T H E D U T C H O N T O U R - Theater Instituut Nederland

The 1000 faces of
visual theatre
If you were to try and draw the Dutch theatre landscape, you would need not only a pencil, but also
a huge rubber. That’s because the squares and circles for text and improvisation drama, classical and
modern dance, youth theatre and made-by-youth theatre, movement theatre and site-specific theatre
would soon turn out to be harder to define than you’d think at first glance.
So it is not surprising that the genre division in this book is purely a practical division; in each
category there are some groups which could easily have been placed in another chapter.
That said, we can take a look at the categories site-specific theatre and movement or physical
theatre, and at the whole spectrum between drama and dance which doesn’t do traditional
theatrical plots with a-to-z-stories. These theatre forms are an important part of the Dutch
theatre landscape.
Let’s clear one thing up straight away: mime should not be confused with pantomime (that
funny clown with hands tracing an imaginary window), just as site-specific theatre should not
be generalised as street theatre. What can we expect then?
Expressing through movement
In the area of mime – also described as movement theatre or physical theatre – there are such
talented theatre makers as Bambie, Boukje Schweigman, Jakop Ahlbom and Golden Palace.
Many of them were taught at the special mime department of the Amsterdam High School
of the Arts, which attracts students from far beyond the Dutch borders. Inspired by the mime
corporel, developed by Etienne Decroux at the beginning of the twentieth century, this school
builds on a strong mime curriculum, where the central idea of movement is keeping the body
in balance. Students learn how to make theatre, but apart from that they focus on expressing
themselves through movement. Performances are not made on the basis of repertoire, but
The Dutch on tour Physical, site-specific and object theatre