Posted on: September 21st, 2008 Berlin doesn’t eat Dutch
Yesterday we went to the dutch theater festival “the boulevard”, known in holland under the name “de parade” for over 20 years and for the first time explored their success in foreign waters. They have chosen a beautiful spot by the central station and put up their tents and camps en prepared them selves for the big week of busy theater.
The concept is pretty cool. Instead of one big show for 20 euros you have the choice to go to different smaller shows of a half an hour for just 5 euros each. So i went first to the berlin theater sport ensemble and after that the living jukebox. The quality of both shows was impressive high and verrry funny.
The only thing was is that there were not much people. The majority of people were dutch people living in Berlin and they already knew the festival from there home country. While everything you can imagine of promotion has been done, the burgomaster opening, the television attention and street parade, there were simply less Germans then Dutch!
I really don’t know why while the dutch are mostly loved for their culture and high standards of art. Berlin is of all cities one of the most open minded there is, and Berliners eager to explore new things. The main problem is that the festival has many big celebrities, such as jules deelder and ellen ten damme, which are big in Holland but fairly unknown to the world. To see your favorite star in a small circus tent has all that charm and is good for people to come and spend their money. But they didn’t connect with the Berlin theater scene to inform what’s going on here and simply put up their show and waited for people to come in.
Okay the timing was bad, most shows start between 18:00 and 22:00 and the festival stops in the weekends around 2:00, which is late in Dutch standards, but nearly not enough for a city that never sleeps while my latest seen theater performance was around 6:00 in the mourning and about naked ladies wrapped in plastic. and that is Berlin meinen Damen und Herren.