‘What would happen if we were lifting our own institution? What happens if an art institution ceases to exist? ” It is an exciting question that Anne Breure, director of Theater Utrecht, raises in the state of the theater.
The State is the traditional opening of the theater season, pronounced at the start of the Nederlands Theater Festival, this Thursday in Amsterdam. Breure gave the speech together with her life partner, prominent theater maker Sadettin Kirmiziyüz, who had his own story. They were asked together, but had chosen this “two states solution,” said Kirmiziyüz, with a great sense of irony.
Breure had already suggested the question about the inviolability of institutions, Breure, and the reaction was emotional. The question was dangerous, she was told. “People work there, Anne. It is not possible. You cannot ask this question.” But Breure does not consider Employment as a serious argument to maintain institutions in culture.
Delusion of the day
What is at stake? In the ITA packed with colleagues from the theater sector, Breure mentions in response “deeply sensed values, which we want to defend at all costs,” or “the space of art.” These are values that the theater sector often seems to be losing sight of. Because theater makers “respond to the issues of the day” and choose the way of the “least resistance”. So that “guaranteed public numbers, the criteria of subsidy applications and the political fear, fear of difficult conversations in the room or beyond, the fear of contradiction and unrest” are leading.
The sector produces beautiful performances, says Breure, but: “How much risk do we really take?” “Are we mainly busy with survival and conservation?” That is only a danger, she concludes, now that “society is constantly moving to the extreme right and working with fascist parties is being normalized.” Her conclusion: “We need contraders.”
Unfortunately, Breure then stuck in more of the same abstractions, without making her strong criticism concrete. While it is remarkable that a director of the Establishment (Theater Utrecht is one of the large, government -subsidized theater companies) encourages the possibility that institutions cease to exist, after a year in which a series of highly written, smaller theater companies after controversial work of assessment commissions were threatened for the stopping of the subsidy. And after a year in which the consequences of the cross -border behavior at ITA, the formerly largest theater company in the country, still nours. Is the suggestion that these settings can and may have to stop? Is that the ‘state’ of the theater, the situation in which the sector is now?
Dead in the pot
Breure explicitly avoids concrete answers. Even the naming of the values she strives for, she regards as death in the pot. Because aim is a process. “It is always on the move and never ready.”
After her, her partner Kirmiziyüz came through a different way with the same type of criticism. Now that the extreme right is in power, theater should “do more than respond. Theater should be put on the agenda. It should not only be mirrored, but question. Not only registering, but breaking open. We are more than chroniclers of our time; we are also builders of a future that does not yet exist.”
According to him, the sector is trapped in the four -yearly “dance of the applications” for a subsidy. “How can we tell stories about freedom if we are imprisoned in a structure that determines our choices?” Kirmiziyüz, who himself also receives a quarter of a million subsidy per year for his work, also argues for more risk. Because: “Theater is not a safe port where we escape reality. Theater is a training ground for that reality.” For example, the director and the maker call on their colleagues not to be afraid anymore and to show courage.
They are beautiful, lyrical and perhaps motivating words for their colleagues. On the other hand, the lyricism and the philosophical tone also form the Achilles heel of the state of the theater. It often extends no further than a global view, in a sector that is already rich in edifying intentions. Perhaps the state itself is also such a theater institute whose necessity must be questioned.