Fewer locations, fewer performances, more space for the landscape: even at Oerol, the annual theater and music festival on Terschelling that invariably propagates a good relationship with nature, there is more attention for the environment. With 27 instead of 35 performances and 70,000 instead of 100,00 available tickets, the festival is taking a serious step towards a more compact version. Oerol’s starting point is the philosophy that contact with nature promotes awareness of the value of nature.
There will be endless things to experience for ten days, says Sabine Pater, the new artistic director of Oerol, with many premieres and a lot of new work. In addition, more attention will be paid to other elements of the festival. Father is pleased that street theater is returning after three years of absence. “We want to show that street theater has developed into a modern genre and offers a great mix of disciplines.”
Polyphonic: also islanders
Pater comes from their own ranks. She had been a programmer at Oerol for years and wants to build on what the festival is. “The artistic choices of theater makers are paramount. In conversations we hear that there is more attention for polyphony and for mixing disciplines. It is important to Oerol that makers have an idea about working on location: in the open air, in a forest, dune area or shed. That creates a different relationship with your audience. You have to be open to that.”
The festival also seeks variation in genres: dance, music, text theatre, installations and circus. For example, there are once again major international circus performances on the program, from Iceland, France and Spain.
This year the program contains fewer regular guests and theater groups that have been playing the theaters all year round. “That is partly a practical fact, because groups like Orkater make a summer production elsewhere. It is partly a choice, because we want to make room for new names, for whom it is important to be on Oerol. For example, go to Joost Oomen & de Poezieboys.”
Collective Nineties Productions, which has experience playing on location, is this year’s ‘creative partner’. The group is not a curator, but focuses on its own productions. Pater: “With a creative partner we add a different artistic view to our small club of programmers. Nineties felt that we as Oerol can draw even more from what is already available on the island. They make the islanders part of the program and set up theatrical walks with them.”
The sea as a refrigerator
Oerol also embraces the idea of the ‘symbiocene’, a new era in which a new balance is found between man, nature and technology. This is in response to the ‘Anthropocene’, in which humans, with their destructive impact on the earth’s ecosystem, are central. Pater sees that focus in various performances: “Gouden Haas is making a performance about the loss of biodiversity. Touki Delphine makes an installation about the underground fungal network. The Weedier S wants us to look at the sea as a refrigerator and the beach as a pantry. Back to techniques that were in vogue for devices that took over functions. There are more examples like that.”
Makers are also turning to magical realism to give nature a voice. “Simon Heijmans is making a performance at Theatergroep Suburbia about the division of land, in which the forest comes to life and he changes into a deer. Eva Meijering is making a performance for Tryater about peeling off skin, in humans and animals, from the perspective of a deceased person.”
Completely new and a gratifying fact for Oerol fans is the return of a festival heart. Oerol was forced to part with the old festival heart on the Westerkeyn. Last year there was no central place. It has now been found in the dunes and on the beach at Paal 8. “A festival heart on the beach was a long-cherished wish. This emphasizes that this festival takes place on an island.”
Oerol Festival takes place from 9 to 18 June on Terschelling. Info: oerol.nl