Arno Brouwer in the footballstadion during the preparation of the show "Hand in Hand"

 

 

 

Company
The Rotterdams Wijktheater has no regular company of actors. The company of each performance is formed by non-professional actors from the borough where the specific play is based, written and rehearsed. The people from the community that join the production-group usually have no connection with theatre whatsoever and most likely have never been on stage before. This means that the Rotterdams Wijktheater has to put in a lot of work and effort in a long and very intense production process, which contains two important phases. In the pre-production phase is improvisation and discussion an important source of material that represents the situation in the borough and the people that live in it. It is this material that forms the body of the script that is to be written. The production phase contains the rehearsals and the technical production of the play. In both phases are the acting community members ‘the engine' behind the development of the work. They are an irreplaceable source of inspiration.

House in the community
The people from the Rotterdams Wijktheater do most of their work right in the middle of the communities they want to address. Rehearsals and performances are held, out of site of the ‘official' Rotterdam Theatre world, in Community Arts Ce nters, Community Centers, Youth clubs and schools. With their small van they travel to all the Rotterdam boroughs, where they, more often than not, need to swap pool tables and pinball's for rigs, theatre lights, follow-spots and slide projectors, put down a dance floor, blinding curtains, masking, and improvising dressing rooms, in short, completely transform the center into a theatre.
The Rotterdams Wijktheater has worked in the different boroughs of Rotterdam since 1992. Up till today it developed productions like The Bridge in Hoogvliet, Ommoord the End in Ommoord, Feyenoord acts Feyenoord and The fire in the borough Feyenoord. Youthcamp in the Tarwewijk, Pinetrees in the dark in Vreewijk, Trouble on the cape and The wedding in Katendrecht Did Spangen deserve this? In Spangen and so on. The people from the communities tell us about the citizens, what they think of each other, what they like or worry about, what is their view on life and what they expect from their lives and each other. The productions are, due to their close connection to local communities, valuable little portraits on life in the Rotterdam boroughs at the beginning of the new millenium.

International Community-based Theatre Festival 2008
March 2008 is a special month for the Rotterdams Wijktheater. Many national and international community theatres will present their work in the International Community-based Theatre Festival 2008. Not only in Holland but all over the world there is a growing attention for theatre by and for people from the community. The different Community theatres, very divers in their appearance but starting from the same ideal, will get together and talk about the future of authentic theatre performances by local, black and Asian community groups. In the festival, the RWT will try to get community theatre in the spotlight by presenting a diverse program of Dutch and international community theatre projects. Even more interesting is the addition of conference-activities like discussions, workshops, public rehearsals and lectures in which community theatremakers are invited to exchange ideas, knowledge, experiences and enthusiasm. The festival is meant as a start-off for an international community theatre network and add to the profile of community theatre within drama and theatre studies.

Youth
5 years ago the Rotterdams Wijktheater first started a youth production group out of -mostly Black and Asian- boys and girls. These youngsters were the same the RWT always met on their travels trough the Rotterdam Arts Centers. Theatre - and especially the producing and acting - was for the heap of the group a no-go-zone. But FAWAKA, the first youth production was a great success, that wouldn't have happened without the hard work and will to succeed from the people involved. The enthusiastic response from the teenagers in the community centers and schools was overwhelming. Since then the Rotterdams Wijktheater made JEBBEL, with a group Morrocan boys, PLAYERS, with 20 young black and asian boys and girls, and CRIME CITY, about the difficult relationship between young people and the police.

Development new community theatremakers
The RWT seeks to stimulate and motivate young theatremakers that want to produce theatre with people from the community. This involves the creation of workplacements young directors, writers and drama teachers. The possibilities to gather experience are divers, differing from the (supervised) support of a complete production process to a specific writing or direction project. Even the development of new projects, like community theatre by and for children, is one of the options. To work as a seed bedding for new community theatremakers is not just a wish but a necessity, as the specific competence that is needed to do this kind of work is something that is as new as experimental and therefore not taught in higher theatre education. The RWT sees it as its duty to offer work-experience to young theatre-professionals.

Rotterdam Audiences
The Rotterdam Community is on a continues search for tightening the bond with the Rotterdam communities. Not only by presenting the shows, but also by participating in many different community projects the RWT aims to place their shows in the wider perspective of life, in close collaboration with the local community-centers and social organizations, which the Rotterdams Wijktheater sees as the secret of its success.

Future
Looking back and towards the future you may say that current developments are good and bad at the same time. What first started as a careful first step in the direction of reaching new audiences did grow quickly into a voluminous organization that performs more than 80 shows a year in packed community spaces/venues. The long waiting-lists show that the word has spread quicker than the organization might have dreamt off. This is pleasing, and shows the value of the initiative, but on the other hand its is worrying, as the demand has grown explosively and the work is still done by the same amount of people. The number of shows has doubled but the organization is still leaning on a few part-time theatremakers. This could mean the end of the Rotterdams Wijktheater, that is bound to become the victim of its success, if no new staff is added to the organization. Extra staff - and this is a heartfelt appeal to drama-students and young theatremakers - is needed badly for the Rotterdams Wijktheater to maintain and extend their contribution to a theatre-landscape that is true to the multi-colored society that Rotterdam has become.

About The Rotterdam Community Theatre
The Rotterdams Wijktheater (Rotterdam Community Theatre) is a theatre company that, supported by Rotterdam City Council, produces theatre for and by people from the community. The main aim of this community arts organisation is to develop new writing, accessible, appealing and relevant to non-theatregoers, to invite new and culturally excluded audiences to theatre performances that are based on the stories of their own community, and therefore dealing with issues that are relevant to those groups. By presenting the enormous amount of new work they developed, the mostly full-booked performances in the different Community centres (more that 60 a year) and the number of new projects they're constantly initiating, the Rotterdams Wijktheater provides the living proof that theatre by and for people from the community can be alive, interesting, moving and entertaining.
Some characteristics:

They don't come into the community with an exsisting play, but develop plays based on stories and events the people tell them about.
They don't do any of the acting themselves: the neighbourhood group does al the acting and the people of the Rotterdams Wijktheater facilitate, coach, direct, arrange for sound and light etc.
They work primarily in disadvantaged neighbourhoods with people that have little or no experience with theatre as performer or audience.
The plays tend not to focus on one big issue, like ‘teenage pregnancies' or ‘child abuse' but rather portray life in the neighbourhood, with al the laughter and sorrow that comes with it. Depending on the ages and cultural diversity of the group they work with, other artistic disciplines, other artistic disciplines, such as dance, music or video may be

incorporated.
The Rotterdams Wijktheater aims with the festival to start an international network of people or theatregroups that have a similar approach. We are specifically looking for initiatives that not necessarily have theatre as their primary medium but have a similar methodology i.e. not ‘distribute' the ‘high arts'to the communities ore use sociodrama methods the way they were employed in the 1960's and 70's.