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

Site-specific theatre makers can
choose their own place, rebuild it
into a theatre and make something
that can only exist in that particular
place. Whether that place is a forest,
tent, passengers’ terminal or supermarket
But Oerol is not the only open-air festival; there are many more, some of which also take place
in the cities. De Karavaan travels through the province of Noord-Holland and shows its performances
on streets and squares. Festival Over ‘t IJ in Amsterdam, Festival aan de Werf in Utrecht
and Theaterfestival Boulevard in the south of Holland put emphasis on young site-specific
talents. And De Parade descends for a few weeks each year on the cities of Rotterdam, Utrecht,
The Hague and Amsterdam, with a lot of special site-specific and regular theatre in tents or in
the mud. And the audience loves it; the highest theatre attendance figures are always during
the festival season in the summer months.
The best-known theatre groups who only make theatre on special locations are The Lunatics
and Vis à Vis. The latter makes large-scale outdoor summer performances where image and
action play a larger role than dialogues and plot. In visual comedy, the performers show ‘the
fight of modern man with the stubborn reality of everyday life’. In Picnic (2000), the group gave
the audience the opportunity to see what happened both on and off stage. On stage, a couple
decides to go for a picnic and meets a wounded passer-by. Instead of helping him, they take
his luggage, with all the consequences. Behind the scenes, the technicians and actors struggle
hard to create a cinematic illusion on stage. Apparently simple effects turn out to be extremely
complicated to bring about. The eight hundred visitors saw half of the show backstage, and
half of the show on stage – a sublime and humorous invention.
Warner van Wely left his former company Dogtroep in 1990 and started a new company three
years later: Warner & Consorten. It’s a group of sculptors, musicians, dancers and actors who all
prefer unusual locations, indoors and outdoors. In the summer of 2005 they performed Clockwork/Guerilla,
a double production for public spaces. In Clockwork they explored the boundary
between man and machine. The scenery was formed by a living, twenty-metre-long installation,
where the actors endlessly repeated everyday actions (making bread, feeding the fish, washing
socks). Man seemed to be transformed into machine.
There is a new generation of theatre makers who don’t choose to work only in theatres, on
location, for young or adult audiences. They do it all, which leads to beautiful performances.
Dries Verhoevens recent production U bevindt zich hier/You are here was a hit at the summer festivals
of 2007. People checked in in a hotel-like setting, were guided to their rooms and cordially
requested to lie down on their beds. What started as a one-on-one performance changed all of
a sudden into a one-on-one-on-all performance when the mirror ceiling started to rise, offering
the spectator a peak in every other room.
Lotte van den Berg offers the spectators a complete new view on what seemed normal up
until the moment they stepped into her performance. In Gerucht/Rumour (spring 2007) she
blended the street and city traffic into the performance; the audience watched it through a
huge window in their temporary wooden home. The dividing line between what was real and
staged was so thin that the audience was kept in constant doubt.
Many more groups, like The Lunatics, Théâtre Espace or Space, explore what drama can do to
everyday locations. And it can do a lot, as most of their audience members will agree! It should
come as no surprise that the work of these companies is also extremely popular at festivals
outside the Netherlands, as the visual language of this theatre genre can be understood all the
way from Holland to Japan.
Lonneke Kok
10 The Dutch on tour Physical, site-specific and object theatre
The Dutch on tour Physical, site-specific and object theatre
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