fight your way in<\/a> as a minority', and the Barre Landers were rightly angry at the time. You can call it sardonic that they are in exactly the same position now, but let's stick to a painful irony of fate. <\/p>\n\n\n\nIt must also feel humiliating and powerless to sit there, declared old far too young by the self-desired subsidy system, and now forced to reinvent yourself and your craft. 'The artist's existence is simply unsafe,' Andrea Voets retorted, when she dared to speak at the very end as the only representative of the young and new guard that does now receive subsidies at the expense of the veterans on stage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reason for a few attendees to mention the war, without immediately running into the shelter. Someone still called out that maybe they should admire themselves a little less. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every four years<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Chekhov-enthusiasts can take heart from this evening, which will be able to be held every four years, with ever-new groups, as long as the government's budget for the arts does not continue to grow as exponentially as the number of art college graduates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the Cherry Garden, it is the former serf Lopachin who devises a rescue plan for the languishing Cherry Orchard, while the landowner Lyubov hustles her money through on the French Riviera. Everyone identified so intensely with the entourage of that old landed gentry this evening that I developed vicarious sympathy for Lopachin, whom everyone in the room referred to with a dirty word as a 'property developer'. Everyone also thought the summer cottages he envisaged were so lacklustre. You could also think of all those poor people who would now have a roof over their heads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More distance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
This was an evening without self-mockery. Imaginable, but you'd grant us a bit more distance. Also a bit more realism. The subsidy system is creaking, it could be better, but once in, your place is not guaranteed, and the whole sector has fought rock hard for that since the last war. As a result, it could be finished every four years. Or you won't have to admit anyone from now on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was also some sputtering about 'tick boxes' without mentioning the word 'diversity' or 'inclusion', because that is sensitive. So it is inevitable that - under pressure from all those appeals and objections from the sector itself - applying for funding will take on increasingly formal and bureaucratic edges. And we want a diverse and inclusive society, don't we? Musk is not yet in power here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big Capital <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
How to do things differently? We need to agree on that, before something like Musk's coup in the US happens here too. The end of the subsidy is always hanging over your head, so always prepare for that moment. This is not a surrender to big business, but a necessary strengthening of your personal resilience. And if you do have to fly (don't have to), fly with the airline of the young woman who was so utterly unjustly constantly harassed by that screaming Serebryakov in the front row. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then on the next occasion, don't read The Cherry Garden or Uncle Vanya, but dare to put Chekhov's play-within-a-play Seagull on the table. In which a young actress is crushed between the ambition of a young playwright and the crushing arrogance of an old writer. <\/p>\n\n\n
Seen: the stream of The Cherry Garden at De Balie
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