The theater career of director Johan Doesburg started turbulent. As a graduation performance at the Amsterdam Theater School, Director department, he chose the play The dirt, the city and death from the German filmmaker and playwright Rainer Werner Fassbinder. That was already controversial with the world premiere in Cologne because of the alleged anti -Semitic character. The premiere on Wednesday evening, November 18, 1987 in the Rotterdam Theater LantarenVenster was prevented by Jewish demonstrators after a few minutes; They occupy the play floor. The young director was excited. He found the piece interesting.
Last Friday, Doesburg died in his hometown of The Hague at the age of 69. He decided to euthanasia. In a ‘message outside’, as he called it, he announced that he had survived lung cancer for nine years, but medicines had affected his kidneys.
Doesburg was born in The Hague on May 12, 1955. In the theater world he was lovingly called ‘Does’; His appearance with long black hair and invariably a hat was striking.
Eventually he graduated with Cheating from Harold Pinter. But he continued to dream of a performance of fassbinders, and in 2002 it came in, now in the Royal Schouwburg in The Hague. Thanks in part to the stylized choreography of his partner Betsy Torenbos, it became a meaningful performance, which voted for thought. But the theater history was already written at the time of Doesburg’s first attempt The dirt, the city and death to put on stage: actor Jules Croiset kidnapped himself at the time and Harry Mulisch dedicated to the entire affair his book week gift, The theater, the letter and the truth (2000).
Nose for controversial repertoire
After graduating, Doesburg worked at various companies, including Toneelgroep Amsterdam and the Ro Theater. In 1994 he joined the Nationale Toneel in The Hague, to which he remained connected to his farewell in 2015. With his imagination -rich controls, full of dynamics and at the same time as a sharp sense of language and text treatment, he made indelible impression.
Controversial or daring repertoire enjoyed his preference. For example, he released a stage adaptation of the controversial novel Elementary particles (2005) by Michel Houellebecq. Also Mystical body (1996) Van Frans Kellendonk, with Jeroen Willems in the lead, transformed under his hands into the combination of powerful play and a rich content for him.
Are Liaisons Dangereuses (2007), after the letter novel of Choderlos de Laclos, became a superior erotic experiment. His version of the tragedy Medea (2008), with Ariane Schluter in the title role, emerged as a heartbreaking search for the motivations of why a mother would kill her children.
Doesburg’s last performance for the National Theater was the marathon Genesisan adaptation of the first Bible book by his regular author Sophie Kassies. For this, Doesburg received the price of the criticism and was also appointed Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion.
The oeuvre of Doesburg comprises more than seventy controls. The great grasp was dear to him. He directed Goethes in 2011 Faust I & II As a whole, a rarity in Dutch theater history. Shakespeare belonged to his favorite writers. Among other things, he staged a glowing Hamlet (1999) and a daring Othello (2006).
A quote Hamlet He had it placed on his funeral card: “Since no one, when he goes, knows something about what he leaves behind, why not gone in time?”