For the continuity of the country festival that has existed for two decades in the former industrial halls of the mines and power plants in Bochum, Duisburg, Essen, and Gladbeck, the exchange with the Dutch-Belgian-Flemish neighbors is essential. Beginning with the spiritus rector and visionary of the festival, the opera innovator Gerard Mortier from Ghent and Brussels, who brought Johan Simos with him in his very first season and thus laid the groundwork for his later successor.
Even back then, Ivo van Hove said he had attended performances, had learned to "love" the festival, and later contributed five productions. In several editions, he was present with his theater group, the International Theater Amsterdam. He was also invited 'next door' to the Ruhr Festival with the intensely condensed staging of Hanya Yanagihara's novel "A Little Life."
Ivo van Hove (born 1958), who has long lived with his stage designer partner Jan Versweyveld, is the most polyglot (Jürgen Flimm may forgive) of the previous artistic directors, engaged from Amsterdam to Berlin, London, Paris, Vienna, and New York, and has also led the Holland Festival (1998 to 2004). Like Johan Simons, he is familiar with the "artistic project" of performing in non-theatrical established venues.
Laughing, he recounts where his earliest productions took place, when theater in Belgium was "terrible": the first in a laundry, the second in the not yet architecturally urban-styled harbor of Antwerp, while outside the prostitutes walked by, the next – a scene from Botho Strauß’s "Groß und klein" – in private apartments.
He looks back on an enormous body of work spanning four decades, diverse, repeatedly referencing Shakespeare, but also incorporating Tennessee Williams and Eugene O’Neill, Susan Sontag, Marguerite Duras, Molière, and the ancient dramatists, and frequently cinematic material from Antonioni, Bergman, Cassavetes, Pasolini, Visconti (surprisingly, Fassbinder is missing) as well as the adaptation of "Brokeback Mountain" for musical theater, as he has also devoted himself to opera for more than 20 years.
His goal, says van Hove, is to orient the Ruhrtriennale "internationally as the best theater for as many different and diverse people as possible." The preferred "extreme" performances are to span all genres and continue the "creations" initiated by Mortier across disciplines, supplemented by contemporary rock and pop music that can expand musical theater. He himself will take on one production per season. He would like to point out one more thing: In the word Festival, there is also a component of FEST.
In terms of content, he wants to "make proposals for the world of today and tomorrow." Citizens carry responsibility as members of society and simultaneously follow the impulse to determine themselves and live their own desires, which in its massive expression can hardly be reversed. Movements like Black Lives Matter and MeToo are increasingly influencing and should influence the arts as well. And thus he presents a motto for the program: "Longing for tomorrow" – "Sehnsucht nach morgen". This forward-looking motto and its utopian impetus inquire, in light of a world in turmoil and the crises of humanity – bitter discourses of identity politics, violence that banishes entire societies, "the war of nature against us and our war against nature," so van Hove – about possible new paradises.
Van Hove, with his thoughtfully crafted concepts, is an intellectual explorer and re-presenter, open to the experimental character of the performing arts, and he can effectively meet entertainment demands when working on Broadway. The "Tony" winner has no hesitation in the musical genre, having produced the hit "Rent" and David Bowie's "Lazarus," and directed Tony Kushner's Hollywood-esque AIDS political revue "Angels in America." For him, the divide between commercial and subsidized does not exist, only a divide between good and bad. In January 2024, he premiered the musical "Jesus Christ Superstar" in Amsterdam. And again, he dismisses the dichotomy of high and low art. It must be "serious but not heavy".
Depicting and illuminating existential crisis moments is a central theme of van Hove's work. Creating visual laboratory situations and dramaturgically ambulatory open situations is a model of his works, which are known for their strong symbolic placements. The characters often comment on their roles, stand beside themselves, and reflect distantly on their play and essence. In him, dramatic effect is created by the musical structure. In Visconti's "Rocco and His Brothers," for instance (also presented at the Ruhrtriennale), there are songs from the Sixties, a late Beethoven string quartet, and Opus 5 by Anton Webern; in addition, four chamber musicians create electronic sound at mixing desks, which escalates into apocalyptic noise.
A major success was achieved by van Hove with his exquisite trilogy of novels by the Dutch author Louis Couperus, beginning with "The Silent Force" and continuing with "The Things That Pass" and "Little Souls" for the Ruhrtriennale. The performances also served as a literary discovery for the German audience from the interstice of symbolic poetry and realistic narrative. The decay of families and life designs, the lie of life, and failure find expression in it.
The colonial narrative of "The Silent Force" was completely shrouded in mist by Van Hove in the salt storage of the Zollverein coking plant. Above a wooden square, nozzles sprayed water that cascaded down in torrents or drizzled gently. The sultry, humid climate absorbed the energies. There was no calm, no intimacy; everything was exposed. With precisely prepared dialogues, the essence of the novel was preserved in its analytical, erotic, and emotional power, and it was attributed and given high effectiveness. - We may expect a 'powerful' artistic direction. And a sustainable one.
