Magazine - TOBACCO Theater

A DIRECTOR’S
WEEK
Erik van Wilsum, owner and director
of the TOBACCO Theatre Amsterdam,
takes us along in his (hobby)
week. Since 12 years Erik van Wilsum
is the owner of the building in which
his own TOBACCO Theatre is located.
An industrial location located in
the cultural street of Amsterdam: the
Nes. A theatre with its own way: we
subsidize our own performances and
make commercial parties the actual
subsidy tap of our theatre.
Monday 2 December 2019
Today, together with the cultural
team, the annual plan for 2020 is on
the programme. This means how
much budget do we expect to have
at our disposal and what are we
aiming for this year? Last year we hosted
a great festival in the summer.
In the summer, most theatres are
closed and the commercial activities
are at a standstill. We organized
a 10-day photo festival under the
name of TOBACCO PLAYGROUND.
An event that eventually cost over
€ 30.000,00. Do we want to focus
again on such a big event or are we
going to program more small shows?
We are now doing an average of 55
cultural events per year and we want
to bring that to 90. Or are we going
for a special festival in the summer...?
The presentation of the Golden
Genesius Medal to Marjolijn Touw
was in the afternoon. A big theatre
prize that was organized at our
venue. The organization had never
seen such a good team in all those
years that they organize this award
ceremony. Of course we are very
proud of this achievement.
During the afternoon I am visiting my
younger son’s school for the introduction
to his profile choice in the
evening.
Tuesday December 3rd
Today my wife returns from 3 weeks
visiting family in Australia. My alarm
clock set at 4.40 am and I picked her
up from Schiphol Airport. We had
a nice chat together in the morning
and also spoke about our male cave
without any embarrassment (we have
3 sons) the last three weeks. In the
afternoon we went to Amsterdam to
TOBACCO theatre for a brainstorm
for the next edition of EdelWise in
het Sieraad. Since 4 months this
famous Friday afternoon / night drink
I organize under the name of De
Artistes Events (www.deartiesten.nl)
together with my cultural team. We
expect a good December edition
with at least 350 dinner guests and
1500 party guests. What are we
going to do as acts, how are we
going to dress it up and who can we
approach to do non-standard acts?
Every month a mighty nice puzzle to
surprise the guests again and again
with crazy, bizarre acts next to our
permanent team of fantastic DJ’s
spinning from 18.00 to 03.00.
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