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Toneelschuur Productions has selected six young directors who will each be given the opportunity to develop their artistic vision into new theatre productions in the period 2021-2024. Ammodo spoke to all six of them about their upcoming work and their perception of the creative process.
Which stage of the creative process do you find most inspiring?
Nina Spijkers: My favourite period, apart from rehearsing, is the period between choosing a piece and the intensive preparation. Sometimes there are years in between. You put the project in a little drawer somewhere in the back of your brain and then you start squirrelling away little nuggets … it’s sort of brewing. Then when you go into preparation with your whole team, you pull open that drawer.
Jessie L'Herminez: I like the rehearsals best. Before that, everything has to be thought up and the work is quite cerebral. Once you start rehearsing you create and experiment. It doesn't have to be good or finished yet, but you get glimpses of what it could become. Things arise that I could never have thought of beforehand and that is often magical.
Loek de Bakker: For me, the most fun phase of a new project has to be the initial discussions with the artistic team. Suddenly all kinds of layers, views and ideas from the set designer, costume designer or composer come into play. From then on, you are developing it together and the performance only gets richer.
Abdel Daoudi: The first week with the actors as well as the editing period. After months of preparation, the actors are primed and a sort of huge pollination takes place. This experience is the closest to the audience's first experience. As a director, I try to record as many of these first impressions as possible. The editing period is the week when all the disciplines come together and the performance is forged into a whole. This is where the most exciting and important choices are made.
Steef de Jong: The 'inventing': how do I want to do it, what is possible? I find that the most inspiring phase because that is when I experience a great sense of freedom.
Nita Kersten: I am now in the writing phase. Reclusive in my garden shed creating a world; just me and my laptop. I really enjoy that, but at the end of the day I'm mostly a rehearsal animal. There's something about the smell of the studio or auditorium, exploring with a group of driven people and discovering and harnessing the talents of actors and co-creators. That wins out over everything else.
What lesson have you learned from one of your previous projects?
Nina Spijkers: There is never one truth, but sometimes the best way to emphasise that is to choose one truth very clearly for every moment, every scene, every sentence of the performance.
Jessie L'Herminez: 1. Not everything has to be comprehensible, understandable or explainable. 2. A clear choice in form and concept gives guidance, creates clear ground rules and content. 3. Contrasts work.
Loek de Bakker: A writer and dramatist friend has a sign in his house saying, "But is that even there?” During an initial script discussion, he pointed to that sign several times. A good reminder for all stages of the process. As a director, you can fantasise all sorts of things about characters but will the audience see or hear that?
Steef de Jong: I think the most important lesson is that there is always an extra step to take. You don't want to finish on the finish line, but just past it.
Abdel Daoudi: During the lockdown, we continued working on Antigone in the background. Despite downtime due to kids and illness, snowstorms that kept us from getting together and physical distance, we kept faith in the value of the story and the need to tell it. Patiently continuing to breathe and work proved to be the key to finishing the show.
Nita Kersten: With my music theatre collective Sir Duke, I created a number of eclectic performances at Orkater as a Newcomer where music, physical play, text or just a bold idea could be the entry point to material. Now I opt for a small cast and a story leading. I hope to learn a lot that I can take with me when I next seek that eclectic style again.
Which of you performances will be shown at Toneelschuur next season?
Nina Spijkers: In September, I start rehearsing for Kasimir and Karoline, a critical folk play set in a blissfully festive and exciting location: the fairground. It is about the growing gap between rich and poor and how people increasingly let their self-esteem depend on status.
Jessie L'Herminez: We are now working on The Chairs, an absurdist play by Eugène Ionesco about two people in their nineties on the eve of their death. Isolated from the outside world, they play together and imagine everything they still long for together until an apotheosis. A totally nonsensical exercise, which nevertheless turns out to be meaningful. The premiere is in September.
Loek de Bakker: This autumn, I am making my first performance at Toneelschuur: a stage adaptation of the novel Het leven zelf (Life Itself) by Roelof ten Napel. In the book, you follow several characters who share the fact that at some point their life their paths crossed with that of Amos, a talented boy who suddenly committed suicide. A moving story about the ongoing attempt to connect. It will be a musical performance with four twenty-somethings who are full of life.
Abdel Daoudi: I am at the start of a new project. In all likelihood, it will be an adaptation of Édouard Louis' book History of Violence. Without judgement, he creates a universal account of how class affects your identity. And how this can not only tear apart a society but also put family ties and socio-cultural relationships at odds.
Steef de Jong: My production Eine Nacht in Venedig has just premiered, an 1883 operetta by Johann Strauss Jr. It is a grand musical theatre spectacle set in Venice during carnival. I have adapted the piece so that it can be performed by seven performers. They are the orchestra, the choir, the ballet, the soloists and even the technicians.
Nita Kersten: Next season, I will create the play Apocalypse. Together with playwright Freek Vielen, I am developing a new text for this, inspired by Jean Hegland's book Into the Forest. It tells the story of two sisters who live together in their parental home in a forest, while the world outside the forest slowly collapses.
If you could invite anyone, who would be the ideal spectator to talk to about your work afterwards?
Nina Spijkers: Sylvana Simons. I admire her very much as a person and as a politician and I think I could have a very inspiring conversation with her about how art reflects on society and about the worldview in performance.
Jessie L'Herminez: The Russian director Vsevolod Meyerhold. I would like to ask his advice. He worked with actors on a new, physical style of acting and experimented with text theatre. Unfortunately, he was imprisoned and killed in 1939 because his art was too avant-garde.
Loek de Bakker: Filmmaker Xavier Dolan. We are almost the same age, but he made his debut at nineteen with a film I was watching with my mouth open! He writes, acts, directs, does costume design and also makes films on the same themes I make theatre about.
Abdel Daoudi: Albert Camus. His philosophy is steeped in rebellion and opposition to something, but at the same time solidarity and the value of community spirit. It is both contradictory and utterly logical. Recognising the absurd reality that life is meaningless yet rebelling against it, that appeals to me a lot.
Steef de Jong: My grandmother, Petronella van Wijngaarden. She was a variety artist in the 1930s. She performed in the most famous theatres in Europe. Unfortunately, she died early so I was never able to speak to her about it and I would love to do so since I draw a lot of inspiration from old theatre forms like operetta, revue and variety.
Nita Kersten: My 14-year-old son. He belongs to a generation that has been aware of the seriousness of the climate crisis from an early age. Ever since he could speak in full sentences he has been expressing his concerns about how we treat the earth. He forces me to look ahead, beyond my own life. By taking his concerns seriously and making an attempt to actually sketch that anxious picture of the future, you are forced to reflect on yourself and your contemporaries. This is also what I find so fascinating about dystopias and the apocalyptic future image. Why do we tell these stories and what mirror do we want to hold up to ourselves through them?
Published on 12 July 2021.
Group photo: Bibi Veth
Portraits: Nienke Veneboer
