Open-air theatre

On Thursday we were praying for the rain not to pour and driving to a small place between The Hague and Leiden for an open-air theatre play in English.

A few months ago I won the tickets (of course), so it was a wonderful opportunity to enjoy another cultural performance in the Netherlands!

This time it was The English Theatre, which was organising another English theatre company's tour around the country with Shakespeare's play "The Twelfth Night". It was unusual because of several reasons:

1) It was outdoors. We were sitting on chairs, wrapped with blankets, sipping our drinks and eating food we have brought with us - a real picnic!

2) There were only five actors, but around 10 characters - so each of them were performing two roles, some even more. Men were playing women, women were playing men etc.

3) I haven't read the book and haven't seen other performances, but this was definitely one of the biggest comedies I have ever seen! Couldn't stop laughing (even if I didn't understand some parts due to the specific English) and wondering how did Shakespeare write it in the original version.

If you have a chance - go and see the play either here or in the United Kingdom!
If not - make sure you attend any other open-air theatre, it is a completely different experience!

Cultural life in Amsterdam

Yesterday I had the chance to visit two events in one day.

At first it was a very inspiring meeting with Dutch and Palestinian theatre makers who are working together to create a play for children. It will be performed in the upcoming summer in the schools of Gaza - so the target audience are children.
For more than two hours they were telling about the history of the project, the first meetings and cooperation between Dutch and Palestinian artists. They were speaking so passionate and so enthusiastic about it all!
After the meeting there was a chance to try Arab sweets and some food which Palestinian guests have prepared. Delicious!

The second part of exploring culture in Amsterdam came two hours later, when I was watching a theatre play in the Flemish Arts Centre "De Brakke Grond". The theatre play "Hannah en Martin" was in Dutch (or was it Flemish? :S) with English subtitles (or rather upper titles). I won the tickets in I AMsterdam competition (thanks to Facebook!), wouldn't have been going otherwise. The play was ... weird. It was about two real German lovers between the World Wars, the man was Nazi socialist, the woman - Jewish and his student. The actors were changing their characters during the play (pretending to be one person, then another one, then another one), so sometimes it was a bit confusing which character is speaking now. But I guess that it was meant like that.

However, it was nice to see different kind of theatre as so far I have been going only to Latvian theatres and some musicals in London, but it's not the same. I hope to see some more plays either here or somewhere else in English to get to know more about the way theatre is played in other countries.

Apart from that I must admit that there are so many ways and opportunities to discover Dutch culture here in Amsterdam! In the last months I have been going to quite a few different meetings in several cultural centres, institutes or somewhere else. How to find them? Just subscribe to different newsletters and Facebook Pages, get updates and have free time to go!

Thank you, Amsterdam!