As a young creative in the performing arts, how do you take the next step? And show the world you are there? Without Festival Cement, a lot of new talent would miss an opportunity. This is why Dioraphte continued to support this multi-facetted festival in 2022, which keeps on developing new strands.
Cement makes it possible for young makers to grow. Every year, about twenty new talents show their work to audiences in Den Bosch. This talent has been scouted and selected by Cement. There are an average of one hundred performances spread over nine days. In response to the corona measures, in 2022 Cement opted for a slightly different set-up. It collaborated with Theatre Festival Boulevard, for example, thereby offering the makers some additional opportunities to perform, a new audience and new platforms.
Intensive coaching
Every year, Cement will produce a number of productions of its own. In such cases, the makers, with their teams, are given intensive business coaching as well as artistic coaching. They will also receive support with the production, technology and with marketing.
The special thing about Festival Cement is that it isn’t just the performance that matters, but the process of getting there. The focus is on the amalgamation of everything happening in and around the performance. Like the so-called Broedplaats, which gives makers the freedom and space to explore their creative process in conversation with a small audience. The Werfplaats is an experimental space. For one week, makers who haven’t met before will learn about each other’s work methods and disciplines. By the end of the week, they will open the doors to their studio. The general public is allowed to take a look around and observe the process.
Cor Langerak graduated in 2022 from the Toneelacademie Maastricht, institute for performative arts. For his performance ‘Op een gegeven moment’ (‘At some point’), he exported eight hundred theatre texts from the Nieuwe Toneelbibliotheek into a database. During the show, both actors and the audience were shown text excerpts on a huge screen. There were no rehearsals beforehand. The excerpts were compiled with artificial intelligence, based on the properties and the patterns of all of the eight hundred texts. They’re seemingly random sentences and bits of dialogue, spoken by the actors. It all starts to evolve over the course of the performance, as a collaboration between actor, technology and the audience unfolds.
Watch an interview with Cor Langerak
