Annual Report[Abridged Version] Noorderzon Performing Arts Festival Groningen 21-31 August 2014

Annual Report[abridged version] Noorderzon Performing Arts Festival Groningen 21-31 August 2014 Introduction It remains remarkable – and sometimes difficult to explain to outsiders – how the various festival editions differ. Each festival is like a child with its own name, appearance, identity and inner strength. Not every child has it easy. The weather – an extremely important factor for a public festival, one which partially takes place outdoors, with regard to the festival feeling – made things difficult for the first half of Noorderzon. It was cold and wet. The warmest moment of Eurosonic Noorderslag (in January 2015!) was warmer than the coldest moment of Noorderzon (4° Celsius in the evening!). So circumstances weren’t perfect in the way they nearly were for the 2013 edition. It was an edition that had a few issues to deal with. But it was like a child that ultimately blossomed into a strong and beautiful person with a wonderful soul. Noorderzon 2014 was an astounding edition that had a lot to offer in a year that we had agreed that we would focus once again on content. On art! A-R-T! Returning to our raison d’être – making exciting art for adventurous audiences. And Noorderzon 2014 managed to do just that. In August the papers at home and abroad were filled with wonderful reviews and glowing festival previews. NRC Handelsblad wrote on the front page of its Culture section: ‘Terrific theatre at Noorderzon: Masked children besiege the world in Next Day, one of the outstanding plays at the Noorderzon festival in Groningen.’ While every other article about Groningen these days is about earthquakes, positive attention like this should be warmly appreciated. And we certainly do appreciate it. Despite the autumnal weather conditions, 135,000 people visited over the course of eleven days, purchasing over 50,000 tickets. These are wonderful figures that we have adventurous audiences to thank for. We managed to end the year with a modest positive result of EUR 1850. It is in years like these that we really notice just how deeply Noorderzon is ingrained in the DNA of many of our visitors. We made a great many changes to the festival this year. The entire internal production structure was adapted, we built a new central kiosk and added two more, we introduced new and improved venues and stages, moved the Spiegeltent and displayed more art in the open air. Nearly all of the changes meant an improvement for visitors’ festival experience. One improvement that we ourselves would enjoy was our move in December to new offices in pleasant, new and exciting surroundings. We moved to the former Prinsentheater on the Noorderbuitensingel on the edge of the Noorderplantsoen. There is office space there and stages and performance spaces that Noorderzon has always used and which are used throughout the entire year by the VRIJDAG organisation. It feels good to now be developing our future activities based in this place, where things are bubbling and cooking. We would like to thank all our visitors, artists, friends, grant providers, funds, partners, suppliers, volunteers and staff for allowing us to produce this thought-provoking and wonderful edition. Onwards to a beautiful 25th Noorderzon in 2015! Bert Bruggeman – chair of the board Femke Eerland – general director Mark Yeoman – artistic director Artistic Noorderzon has an international main programme that distinguishes itself locally, nationally and internationally from the rest of the performing arts that are on offer. Qualitatively strong performances by makers from across the world are presented in Groningen to a very diverse audience. While many performing arts venues find it difficult to sell international acts to their audiences, Noorderzon offers them a fertile place to flourish. Adventurous visitors will take on anything. This allows us to programme the very cutting edge, which means that our careful selection strongly appeals to many professionals in the field. Noorderzon can count itself among the festivals which are closely monitored by the trendsetters in the international professional performing arts world. In addition to the main programme, Noorderzon also has a wide range of other programmes. This can involve anything from the exciting international music programme – some acts performing on stages with free admission – to dozens of performances in shipping containers and a mini lterature festival. From a playing field full of things to do for children, including special children’s performances, to visual arts displayed across the festival grounds. A lot goes on under the Noorderzon banner. Our mission for 2013-2016 Noorderzon is an annual eleven-day performing arts festival. With a distinctive and outstanding artistic profile based on programming the international and national cutting edge combined with an open welcome extended to visitors from every walk of life, Noorderzon appeals to an extremely wide and diverse audience, from professionals to novices. People and their context focus of 2014 programme The 2014 programme focused on people in all their diversity and their relationship to their living environment. This was reflected in major performances and in smaller ones, where recognisable social issues were addressed, sometimes very subtly. The 24th festival edition was a strong one, packed with experimentation and interesting new types of performing arts, with many Dutch premieres of both international makers and ones from the northern Netherlands. 50 Groningen performers onstage It felt like Noorderzon was off to an early start in 2014. This had a lot to do with preparations forThe Record by the American theatre company 600 HIGHWAYMEN. Putting it on meant that 45 (and eventually even 50) Groningen actors had to be selected. Although they would perform together, they would only finally meet onstage at the Stadsschouwburg. All of the auditions, selection rounds and rehearsals had to take place prior to the premiere on August 27th. The call for actors went out in late April and the response was tremendous. More than 300 people volunteered to be involved in this project. Auditions took place in June and rehearsals began in the first week of August. Theatrical tension mounted steadily as the date this gigantic production would premiere drew nearer. The Record was a rousing artistic success, receiving a five-star review in the Theaterkrant, among other accolades. During the entire process of bringing this production to the stage, we were extremely touched, as an organisation, by the impact that such a project has on the lives of the individual participants. The urgent need to participate in it was obvious across the board. You suddenly see and realise exactly how deeply such a festival enters into people’s lives. Mind you, this was just one of the many performances at Noorderzon. EU – Culture Programme: Create to Connect – 2013 – September 2018 The Record by 600 HIGHWAYMEN was presented in the framework of the European network Create to Connect. Within this network, participants strive to develop new and sustainable ways of creating a connection, perhaps a lasting one, between local audiences and artists from home and abroad. The Record, of course, was an excellent example of this. Other projects we developed in the framework of Create to Connect were the scientific lectureDansende wetenschap (Dancing science) courtesy of Studium Generale, our programme bringing in-depth insight and background information, Achter de schermen met Joost Ramaer (Behind the scenes with Joost Ramaer), and two art projects (interactive campaign image and Waterstaat) carried out together with artists collective WERC. Create to Connect comprises the following partners Bunker (Ljubljana, Slovenia – project leader) | Artsadmin (London, Great Britain) | EGEAC/Teatro Maria Matos (Lisbon, Portugal) | AltArt (Cluj-Napoca, Romania) | Noorderzon Performing Arts Festival (Groningen, the Netherlands) | Theatre La Villette (Paris, France) | Santarcangelo del Teatri (Santarcangelo di Romagna, Italy) | Festival De Keuze (Rotterdam, the Netherlands) | Arts and Theatre Institute (Prague, Czech Republic) | Walking Theory (Belgrade, Serbia) Fernando Rubio back in Groningen The Record was one of many special projects where Noorderzon played a major role as producer or coproducer. Another special project was When We Were Kids, the most recent production by Argentinian maker Fernando Rubio. He spent some time in Groningen in August to work on the premiere (our opening night) of the first part of a trilogy about childhood and years passing. Rubio had already visited Groningen earlier with Alles aan mijn zijde (Everything By My Side), which was also performed in June 2015 at the Holland Festival in Amsterdam. EU – Culture Programme: NXTSTP (the 2nd generation) – 2012 – October 2017 Noorderzon was involved in many international coproductions in 2014. A few of these were produced in the framework of the European network NXTSTP, a collaboration between a number of prominent partners working on the ‘next step’ in the international circuit for promising European theatremakers. In 2014 we presented no fewer than five productions in the framework of NXTSTP, three of which were also Noorderzon coproductions. These were the magnificentDementia by Kornél Mundruczó/Proton Theatre (Hungary), which received a five-star review from Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad, the storytelling installation Perhaps All the Dragons by BERLIN (Belgium) and the energetic dance performance Kinshasa Electric by Ula Sickle (Belgium/Congo). The other productions

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