Young Europe II
Young Europe II is the first project in the ETC's Young Europe series in which de Toneelmakerij participated. Young Europe II focused on multilingual creation and education with the goal of a multilingual European repertoire for young people. Youngsters were involved in the creation process and four new plays were written, connecting different languages and cultures and celebrating multilingualism. These texts were staged in seven different productions. For Young Europe II, de Toneelmakerij collaborated with Det Norske Teatret from Oslo on I/IK/EG. The tekst was written by Oscar van Woensel and the play was directed by Jonas Corell Petersen. The text was inspired by material collected from Dutch and Norwegian youngsters, who interviewed each other and made short films. About what they want, what they must and the fear of failure.
Young Europe III
After two highly successful editions of Young Europe, the third edition took place within the framework of ENGAGE, the four years program of ETC. Like the previous editions, Young Europe 3 had a strong focus on playwriting and the creation of new European repertoire for young people. The whole project was based on extensive research amongst youngsters in the participating countries, aiming to create documentary theatre. Nine ETC Member theatres developed seven new theatre texts for young audiences. De Toneelmakerij collaborated closely with Junges DT in Berlin and Weores Sandor Szihaz in Szombathely, around the common theme of rage. Within this framework, Dutch playwright Jibbe Willems has written the play Age of Rage, which de Toneelmakerij staged in the direction of Wieke ten Cate. Other plays that have been written are: Rage by Wilke Weermann; Fury Island by Attila Lőrinczy; Democrisis by Jules Buchholtz; Strange Things by Alexandra Salmela; Plan(et) B by Stefan Hornbach and Before Tomorrow by Péter Deres, János Antal Horváth, Illés Horváth.
Nadia
Daniel van Klaveren’s Nadia examines the process of radicalization. It does so through the eyes of best friends Nadia and Anna, two adolescent girls right in the middle of their search for identity and belonging. Their online lives play an important part in this search. Anna’s outlet is her healthy eating blog – but as time goes on, she starts writing more and more about the growing distance between herself and Nadia. Meanwhile, Nadia is searching online for the roots of Islam when she comes into contact with Brahim, a young man living in the caliphate. He promises her a new beginning in a place with brothers and sisters, where everyone is equal. When it comes to a confrontation between Nadia and Anna, everything is put to the test. Nadia raises pressing questions about young radicalization. Where does it start? And how has it come to be that large numbers of young people are feeling increasingly estranged in Western societies?
Theatre Café Festival/ European Writer’s Lab
The 2014-2015 Theatre Café Festival was an international collaboration of Company of Angels / London, GRIPStheater / Berlin, de Toneelmakerij /Amsterdam and Imploding Fictions /Oslo. The collaboration aimed to select, translate and distribute the best European youth theatre texts. The chosen texts were presented in informal café settings in staged readings to an international audience of theater professionals, young people and other interested parties. After each reading, an aftertalk was held with the author, translator, actors and audience. De Toneelmakerij was the creator and facilitator of the European Writers Lab, which was part of the 2014-2015 Theatre Cafe Festival.