“All I know is that screens aren’t the answer. I need people around me’

It is precisely during the Christmas holidays that René Geerlings from Maas Theater and Dance wants to be there for his young audience. “Those kids have it hard enough as it is.” Three live streams can be seen on the site of the Rotterdam company this week, for all ages.

At the last minute, live youth theater can still be seen this Christmas holiday. Online, yes, but no less interactive. Maas Theater en Dans from Rotterdam presents three live streams on their website, for all ages. Striking in between is the free Toddler Press Conference (3+), which airs Saturday mornings at 11 a.m. In this, all toddlers in the Netherlands (and their parents) are updated about the current state of the country by two figures who actually don’t know it either.

An exception, because despite the lockdown, there is now much less online theater than a year ago. René Geerlings, artistic director of the Rotterdam youth theater group, has a good idea why. “Everyone’s done with it.”

He himself is not a fan of watching theater through a screen. ‘I have too short a tension for online theatre. When I see a dancer walking very slowly from left to right, I often flush. I already know where she’s going. You can’t do that in a theater. Then you have to relate to such a movement. Those are the moments when you open up as a spectator, I know. Theater was created as a live experience, which is irreplaceable.’

Still, he didn’t want to sit still. He wants to be there for his young audience especially during the Christmas holidays. “Those kids have it hard enough as it is.” ‘s Christmas Holiday Tours light, a theater adaptation of Annet Schaap’s book by director Moniek Merkx, and The big save your ass show, a parody of a talent show, were nipped in the bud by the lockdown. Now the public gets the opportunity to see them after all, at home on the couch.

Geerlings: ‘From a digital broadcast of save your ass I did get excited again. That performance is designed exactly like a TV program. We are now going to recreate it from scratch as a broadcast. That will be a fun experiment.’

Initially, a performance by Geerlings himself would also premiere this week: BullyBully (3+), about two world leaders who behave like toddlers, including unintelligible gibberish. When the question was asked whether it could also be online, his answer was immediate: no. ‘It doesn’t work on screen. You really have to experience this kind of visual theater in a room with 3-year-olds and their parents present.’

Instead, he came up with the ten-minute mini-show Toddler Press Conference. With the same two characters, but in the setting of the well-known corona press conferences.

‘BullyBully is about how adults often do not understand or understand each other. That is certainly the case with those press conferences. Everyone is trying to take control of something that is uncontrollable. You then see the powerlessness of those in power and their bombastic self-righteousness. I try to make this visible to toddlers in a funny way, so that they see that adults often don’t know it all either.’

Making online theater for children is often even more difficult than for adults. Theater makers are not film or series makers. Competing with the netflixes of this world is an impossible task. What theater should therefore always do, according to Geerlings, is to ensure that there is a live element in it.

‘Even if it’s just an interview or a workshop, after the stream. That is the simplest form. It can also be done with tricks. At the stream of Egg we asked the parents to hide an egg in the house beforehand. The actors then let the children look for that egg. That worked well. Bee save your ass we’re going to make an applause button in the image, they can press it when the showmaster indicates that.’

According to him, the big question remains how the theater should continue in the future, because corona will not go away and online theater is not the solution. Geerlings: ‘I have just been director of Maas Theater and Dance for a year now. I fell with my nose in the corona butter. Long-term planning remains impossible with so much uncertainty. I’m just reacting all the time.’

Making theater in this day and age involves trial and error, he says. “All I know is that screens aren’t the answer. I need people around me. Real contact. I want a live audience. That’s why I became a theater maker.’