Drama in the Netherlands

Drama in the Netherlands HANS VAN DEN BERGH The situation of theatre in the Netherlands about 1960 was pOladoxical: draInatic productions blossomed, but virtually no plays of any importance were being written in the Dutch language. There were approximately a dozen repertory companies in the country, mostly in the more densely populated Western region, the provinces of North and South Holland. These companies annually staged between sixty and eighty new productions with which they toured all the theatres in the country. So even in the most remote towns, people had the opportunity of seeing some of the new productions in the local theatre during the season, sometimes even twice a week. This system enabled a small circle of people to keep abreast of developments in classic, semi-classic and contemporaIY draIna written by all the leading international playwrights past and present, often in competent professional performances in Dutch translations. But original Dutch plays, whether classic or modern, were exceptional. What makes this situation seem even odder is that in those days - in the Netherlands still a period virtually free of television - roughly three thousand amateur drama companies were flourishing all over the country, and they drew on a fairly extensive repertoire of fOlce and light comedies written by Dutch authors' who were treated as non-existent in the official circles of literature and professional theatre. This is a problem that has plagued the Dutch literaIY world since the Renaissance: there has always been a plentiful supply of realistic narrative work and lyrical poetry, but interesting and performable draIna has very rOlely been written. Significantly, in this connection, a book about the situation of Dutch mama that was commissioned by the Ministry of Culture in 1973 bore the subtitle: "An attempt to explain a lack.'" The author, Ben Stroman, explained this lack of high-quality Dutch-language plays in terms of several historical developments: first, the Calvinist form of Protestantism that predominated in the Netherlands since the sixteenth century was averse to anything to do with "idle ostentation," or "vanity"; second, the Dutch chOlacter Drama in the Netherlands was uninclined towards artificiality, frivolity, and exaggeration, three qualities that were associated with stage-acting; and third, the country was not ruled by a monarch from the creation of the Dutch Republic (c.1S80), so there was no royal court, notably in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to stimulate the theatre (as in Versailles, London, Vienna or Weimar). When the monarchy was founded in the nineteenth century, the situation did not improve. Probably a combination of these factors is to blame for the absence of ambition among writers to create for the theatre. In any case, there is little dramatic talent to be found in Dutch literature between the Middle Ages and the end of the nineteenth century. Although Vonde!'s baroque drama in verse (seventeenth century) is generally praised for its poetry and lyricism, his plays can hardly be called exciting or full of dramatic action. The same is true of tte other more important classic authors such as Hooft, Bredero, Huygens and Langendijk. It was not until the beginning of this century that new life was breathed into play-writing by the realistic, socially committed and performable plays written by Heijermans (1864- 1924). Heijermans's theatrical knowledge and insight owed a great deal to his experience as a theatre director, but even his plays could not fill the vacuum in the theatre of the post-war period. Consequently, theatre in the Netherlands in the early sixties produced a stream of foreign productions in translation and virtually no original Dutch drama. It is obvious that such a situation, for more than one reason, is extremely unfavourable for the development of a truly national theatre. Although the public was confronted with dramatic events on stage, it seldom had the chance to identify itself with the characters in a play or to recognize in their backgrounds its own experiences of reality. For the actors, too, these circumstances were far from ideal. While they had ample opportunity to exhibit their skills and versatility in portraying French lovers, English butlers and American travelling salesmen, they seldom had the chance to grip the public's imagination with...