It was actually unbelievable what FestiValderAa presented to its audience for three days. A full-fledged program suitable for a large audience, in imperfect circumstances that allowed a much smaller audience.
FestiValderAa suffered less from the heat than from the nitrogen restrictions, which do not apply to the agricultural sector and heavy industry in this country, but do affect culture. Everyone agreed: the all-binding festival heart, the piece of heath in the middle of Schipborg where thousands of visitors would otherwise gather, was sorely missed. The classical concert on Sunday morning, which was ‘secretly’ moved to the edge of the festival grounds, served as a statement for this.
The organization now had to improvise and experiment and went full of enthusiasm, not complaining for a second about how beautiful it could have been. It was about seeing what works and what doesn’t, with an eye to the future. Because that nitrogen doesn’t just blow over.
Two festival hearts
There were now two, say, festival hearts. There was something to eat and drink outside, the audience had to go inside for a performance or concert. One heart was café De Drentsche Aa, the other the Fletcher Hotel de Zeegser Duinen. As a crowd puller, the first location contrasted sharply with the second, where there was more commotion and atmosphere. Such a thing was also difficult to estimate in advance. However, the nature reserve next to the hotel is a bit more attractive than the originally parking lot at the ‘Aa-café’, no matter how nice the design tried everything there. Learning moments.
Speaking of improvising, just after language artist and teetotaller – but literally, he forgets nothing – Wim Daniëls had delivered a witty lecture on Friday in the hall of the Drentsche Aa, Ellen ten Damme had to work hard in the Fletcherhotel, playfully renamed Heideway. Her drummer wasn’t going to join anyway, but now the rest of her band got stuck in a traffic jam and she started solo. Class and personality are saviors in such a situation. Only, again nothing to be done, visitors complained about the somewhat low stage.
Beautiful and attractive in the garden, the room is flat
Daniëls was there on behalf of the literary section Summer Sentences. Before that, historical linguist Frits van Oostrom had a nice conversation with Annet Timmer in the garden of Klaas en Gré about his book De Reynaert. Living with a medieval masterpiece . That works like a charm, such a location, free from any prohibition whatsoever. On Sunday afternoon, to stay with Summer Senses for a while, comedian Erik van Muiswinkel flattened the Drentsche Aa with his Moojen Ligjes in the Lugt .
Talk about top programming. In the church of Anloo, Wabi Sabi was allowed to advertise a longer playlist of the performance while playing Justifiably (book that thing!). And in Jan’s Schuur, on the green in Zeegse, Mrs. Ogterop, with Lotte Dunselman and Wouter van Oord, emphasized I’d rather be called Angel once again how much this beautiful production deserves a reprise after this very last performance. This really needs to be seen much more often.
Wouter van Oord must be broken (with Loods 13)
That Van Oord must be broken by now. He also ran countless times as an actor behind, next to and in front of the covered wagon of Loods 13 from Emmen. Director Isil Vos had devised a ‘theatre taxi’ for the youth theater company, which slowly shuttled the audience from the hotel to the café. Meanwhile, the actors acted in Between time witty with time, travel, haste, tranquility and nature, a trip full of wonderful surprises and a soaking wet character who climbed the covered wagon from the water. Actually the only theater production that managed to make use of the environment and also (nature) beauty. Bravo!
The other regular festival guest, De Noorderlingen, posted them Lee in Jelto’s barn, a production in which it was not difficult to find the hand of director Lotte Lohrengel. Virtually textless, full of movement, overflowing with energy and especially in this case frenzied facial expressions. One of the few lines of text was also the last scene, before the only remaining actor closed the barn door: “The man had one more question…” You could think back in the stands: “…what was this about …’
That’s the nice thing about Lohrengels Noorderlingen: give your own interpretation to those energy eruptions. You saw clashing characters, conflicts, making amends, strong and submissive characters, harmony, and so on. How that one young actress looked at the audience with a nasty defiance! Just dangerous. So it’s still an exciting thing to do.
Headphones and VR glasses
The range of music, always indoors, was strongly varied aimed at young as well as older audiences. There were infectious performances by Katie Koss, Huize Lucas, of course Jammah Tammah, with the finer work of Fay Lovsky and Laurens Joensen on the other. Electropoetry this time was more electro than poetry, that is, the rough dance sounds, good for a party, helped suppress the text. Too bad in itself.
The audio experiment shelter by Tom Tieman brought peace under the oak. The visitor had headphones on, with interviews of young people who aspire to an absolute natural life. Meanwhile, that visitor steadily had a tent built around him, which definitely strengthened the imagination surrounding those stories. Tieman elaborates it even further.
Like Chantalla Pleiter, just like Tieman on behalf of Station Noord, further develops her wonderful and enchanting latest VR production together with Jan Klug. It is a combination of virtual and real reality, where thanks to the glasses your hands and arms deform into strange stakes, and you can grab countless virtual blocks from the air, with which you can eventually make the strangest connections with an opponent. Fascinating dream world.
Marcel Hensema with a new topper in the making
Yes, and then Marcel Hensema. He apologized in advance, in the beautiful playroom of Greet’s Place (another farm), for the fact that he hardly had anything useful to offer. So forget that immediately. He wound the room around his finger with texts that he had partly completed the same afternoon. Again personal, like My Ed and so on, but still different.
Whether it will continue to go in that direction, who knows, but now he sketched the contrast between bustle, stress and exaggeration (crazy holiday trips and so on) and the tranquility of the man who maintains the cemetery in Hensema’s Groningen village. Even if Hensema said that he had been ‘talking about for a long time now’, you could think: leave that in there too. Makes curious.
There was, of course, much much more. That’s the beauty of a festival. You can’t have everything. But FestiValderaa itself deserves everything. And that was more than it was allowed this weekend.