Ten years ago, we were asked to write a short story for a literary festival in Holland. We'd once told ourselves that the one subject we would never tackle was the death of a child. Needless to say, from that moment we know we had to do it and so we wrote a story called 'Grief' (published in Dutch as Verlies).
A couple of years ago, we were approached by a Dutch theatrical producer with the idea of turning it into a play. It sounded a crazy idea.
Well, Leon van der Sanden wrote and directed it, and yesterday we went to the premiere in the beautiful town of Haarlem. It's pretty strange to see your story dramatized, your characters played by actors - and all in Dutch. Grief is one of the most intensely emotional things we've written - and, even with our extremely rudimentary Dutch, we were overwhelmed by the power of the production. Many thanks to Isa Hoes, Irma Hartog and Ad Knippels for their amazingly committed performances. (You can see them here.)
We got a glimpse of a very different theatrical tradition. Firstly, these productions are more like a rock tour than the kind of theatrical season we're used to in England. Over the next few months, the production is heading out on an eighty(!)-date tour of Holland. If you're in Holland - wherever you are in Holland - you'll be able to see it.
Secondly, we learned that there's a tradition of adapting modern ficion that we really don't have here. It's common to adapt children's books for the London stage. There are occasional versions of classics (Nicholas Nickleby, A Handful of Dust, The Master and Margarita). Apart from the very particular case of The Woman in Black, I can't think of any other examples. Can anyone else?
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