About Audience

What do you want the audience to experience?

“I want to talk to people about something. Theater is an invitation to a conversation. Not a literal conversation, but all kinds of things happen between the people who are doing things on stage and the people who are sitting and listening. That’s what I want to generate, the feeling that you’ve talked to each other about something when you’ve seen a performance. And I also want people to see that there is not just one possible solution to an issue. My own foundation M.A.M. stands for that: Multiple Answers Possible. That’s what I want to show, that there are multiple ways to deal with something. A broader perspective: there are other realities besides your own. Theater, as far as I’m concerned, is not so much a mirror, but a window through which you can look to see what other realities there are.”

About Niemand wacht op je (No one is waiting for you )

About the meaning of the aftertalk

“Normally I would say that art should speak for itself. So no aftertalks. But with this performance, the aftertalk serves the meeting. We don’t talk about the creative process, but we facilitate an open conversation between the audience about today’s politics. And that brings out a lot of emotions. One reaction that really hit me was from the PvdA party chairman in Roosendaal. He said, ‘If I truly admit that something is not working, they will kill me.’ So that’s what we do to politicians with public opinion. As a result, politicians have to act as if they know everything for sure and never doubt. That alderman drew comfort from a sentence in the performance: what if we as humanity were one body, where would we move? This made him realize that the hand that is hitting him – that is, that public opinion that is finishing him off – is in fact his own hand.’

About Judas

“A search for the human condition is always my driving force in writing: Judas must have had a good reason for his deed, an understandable human reason. At a certain point I thought: this is how it happened. That is the beauty of writing, that you can get very close to the core, to someone’s pain. Not at his inability, but at his hurt. I don’t believe that man is incapacitated, but hurt.”

About playwriting

“Words within a play are mere islands, they seem like good refuges to stay, but the real challenge is how to move from one island to the other without drowning. That space between those words is where the value of the play will show itself. The space that’s available to travel. For directors, actors, designers, and eventually the audience.”

From correspondence with Norwegian writer Tale Næss, published in Ferske Norske

About writing

From where does your need to write come?

“Necessity is everything you cannot not do. You almost can’t explain it, it just is. That’s writing for me, it’s always been that way. Even once when I decided to stop, I had to continue.”

About Momentum

“Actual influence requires momentum. The right time and place have always played a role in changes. Without momentum, your ideals evaporate or you become a frustrated troublemaker. But if you don’t have unshakable ideals, it’s harder to succeed, because ideals give you the courage to keep going. To be patient, to wait for the momentum. I don’t think there are many fixed values ​​though. Many values ​​are well-packaged norms that you should always continue to examine closely.”

About Vals (False)

Do we need the lie to survive?

“I don’t think we necessarily need the lie, but I do believe we use it to survive. Lying is always a result of feeling insecure. In that sense, we have the lie to protect ourselves. The big question with any lie is: does it help you move forward or backward? Sometimes we have to lie for literal survival, but I think more often than not we lie to avoid seeing reality; that what is really going on. And then the lie has a narrowing effect. We literally see less because of it. It gives us a false perspective. The only way to rid ourselves of such lies is to look again at what is really there. Ge (the cell biologist) calls this looking the basis of learning. So in that perspective, the lie does not serve us. But the fact that we are all lying is beyond doubt.”

About the difference between writing for adults, adolescents and children

“I believe writing for youngsters is the same as writing for adults. I talk to them like I talk to adults. The difference in theater for youngsters is not in the writing but in the directing and staging. However, there is a big difference between writing for adults/youth and for children. It is not so much what you write about (children live in a world where they are confronted with all kinds of things) but in how you write about it. For me, it’s important to give an optimistic perspective, especially when writing about heavy topics like death, violence, crisis and war, to show an opening when it’s dark and to think playfully in your solutions. Children are much less complicated and very original when it comes to finding solutions to problems. That’s what I like about them. Another thing I like about a children’s audience is that they are so honest. They don’t pretend to like it when they don’t like it. And kids challenge me to think bigger and less realistically. Anything is possible from a child’s point of view. Writing for children has therefore influenced me in a very positive way. It has freed me from theater conventions and opened up a field of possibilities. I would recommend any playwright who hasn’t already done it to write a play for children.”