Holland Festival 2018 Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam

VIETNAM
HOLLAND FESTIVAL 2018 on 13 and 14 JUNE in STADSSCHOUWBURG (Rabo Zaal), start 19:30. Tickets https://www.hollandfestival.nl/nl/programma/2018/saigon/

SAIGON French director Caroline Guiela Nguyen likes to tell French stories that take place beyond France’s borders. In her compelling SAIGON, one of the hits at the Festival d’Avignon last summer, eleven French and Vietnamese actors depict a variety of interwoven stories about love and exile. The characters meet in a Vietnamese restaurant in Paris. Scenes switch between Paris and Saigon and between 1956, when the French were defeated in Dien Bien Phu and withdrew from Vietnam, and 1996, the year in which the United States put an end to the economic embargo and Vietnamese could visit the country again. Nguyen delves into the painful, shared history between France and Vietnam and translates this into universal theatre about the long-term consequences of warfare, migration and love.

Prior to the performances, VVAK-lid John Kleinen will give an introduction (18:45-19:15).

KOREA
Friday 8 – Sunday 10 June 2018: https://www.hollandfestival.nl/nl/programma/2018/trojan-women/

The women of Troy are victims of war. After their men and sons were massacred by the victors, the women were shipped to Greece as slaves. Over two thousand years ago, Euripides wrote Trojan Women, a fierce denunciation of the horrors of war. The National Theatre of Korea from Seoul and the Singaporean director Ong Keng Sen adapted this Greek tragedy into a contemporary Korean opera, featuring both pansori (traditional Korean musical storytelling), composed by Ahn Sook-sun, one of the greatest pansori masters of our time, and contemporary music, composed by Jung Jae-il, K-pop (Korean pop music) producer and composer. The pansori singers’ voices and expressive acting are phenomenal, expressing more poignantly than ever the bleak fate of the Trojan women. MALEISIE

Friday 8- Monday 11 June 2918
ONE OF SEVERAL TIGERS VAN HO TZU NYEN (SINGAPORE) in FRASCATI: https://www.hollandfestival.nl/nl/programma/2018/one-or-several-tigers/

The relationship between tigers and humans is complex. First regarded as kin and vehicles for ancestral spirits, humans ended up by virtually exterminating tigers in the age of colonialism. Yet, as myths and metaphors, tigers incessantly return to haunt the public imagination. In a film duet, the Singaporean artist and filmmaker Ho Tzu Nyen weaves history, ecology and mythology through his theatrical installation One or Several Tigers. Grafting animism onto animation, a Malayan Tiger and a colonial surveyor on two facing screens sing a duet in which a million years of history pass by. Through seamless use of cinematic techniques, ancient and contemporary, Ho Tzu Nyen enacts the manifold metamorphoses of tigers, humans and weretigers (people who can turn into tigers).