The Low Countries. Jaargang 17

Away from the Dutch Clay
Alize Zandwijk's Theatre

Alize Zandwijk (1961-), since 2006 artistic director of the Ro Theatre in Rotterdam, is one of the most interesting theatre directors in the Dutch-speaking world. Her work has by now been seen in many other parts of Europe, yet in her own country it hardly receives the acclaim it deserves. This will probably change now that she also has a foothold in Belgium as a regular guest director at the Royal Flemish Theatre. The odds are, though, that she will move to Germany, following in the footsteps of Luk Perceval and Johan Simons. After all, at Hamburg's Thalia Theatre they worship her.

For director Alize Zandwijk, her acquaintance with German theatre has had deeper and more far-reaching consequences than for most of her colleagues from the Low Countries who sometimes work in Germany. Theu Boermans, Ivo Van Hove and even Johan Simons tend to export their own style to Germany. Alize Zandwijk, on the other hand, brings something of that German theatre back with her to Holland. And she has done something special with it. Zandwijk allows actors to shine, and that is something new in the Netherlands.

Ideas about acting couldn't differ more between Germany and Holland. The same goes for what constitutes a sense of humour. This was most painfully apparent a few years ago in the performance of The Gambler, based on the novel by Dostoevsky. This production, staged by Johan Simons at the Berlin Volksbühne am Rosa Luxemburgplatz, was one long series of disagreements about what theatre should mean and how it should be acted. At the centre of this disastrous evening was the German star actress Astrid Meyfeld, who for two hours tried to blow her Dutch and German colleagues off the stage. This wasn't entirely her fault, but the result of Johan Simons' failure to really persuade her of his Dutch approach to acting.

German actors are virtuoso technicians, who can master a role in record time. They will then play their part in a way that is a horror to many Dutch people: exalted, over the top, loud and clearly enunciated. German ideas about getting into character are totally at odds with those of the Dutch: under the motto of ‘act normal, that's quite crazy enough’ the Low Countries has developed a style of acting characterised by sober restraint, small gestures and emotions kept firmly in check.

To get an inkling of what German theatre practice would mean for the Low Countries, we have to look at Zandwijk. One sees it most clearly by drawing a line from Night Shelter, in 1998 her first production at Ro Theatre, via Leonce and Lena to more recent highlights such as Platonov, Innocence, King Lear and Baal. Among these, Night Shelter stood out as a very ‘Dutch’ play compared to Zandwijk's later work. It was a sober, bare, egalitarian piece and so extremely flat that it actually became funny again, although ‘funny’ is perhaps not the most suitable word here. The production was spectacular in its severity, but it was also imbued with that inimitable humour that puts things in perspective which is so typical of Zandwijk's work when she is at her best.

Then suddenly, in 2002, there was Leonce and Lena. This youthful work by Buchner brought out the very best in Zandwijk. The power of that production still reverberates in her more recent work, while at the same time it was a culmination of everything she had done in the previous fifteen years. For that's how long Alize Zandwijk has been at it, that's how long she has been working at the very top of her profession. At the Amsterdam Theatre Company she twice created a

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youth production as a counterpart to the adult production that was being performed by the company's professional actors at the same time. Those two shows - Spring Awakening in 1989 and King Lear Junior in 1990 - have become legendary, not only because of the violent content of the plays but also because of the freedom with which the adolescent actors - often without any clothes on - moved about the stage. It gave her the reputation of a director who had forced her young and innocent players to extremes from pure ambition, but the opposite proved to have been the case. The children themselves had demanded it. After they had passed the auditions of the professional adult company, these boys and girls wanted to do everything that in their eyes constituted real theatre. And as it turned out, for them taking off their clothes was one of its most important characteristics.

Zandwijk didn't stay with the Amsterdam Theatre Company. She opted for a freelance existence and eventually became a permanent director at the subsidised youth theatre centre Stella in The Hague. This is where she created her first legendary productions of classic plays that she approached in her own particular way. The highlight was her version of Othello, with her favourite actor Jack Wouterse in the lead next to other big names like Marc Van Eeghem, Monic Hendrickx and Sanneke Bos. It was a scintillating performance that evolved like a rough night at a disco, complete with the embarrassing moment at the end when the neon lights go up and reveal that evening's battlefield.

This production, together with her earlier and equally intense version of Hugo Claus' classic play Friday, was awarded the Proscenium Prize by the Society of Theatre and Concert Hall Directors. More than ten years after her promising debut, this was a late but justified reward for Zandwijk, who has an unrivalled feeling for what goes on in the heads of young people. That she was appointed one of the company's directors by Guy Cassiers was a logical result of this, though she had absolutely no desire to become a ‘youth specialist’; her position would have to be the same as her colleagues. Zandwijk wanted to be regarded as a normal director. That her audience was a

Ro Theatre's Leonce and Lena (2002), directed by Alize Zandwijk.

good deal younger than Cassiers' was just something she would have to accept as part of the deal.

It has never been so much the form, but rather the feeling and atmosphere of her work that makes Alize Zandwijk's theatre so attractive to young audiences. Running through Leonce and Lena there was a layer of emotion that turned this play by Büchner into a really swinging piece. But her work was still deeply rooted in the Dutch clay. Only since Platonov has it gradually become a lot more transparent and lively, even though its message is often still as bleak as that of Night Shelter and Leonce and Lena. But now Zandwijk permits a lot more freedom. Her actors are allowed to take liberties that were previously almost unthinkable. In fact, it goes even further than that: Zandwijk forces her Dutch actors to do things that the average Dutch actor is trained out of at drama school. This too can be attrib-

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uted to the influence of Germany, where actors use their parts to aim for effect. At the Thalia Theatre, where she has directed a number of eye-catching productions in recent years, she often has to persuade her actors not to lay it on so thick, whereas she has to push her Dutch actors to show more fire and visible sparkle. In this, by the way, she is helped by her Flemish employees.

In 2005 I was present at a number of rehearsals for Platonov. That was unusual, for Zandwijk's relationship with publicity, and especially with the press, is a difficult one. But as it turned out Zandwijk handled her actors very cheerfully, she made jokes and gave casual directions, while the actors took their time working out scenes for themselves. Even when she did blow up just for a moment because things weren't going the way she wanted, everybody put up with her outburst patiently. Next day everything was back to normal and they continued working hard and in good spirits.

Zandwijk gives solo performers a lot of room. You can see it in Innocence and King Lear and definitely in her more recent production Baal. It must be wonderful for actors to be allowed to approach a role so freely. And it is exactly this freedom that challenges Alize Zandwijk's actors to go further than they would ordinarily expect of themselves.

A good example of such a development is Fania Sorel. At the start of her career, this actress' appearance tended to work against her, or for her, depending on how you looked at it. Her big eyes, her dreamy gaze and curvaceous figure made her the ideal beautiful girl. But, thanks to the wild influence of Alize Zandwijk, Sorel was able to turn Baal into an androgynous punk hero, as repellent and at the same time attractive as Brecht must have intended her to be, if he had ever allowed himself to think about it.

Alize Zandwijk still regularly complains about the lack of recognition for her work. Rightly so. When Ivo Van Hove, Theu Boermans or Johan Simons are invited by foreign theatres, that is news, sometimes it even makes it onto the front pages of the newspapers. Zandwijk's foreign successes, however, are mostly ignored or are, at best, not given their proper due. When Night Shelter receives rave reviews in Edinburgh and eventually goes on tour all the way to Moscow, it only warrants a small paragraph in the press.

Perhaps this lack of interest in her work is due to her strained relations with the press. Being based in Rotterdam, a difficult city for culture, doesn't help either. And nearly all of Zandwijk's productions have the rough edges of society as their subject. Theatre-goers do not always appreciate this; just as they did 2,500 years ago, people would rather watch kings suffer than people of their own class. And as for compassion with the underclass, Zandwijk's trademark, we only have room for that a couple of times a year. That's how it is, sadly enough, with a chronically bourgeois theatre audience.

But perhaps there is an even more banal reason - one that exposes even more clearly a deep fault in today's theatre world. Could the lack of recognition for her achievements in Holland perhaps be simply because she is a woman and her successful colleagues are men? Even though since January 1 2009 she is in the company of Ola Mafaalani, who then became artistic director of the North Netherlands Theatre Company, while Mirjam Koen has been for years one of the directors of the Independent Theatre - with so few women in the top jobs, theatre in the Low Countries is actually lagging behind, and that could become a problem.

Wijbrand Schaap

Translated by Pleuke Boyce

www.rotheater.nl