentary on art and what it is supposed to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Artemis has set up a little station on the edge of De Parade, the square in Den Bosch and the festival hub of Boulevard. There, you can hop aboard one of those dreadful little tourist trains that catch you off guard in far too many historic city centres and theme parks. Now it\u2019s your turn to hop on, and you\u2019ll set off on a fantastic journey through the bustling city centre of Den Bosch, in search of three children\u2019s playgrounds where real art is about to unfold. This is made clear by the \u2018curator\u2019, a marvellous character in a typical curator\u2019s outfit, complete with outrageous pink glasses and platform shoes from a visibly expensive brand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That curator takes her work dead seriously, despite the banana serving as a faulty microphone, and despite the fact that we\u2019re walking past a children\u2019s playground. The adults amongst us listen somewhat uneasily to introductions about artists and their post-capitalist intentions, or other terms from the handbook of vague art jargon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once they arrive at the play areas, the children in the audience do what children in the audience are supposed to do, especially at Artemis: they take over the play areas, despite the fact that an artist is also at work there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It gets off to a good start with a scene reminiscent of the famous gorilla performance from the art-world satire *The Square*, when a man with a steaming bag disappears into the ground. He later emerges to give everyone a proper fright. And on to the next attractions, all the while waving awkwardly at the somewhat bewildered-looking city dwellers. Because that\u2019s what you do, riding on a tourist train through the human menagerie that a city actually is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The curator remains true to her role, as she should; the artists perform their sometimes rather baffling acts with imperial gravitas and equally bitter seriousness; and a family crisis that unfolds at the final venue \u2013 complete with an aggressive father \u2013 seems to fit right in. Or does it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Arty Farty in the Playground is so delightfully disorientating that, after an hour and a half of driving round Den Bosch and experiencing things in the most beautiful spots, you\u2019ve lost your bearings. That\u2019s what Artemis\u2019s theatre does to you. At a festival like Boulevard, you can just let that happen. In fact, that\u2019s exactly what you\u2019re there for. Take, for example, the phenomenal \u2018Nergens\u2019 in the basement of the Theater aan de Parade. It\u2019s a VR film by the artist duo Schippers & Van Gught. The experience builds on their VR film \u2018Ergens\u2019, which left me spellbound and bewildered last year. You sit on a swivel chair and look around in four directions, where a different solitary figure keeps moving towards you, until all four of you end up at a bizarre children\u2019s party. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
With \u2018Nergens\u2019, the Breda-based artists\u2019 collective paints a sometimes moving picture of disembodied souls in a world that is no longer their own. It bears a certain resemblance to the world of Artemis, where artists and children also moved so remarkably past one another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course, Boulevard also has a reputation to uphold as a festival featuring \u2018mainstream\u2019 theatre. This year\u2019s opening performance was *Ruination* by Lost Dog. Directed by the choreographer and director Ben Duke<\/a> they tackle the classic story of Medea. It is the story of the \u2018Daughter of the Sun\u2019 who, as the spoils of war of the \u2018hero\u2019 Jason, is forced to endure seeing herself and her sons enslaved in Jason\u2019s own city upon his return, after her husband has found a more suitable \u2013 local \u2013 bride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is also the story of the mother who murders her sons, under the approving gaze of a chorus of women who lament her fate. Was that infanticide an act of revenge, or was there something else at play? That question has preoccupied humanity for just under 2,500 years. In *Ruination*, Hades, \u2018Chief of Death\u2019 in the underworld, attempts to answer it once and for all. In doing so, he acts as Jason\u2019s defence counsel, whilst his fellow underworld goddess Persephone takes up the defence of Medea, who wishes to prove her innocence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n An interesting detail is that Persephone herself is not entirely there of her own free will. She was raped and abducted by Hades, and, following Zeus\u2019s intervention, is allowed to return to the surface every six months to be with her mother Demeter, who, as the goddess of fertility, thereby governs the changing seasons. When her daughter is with Hades, Demeter, in her sheer grief, causes the land to wither and the livestock to die; spring then returns as a result of her joy at her daughter\u2019s return. This phenomenon has been beautifully celebrated in song by Martha Wainwright, although that song was about the Roman version of Persephone: Proserpina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n