Flip Noorman has won the Annie MG Schmidt Prize for best theater song for his song ‘They know who you are’. The jury announced this on Sunday. Noorman wrote the song for his theater program Love it. The string arrangement was written by Vera van der Bie.
At the award ceremony in Theater Bellevue in Amsterdam, Noorman received a bust of Annie MG Schmidt and a cash prize of 3,500 euros from jury chairman Jurrian van Dongen.
The song ‘They know who you are’ is about a man who gets stuck in a psychosis. The man feels watched (“They’re looking at you”) and completely loses himself in his panic (“They want you dead”).
In a conversation with NRC Noorman said that he wanted to convey a feeling of “mutual powerlessness” with the song. “Someone is a danger to themselves, but sees the other as the ultimate evil.” The character in the song thinks that his therapist is spying on him, drugging him and eventually wants to kill him. “As a result, he goes crazy and becomes a danger to himself and his environment, so that his practitioner actually sprays him flat. He has no other choice. The apparent insolvability of such a situation moves me.”
The jury says about the winning song: “With a handful of thoughts and impressions, Flip Noorman brings us to the eye of the storm in his head. The music chases the mental short circuit, the string arrangement by Vera van der Bie puts stripes and exclamation marks along the way.
“The protagonist’s paranoia becomes our paranoia. The author once again rubs in that the line between reason and madness is thin. Flip Noorman fights with and against the world around him. His commitment is never polished or aloof – he plows through the mud, digs the bottom, in an uncompromising style of his own.”
Six songs were nominated for the award. The other nominees were: Jan Beuving, Circus Treurdier, Johan Goossens, Musketeers and Lisa Ostermann.
The Annie MG Schmidt Prize is an initiative of Buma Cultuur and the Amsterdams Kleinkunst Festival and has been awarded since 1992 to a lyricist, composer and performing artist for the best Dutch-language theater song of the past year. The prize is named after writer Annie MG Schmidt, who attached her name to the prize during her lifetime. The bust was designed by artist Frank Rosen.