Amsterdam. A city full of dichotomies. Restrictive Dutch heritage and whores in glass boxes. Troupes of tripping backpackers and heart-heavy visitors in Anne Frank's attic. As such, the 62nd Annual Holland Festival captured its city perfectly by leveraging the theme "Serenity & Anxiety" to frame its 34 international productions from June 4-28, 2009.
Forced to Tour/tour de force?
The Dutch Theatre Critics Association (Kring van Nederlandse Theatercritici) and the Festival gathered members of the International Association of Theatre Critics from more than 20 nations to discuss the theatrical selections at this year's festival and to debate our theme of Forced to Tour/tour de force?. Through a series of formal presentations and informal chats, we explored the effects of globalization and immigration on the interpreters of self-expression--that is, how theater critics see "immigrant" or "migrant" theater at home and abroad.
One of the most compelling presentations was by the South African critic Brent Meersman ("From Ipi Tombi to iMumbo Jumbo: How to Act Black"). He touched upon early African "performance" with the example of Saartjie Baartman (aka Sarah Bartman), a Khoisan woman who was forced to entertain 19th century European audiences by gyrating her nude buttocks and showing what was, to them, her shocking human body.
America's Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks wrote the play "Venus" about Baartman in 1996. (Directed by Richard Foreman, it was presented by The Public Theater.) Meersman noted how since international tours of "The Lion King" have swept the globe, most plays from his home country are inevitably compared to that Disney production. Certainly a welcome shift from the early 19th century, but still demonstrating a marked lack of understanding African theater and performance beyond what Westerners interpret simply as spectacle.
Holland Festival: Theater & Music
The Antonioni Project
One of the most striking offerings at the festival was "The Antonioni Project" by Flemish director Ivo van Hove. Through live acting and live video, he imported the Italian films of Michelangelo Antonioni (“L’Avventura,” “La Notte” and “L’Eclisse”) to the Dutch stage at Stadsschouwburg. While Van Hove works primarily in Holland as the artistic director of Toneelgroep Amsterdam, he maintains a home here in New York where his works are frequently staged (usually at New York Theater Workshop). Last fall, his production of "Opening Night" as part of BAM's Next Wave Festival caught the attention of many Gotham critics.
In the beautiful Stadsschouwburg, Amsterdam's municipal theater, Van Hove's vision of love and compromise was refracted through Antonioni's twisted lens. A stellar cast of 17 strode across the massive stage, while camera crews followed their moves, which were projected above the stage. The juxtaposition between theater and film, built scenery and a green screen, underscored the performance's central theme of outer artifice and inner truth. The cast was strikingly talented, giving Hollywood's best a run for their money (Cate Blanchette, Sean Penn and their ilk). Karina Smulders was irresistibly adorable as the bouncy, blonde object of Sandro's (Fedja van Huet) affection, while Halina Reijn countered her as the shrewd brunette avoiding the advances of the bold stock broker Piero (Jacob Derwig).
The scope of the production and the level of acting was among the most staggering I've seen. Pity, the Dutch was not translated for this international festival, so I don't know whether the text added or detracted from the visual excellence of "The Antonioni Project".
[The Sound and the Fury (April Seventh 1928)
The Brooklyn-based company Elevator Repair Service brought their self-indulgent production to Holland. I reviewed the show at New York Theatre Workshop last May for Portugal's Revista Obscena. No need to put myself through that again on any continent.]
The indie folk-rock group Antony and The Johnsons was joined by Holland's Metropole Orchestra for a two-night engagement at the Koninklijk Theater Carré. His 2005 album I Am a Bird Now bewitched me, but I had never had the chance to see them perform live. Lead man Antony Hegarty is a British-born singer-songwriter who lives here in New York. (So I have to go to Amsterdam to see him. Go figure.)
When the thick, red curtain rose to expose the figure of Antony, I was taken aback. Sitting there in the fourth row, no more than 20 feet from him, I found a chubby, pained angel figure with a mop of tangled black hair. During his first two songs with the massive orchestra behind him ("Everything Is New" and "For Today I Am A Boy"), he writhed and twitched, looking up into nothingness. As the performance continued, his anxiety diminished and the vocalist opened a bit to the 2,000-person audience. Musing on the agreement between performer and audience, he offered, “It’s really magical, isn't it? It's so mysterious. It beats me sitting in my room.”
The group's new song "Everglade" was inspired by John Everett Millais' famous painting of Ophelia and Antony's observations of his own mother's aging. Another new song, "Salt, Silver and Oxygen" actually brought a contended smile to the singer's face, as he intoned about a boy “dancing with his casket” and urged the listener to “elect the salt mother" because "she’s a selective Christ”. (If it makes him happy...)
One of his most endearing and down-to-earth moves was Hegarty's version of “Crazy in Love”, the 2003 pop hit by Beyoncé. Sung with all sincerity, the song transformed in Antony's mouth, with the idea of "looking so crazy in love" taking on a darker implication than when sung by the twinkle-eyed mega-star. In that moment, the audience could sit back and know--or at least hope--that Antony had found some serenity, however fleeting.
And Also...
Simultaneous to the Holland Festival's offerings was the Grand Opening of the Hermitage Amsterdam, with the opening exhibition "At the Russian Court" with more than 1,800 treasures from the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg (and all the fuel needed to spark the Russian revolution). Meanwhile, a European White Night, an overnight festival timed with the summer solstice, provided 31 hours of activity in the Hermitage. With the Amsterdam sun setting around 10:30pm each night, there was plenty of light to continue the party late into the morning.
At 10:00 pm, the popular pair of Dutch dancers Peter Bosveld and Euvgenia Parakhina taught visitors a brief Russian waltz in the museum's kerkzaal, while a Dutch quartet, 4tuoze Matroze, played Russian tunes on their violins, accordion, and piano at midnight. At 1:00 am the silent disco began. A dance party without traditional speaker system, the silent disco relies on dancers jamming out with wireless headphones and a DJ with an FM transmitter. (Those without the headphones hear no music.) We got some Gogol Bordello, Franz Ferdinand and a slew of Euro dance hits that I didn't know, but that made the room shake. The disco went until 6AM.
It would have been impossible to absorb all of the cultural discourse and varied performances in three days along the Amstel. But from African history on stage in the U.S. to Flemish interpretations of Italian films, the Holland Festival and IATC captured the many moods of Amsterdam for its global visitors.
