Music Theatre Master's students perform at Over het IJ

Students of the Master Music Theatre deepen and broaden their craftsmanship as music theatre makers. One way they do this is in collaborative projects with external partners: they learn by doing. One of those partners is music theatre company Via Berlin. Master's students Marnix Vinkenborg and Anne Reitsma followed a master class there, and performed their own short solo at the Over het IJ Festival in Amsterdam-Noord.

Anne Reitsma: ECHO KAMER

Anne Reitsma: "I wanted to give myself the opportunity to experiment again, within the relatively safe space that a school has to offer. Stimulating the audience, really having a conversation, that is very important to me." In the video, Anne tells more about her work and Dagmar Slagmolen (artistic director Via Berlin) and Cecile Brommer (programme coordinator Master Music Theatre) elaborate on the special partnership between course and work field.

Marnix Vinkenborg: PENTHOUSE PITCH

Marnix Vinkenborg presented his performance PENTHOUSE PITCH at the festival: a 'psychological seminar, with all mod cons'. Earlier, he investigated whether a project can become more important than the object that comes out of it, together with other makers. With his graduation work, the Pressure Cooker experiment, he researched a new method of making. Marnix: "My ultimate dream is to create a common communication, a common language. Creating together, and strengthening each other in autonomy."

Structural partnership

The Master Music Theatre and Via Berlin partnership sees ArtEZ students being introduced to the 'Via Berlin method’ in a masterclass and then working towards a performance at the Over het IJ Festival.

At the end of 2021, Anne did an internship at Theater Sonnevanck, another partner of the Master Music Theatre. While there, she was assistant to the director for 'Koning Bowi' and dramaturge for the theatrical listening performance "Wakkerland." She also researched the personal experiences of the first-generation Turkish-Dutch people who came to live in Twente at the end of the 70's to work in the textile industry. From this research, she developed the short performance "Spinning Jenny": a theatrical story about living together in Enschede , both then (late 70s) and now. Central is the story of Jenny, the daughter of a Turkish-Dutch textile worker. You can read more about "Spinning Jenny" on the Sonnevanck website (article in Dutch).