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surtitled in amsterdam
This season Toneelgroep Amsterdam will be providing
English surtitles for all her Thursday evening performances in the
Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam.
> [download] the brochure surtitled in amsterdam in
.pdf
Surtitles during performances of Toneelgroep Amsterdam are
projected as close to the actors as possible and are always
controlled manually, making it easy to follow the action for
visitors who do not understand Dutch.
For his first Chekhov production, Thomas Ostermeier is
staging the Russian master's razor-sharp and deeply human analysis
of the conflict between an up-and-coming generation of young
artists and an older generation clinging to its reputation and
achievements.
Konstantin is an aspiring young playwright and in love with Nina,
the heroine of his first play. Having penned a manifesto for a new
theatre, Konstantin is particularly keen to earn approval for his
ideals from his mother, the actress Arkadina. But when the play's
premiere at a friend's country estate ends in disaster, the famous
actress is unable to see her son as a serious artist. The ambitious
Nina then decides to seek her fortune with Trigorin, an older
playwright and Arkadina's lover. Hoping he will help her to achieve
her dreams, she rejects Konstantin, leaving him in despair. Years
later, Nina and Konstantin meet again. Nina's career is in tatters.
Trigorin has left her, and yet she is unable to let him go.
Catastrophe looms. In The
Seagull, everyone longs for love and recognition, but no one
seems able to find it.
O'Neill's ultimate family tragedy.
Long Day's
Journey into Night chronicles a single day in the life of the
Tyrone family. From sunrise to sunset, we follow the parents James
(Gijs Scholten van Aschat) and Mary (Marieke Heebink) and their two
sons Jamie (Ramsey Nasr) and Edmund (Roeland Fernhout) in their
struggle against each other and against the demons from their past.
Even as the mother denies her morphine addiction, the other family
members keep silent about the youngest son's tuberculosis. No one
in the family seems to be capable of facing up to the reality that
they are all living lives of self-deception and unfulfilled
dreams.
In Roman Tragedies, Ivo van Hove and designer Jan
Versweyveld have created a unique arena in which Shakespeare speaks
to our time more directly than ever before and in which the
audience is physically drawn into the political game in all its
complex facets.
This trio of Roman
tragedies (Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and Anthony and
Cleopatra) presents a panopticon of politics in action. In
Coriolanus, the eponymous hero refuses to succumb to the changing
political constellation. Bitterly disillusioned, he takes up arms
against his own people. Conversely, Julius Caesar climbs to power
through his unmatched talent for manipulating the masses. But when
unchecked popularity and power lead to his elimination, all hope of
democracy is irrevocably lost. Finally, in Anthony and Cleopatra,
world politics become entangled in the passionate love affair
between the Roman Anthony and the Egyptian Cleopatra. Anthony's
inability to choose between public duty and the desires of the
heart end in a bloodbath.
Roman Tragedies presents Toneelgroep Amsterdam as an ensemble of
actors that defies categorization. Audience members are placed
amidst the players and behind the scenes, dining and drinking on
the set and reflecting on the performance in real time through
social media.
An evening of intense, realistic, physical theatre in
After the Rehearsal, followed by the muted visual splendour of
Persona. In a word: Overwhelming.
In After the
Rehearsal we meet a director who has withdrawn from life and
now lives only for his art. Within the confines of the rehearsal
space, he seeks to achieve his dreams and dispel his fears. And
then one day his quiet life is disrupted by the young actress
working with him on A Dream Play. He falls for the girl's charms
and recognizes in her the characteristics of her dead mother Rakel,
with who he was once passionately in love. With her, the daydream
of Rakel, too, charges back into his carefully controlled
existence. Both women upend all his certainties and force him to
once again confront life and all its inconstancies - one by
offering a last chance at love, the other with the inexorably
certainty of death.
Persona
centres on a celebrated actress who has given up speaking. Admitted
into a psychiatric clinic, she withdraws into an impenetrable
fortress of silence from which a young nurse endeavours to save
her. They travel to a deserted island, hoping to find comfort and
healing through a communion with nature. But their trip turns into
a nightmare in which the boundaries between them slowly dissolve.
Divested of their roles in life, all that remains in the end is two
women who see themselves in each other and who each recognize the
other's fate.
After his radical Macbeth, Johan Simons returns to
direct another classic from the world repertoire. His Danton's
Death places the two architects of the French Revolution, Danton
and Robespierre, in stark opposition to each other.
Once united as friends in the fight for their common ideals, their
relationship is now steeped in suspicion and conflicting views
about the best strategy to follow: Robespierre wants to establish a
democracy, whatever the cost, while Danton feels increasingly
unsure whether mankind is capable of making the sacrifices needed
for a revolution. Foreseeing failure, he retires to the company of
friends and lovers for a waking night of intoxication and
carnality, even as Robespierre consolidates his power with each
freshly hewn head. Danton's Death is a
meditation on power and responsibility, revolution and violence,
and invested with the urgency of a political pamphlet.
Guy Cassiers, Tom Lanoye and the play of plays:
Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Hamlet and Ophelia are on the brink of
adulthood.
Unlike characters such as Romeo and Juliet, who are still in the
full throes of adolescence, Hamlet is old enough to perceive the
abuses of power around him. And yet he still possesses a youthful
desire for purity, tormenting him with doubt and confusion that
give rise to a terrible paralysis. Hamlet can only stand by and
watch as, after his father's death, his mother allies herself not
with him but with a new husband and father, Claudius. Feeling
himself crushed by the world of adults, Hamlet veers between
self-hatred and self-importance, between contempt for himself and
contempt for the impure world. In the end, he is only human like
all of us: inconstant, multi-layered, ambivalent, ambiguous. In
pursuing his ambitions and fighting his fears, he comes face to
face with himself: Hamlet vs. Hamlet.
Strindberg's taboo-shattering family portrait about a
mother's suffocating influence on her family.
Following the death of her long-estranged husband, a mother returns
to her former home to find her sickly son and her daughter and
son-in-law. The salon where the father expired on the chaise longue
is still imbued with his presence. Fears long repressed resurface
upon the discovery of a posthumous letter. Slowly but steadily, the
image of the loving mother who sacrificed herself for her children
segues into one of a woman who, like the pelican of the title,
feeds her offspring from herself. The Pelican is an intimate
drama staged with a modest set and enacted by a small cast. Yet its
formal simplicity only sharpens the intensity of the emotions.
A West End classic and political
uppercut.
The Entertainer is a
portrayal of the Rice family, spanning three generations of
vaudeville artists who are finding it increasingly difficult to
secure their position in the midst of the fast-changing world.
Conversations between the grandfather Billy and his granddaughter
Jean alternate with performances by his son Archie, whose sarcastic
songs hold a mirror up to his audience. When the family comes
together and the liquor kicks in, news of the death of Archie's son
Mick - killed in action overseas - leaves all its members feeling
utterly adrift. John Osborne paints a grim picture of England as an
empire in decline, where the underprivileged classes are no more
than cannon fodder and their patriotism and latent racism combine
to create a toxic cocktail. By turns sentimental, provocative and
tender, this bold play draws on the rich music hall tradition,
dressing despair as comedy and setting cynicism to the tune of
bittersweet melodies.
Ivo van Hove directs his personal bible: a controversial
and stirring exploration of refusal to comprise in the pursuit of
personal ideals.
This is the fascinating portrait of the brilliant young architect
Howard Roark, who follows his calling and sets himself up against
those who spinelessly parrot the views of others; of Peter Keating,
a fellow architect who sells his soul for commercial success and
public esteem; of Guy Francon, a traditionalist who uncritically
copies architecture from the past; and of the intellectual
Ellsworth Toohey, who manipulates public opinion while slyly
grooming the masses for a socialist takeover. 'The theme
of my novel', said Ayn Rand, 'is the struggle between
individualism and collectivism, not in the political arena but in
the human soul. My aim in writing The Fountainhead was always to
present a novel whose protagonist embodies the ideal man.'
That man is Howard Roark, a creative artist who, like a sun, is
surrounded by less talented and easily influenced characters who
envy him his genius and vocation. But equally, The Fountainhead is the
story of the struggle between two lovers: between Roark and the
beautiful, idealistic and uncompromising Dominique Francon - two
likeminded spirits determined never to sacrifice their own liberty
or autonomy.
The Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam poses as Toneelgroep Amsterdam's
home base, but the group travels throughout the Netherlands and
abroad. Toneelgroep Amsterdam operates internationally with
organizations such as Holland Festival, Festival d'Avignon,
Brooklyn Academy of Music, Schaubühne Berlin, and Barbican
London. Whilst reviewing a performance in the latter, Michael
Coveney of The Independent exclaimed; 'The overall scope of
this wonderful project was impressive because of the acting quality
of Toneelgroep Amsterdam. It made you want to go straight on to
Amsterdam and catch the rest of their repertoire.'