Necrology: for stage director Agaath Witteman, current events were the most important thing in the theater

It took no effort for director Agaath Witteman to take a contrary position: she had been in resistance from her earliest youth, as she emphasized in several interviews. She was born in Oegstgeest in 1942 and grew up in an anarchist-Catholic family. She studied Romance languages ​​in Leiden, art history in Nijmegen and theater studies and classical archeology at the University of Amsterdam. She passed away on Friday, June 5, in her hometown of Breukelen at the age of 84. In February this year she was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

During her studies, Witteman started directing student theater. Besides being a theater maker, she was also a politician; Between 2003 and 2007 she served in the Senate on behalf of the Labor Party. She was concerned with education and culture; she also held the position of chairman of the standing committee for Culture. From 1991 to 1993 she was also a special professor of Greek theater and culture at the Catholic University of Nijmegen, with this chair she succeeded choreographer Hans van Manen.

Since 1962, Witteman had been married to actor and director Hans Croiset; together they had three children. One of her later directories was that of Below the rivers (2021), a play by Ger Thijs in which she directed both her husband and son Julien Croiset – then 85 and 55 years old respectively. It was a pure, pure performance about death and especially life after death.

Witteman directed her first official plays in 1980 with the politically committed company Sater, which emerged in the 1970s. In 1983 she co-founded Theater Persona with, among others, actress Femke Boersma and director Marcelle Meuleman. The company had a clear feminist signature and made performances based on improvisation about the position of women in society. For Witteman, feminism was “a passion, a sacred faith,” as she emphasized when she read Chekhov’s Three Sisters directed at Theater van het Oosten in Arnhem, of which she was artistic director between 1988 and 1993. It was telling that she thought sisters Olga, Masja and Irina were “three brats.”

She opposed regular performances of the play in which the sisters merely pined aimlessly; she emphasized that they come from the ruling class and can therefore take matters into their own hands to leave for Moscow; but they don’t. It was the first time that in a Chekhov production the sisters were not ruthless, but also showed a tough side. In Witteman’s view, it was part of Chekhov’s social ideal to allow the ruling class and the oppressed to coexist harmoniously; the class with civilization and the class with perseverance, as she put it.

Witteman has given feminism a voice in Dutch theater in a flexible manner, never too emphatically. Although she referred to feminism as a “passion” and “a sacred faith”, she did not avoid directing with male actors.

She always laid a solid scientific-cultural foundation for her performances, especially when it came to classical tragedies such as Electricity (1993) by Sophocles. Partly thanks to her annual summer holidays in Greece with her husband Croiset, she was extremely familiar with classical performance practices.

She has long cherished her love for classical theater. In 2022 she directed in the Kleine Willem, a historic hall in Enschede, Antigonealso a tragedy by Sophocles about the young woman Antigone who wants to bury her brother in times of war. But her brother was on the enemy’s side, so the law forbade that. Witteman connected this performance to today’s world, to a ruler like Putin, who has similarities with the tyrannical King Creon – who forbids Antigone to bury her brother with dignity. She believed that emphasizing current events was the most important meaning of theater. In her vision, the audience must experience the “reality of today”, even if it is looking at a young woman like Antigone, whose role was written centuries ago.

Her direction proved that she also had an eye for contemporary theater The Eye of the Storm (2021), a piece by the young French author Florian Zeller (1979). In this sequel to the world famous The Fatheralso made into a film with Anthony Hopkins in the title role, Hans Croiset played a confused, Alzheimer’s-suffering father who is dependent on his daughter. In her perfect direction, Witteman showed the importance of empathy and understanding for someone suffering from mental confusion; it was oppressive and moving theater in the intimate setting of a family: a father and two daughters.

Agaath Witteman’s last directorial work was Shakespearean Hamletwhich premiered on March 21, 2025 with her own company, Studio Antigone.

It was a compelling, sober version performed in mournful black in which her son Julien (then 59) played the title role and her husband Hans Croiset the voice of Hamlet’s murdered father. The choice for her loved ones is characteristic of Agaath Witteman, she felt great connection with the Croisets theater family. With Studio Antigone, which she founded, she created her own theater family with mainly very young players whom she confidently offered a chance.

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