Friday 2nd May, 5:30pm
York St John University Theatre Studio 1 (QW007)
Presented by Theatre Kwast
On January 3, 1638, the first Amsterdam theatre opened its gates with the premiere of local playwright Joost van den Vondel’s tragedy Gijsbreght van Aemstel. Vondel wrote a medieval founding myth for Amsterdam, full of cross-references to Virgil’s Aeneid. Hidden among the audience, Rembrandt captured several scenes in quick sketches for posterity. Sketches that Theater Kwast would use centuries later to recreate the original staging on the actual location of seventeenth-century theatre that burned down in 1772. The story of the legendary lord of Amsterdam, who tries to protect his city against its enemies on Christmas Eve, has captured the imagination of Dutch audiences for centuries. And in the authentic setting that Theater Kwast has created, it is vibrantly energetic and also very much alive. For this staged reading the key cast members of the successful Amsterdam production team up with local York actors.
Theater Kwast
Theater Kwast aims to make Dutch theater from the 17th and 18th centuries prominent again and bring it back to the stage. Famous Dutch playwrights like Vondel, Hooft and Bredero are at risk of becoming a paper legacy, while the strength of their theater work obviously lies in the performance. Today’s audiences, just like the 17th century spectator, must also be captivated and entertained by “historical theater.” This cannot be done by approaching this repertoire as modern text theatre.
In recent years, Kwast has worked on more than 30 pieces in pressure cooker sessions, in which a piece was rehearsed and played in front of an audience in one day. It was a search for a way to play this repertoire and make it work optimally. This knowledge enabled Kwast to create several larger productions such as the Ballet de la Paix, P.C. Hooft’s Geeraerdt van Velsen, Bredero’s tragicomedy Lucelle and now for the seventh year in a row Vondel’s Gijsbreght van Aemstel.
- Artistic director: Imre Besanger
- Actor: Florus van Rooijen
- Actor: Merel Hutten
- Harp: Mirjam Rietberg
£5 Standard
£5 Pass It On! (purchase a ticket for a member of our refugee and asylum seeker community who would otherwise be unable to attend this event)
**All tickets purchased online come with a 10% processing charge. Tickets purchased in person are not subject to this charge but availability of tickets is not guaranteed.
