Thanks to ‘a little subsidy’ and ‘some odd jobs’ David Lelieveld (44) was able to buy a truck and some equipment in 2012. He wanted to try to produce his own performance after he was lost as a technician at a theater company in Friesland. The performance appeared a year later.
Of The emigrant (2013) Lelieveld told a story about a Frisian who leaves for Canada to build a farm and visit Friesland again after sixty years. The show played in dozens of locations. “The room was immediately full at the first performance. In total, there were twenty thousand visitors,” says Lelieveld.
Since then he has not stopped making theater anymore. Together with a team, he brings multiple performances on stage, in churches, village houses and theaters. Lelieveld is creative director of Pier21, a foundation that makes theater on social topics. Teater Oer ús Tiidthey call it themselves. Recent performances were about the abolition of slavery in Friesland, the problems of modern farmer, regret mothers and veterans. “Everything is based on true stories. We want to make the social debate discussable,” says Lelieveld.
They mainly do that in Frisian. “I want to work in that language. For many Frisians it is the language you speak from your heart.”
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A rehearsal of theater company Pier21in Wergea.
Photo Kees van de Veen
Church
They also play the newest performance in Dutch. “Then we can reach more people,” says Lelieveld. “That is why we also play in Groningen and Drenthe. And we play in Dutch places in Friesland where no or less Frisian is spoken, such as Harlingen.”
That newest performance, And then I? (premiere October 9), is about informal care. “Hiske Oosterwijk, one of the actors, said she was working on an album on informal care. We also had contact with Ambulance Care Northern Netherlands, where we were given a tour in the control room and spoke with employees. Those two stories come together in And then I?“Says Lelieveld.
Informal carers form an invisible group. We want to recognize them
Oosterwijk plays Floor, a centralist in the control room who handles emergency reports and also cares for her brother. Oosterwijk has experience with Mantelzorgen and made the album about it Balance. In the show she sings songs from the album, in Frisian. Bouke Oldenhof, who wrote the stage text, spoke with Oosterwijk and also visited the control room of Ambulance Care Northern Netherlands, where he asked the employees.
Of And then I? Want to give Pier21 both the operator tell a face and tell the story of the caregivers, says Lelieveld. “Informal carers form an invisible group. We want to recognize them. In the show you also see what a centralist is experiencing. They help with heart attacks, resuscitation and births and then do not think of themselves. It has become a fierce performance.”
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Satisfied
In a church in Wergea, Pier21 will play the try-out on Thursday evening 2 October. Director Jos Thie will continue the last scenes in the afternoon with the players Hiske Oosterwijk, Lourens van den Akker and Jochem Le Cointre. The dog of Oosterwijk is stretched out on stage. The company looks forward to playing from the play for the public, after thirty rehearsal days. It is the first of fifty performances.
How the audience responds remains exciting, says Lelieveld. “After a performance, visitors always come to me and days later, sometimes weeks, I still get apps. When people say the show has made them think, I am satisfied.”
In this church, director Thie saw the first performance of Lelieveld in 2013. “I was immediately impressed. Afterwards I told him that he should let you know if I could help him.” Thie laughs. “Typically David: he immediately called the next day.”
Since then, Thie has been working on the performances of Pier21, now as an artistic coordinator. Where Lelieveld is modest, this emphasizes how special it is what the theater maker has achieved. “Start nothing at all and then make a performance yourself, that’s handsome.”
A rehearsal of a performance about informal care and the search for balance in life.
Photo Kees van de Veen
Subsidy
Pier21 grew per production, says Thie. “Step by step, with minimal resources. It has never been the intention to set up a company. It is also unique in Friesland to do it that way.” That is what actor Van den Akker thinks. “Especially at that time, in 2012, it was not easy to start, with all cuts on the cultural sector.”
Admittedly, according to Thie, theater is never ‘easy’. In September he took action with Lelieveld and Van den Akker for the Provinciehuis in Leeuwarden. They did that for the preservation of Meeuw Jonge Theatermakers, the Youth Theater School in Leeuwarden, who threatened to lose her subsidy. In July, seventeen Frisian cultural institutions also demonstrated against the cuts at the provincial government.
At the end of September, the Provincial States in Friesland adopted a motion, which releases extra money for cultural institutions. Necessary, says Thie. Pier21 also receives a subsidy from the province. “Even with sold -out halls you need them,” says Thie. Pier21 also has its own income. The tickets for the latest performance cost 25.50 euros. Not “super cheap,” says Thie. “But there is also something. It is a professional theater.”
They play on a small stage, so that the performance also fits in village houses. The stage is being expanded for the performances in the theaters. Nice challenge: playing on such a small stage, says Thie. “With limited resources, but that allows us to play in so many places.”
Countryside
In thirteen years they have not had many setbacks, thinks and Lelieveld. But when they did not receive a national subsidy last year, they were ‘in a minor’. They recovered quickly, says Lelieveld: by the following plans. “We always have ideas and cannot do them all for a long time. We are now working on three pieces, before 2026 and 2027. For me that is the most important, nice theater.”
The new performances are, among other things, about growing up in the countryside with a different cultural background, intergenerational trauma and women in the resistance. It didn’t matter much or Lelieveld had never made all those performances. When he lost that job in 2012, he wanted to emigrate to Canada. He had already visited it fourteen times.
The new performances are, among other things, about growing up in the countryside and women in the resistance
During one of those visits to Canada, he spoke with older Frisians who had made the crossing long ago. Many longed back to Friesland. “We have a successful company, but it has been paid with homesickness, someone said,” says Lelieveld. “If you hear that from someone who no longer has a chance to go back, then you think: I have to choose wisely.”
Lelieveld decided to stay and make theater yourself. That was The emigrantinspired by the stories from Canada. In the end they also played the show there for Frisian migrants.
After the first try-out of And then I? In the church in Wergea, many visitors come to Lelieveld. One of the first is an older woman. She has tears in her eyes. It’s good, she says she is crying. The show hit her. “That’s what you do it for,” says Lelieveld.
David Lelieveld at a rehearsal of ‘and I then?’ – About caregivers.
Photo Kees van de Veen
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