Meet the Makers: Ewout Ganzevoort

Gustav Klimt, Music I (1895). Oil on canvas, 37 × 44.5 cm. Neue Pinakothek.

In this Meet the Makers conversation Ewout Ganzevoort will share his practice working as a dramaturg in (music) theatre. Drawing upon his extensive experience working at various theatre and opera companies, he will talk about the collaborative processes of creating theatre productions that bring together different arts and artistic styles, and how academic curiosity can enrich creative and imaginative practices. We will focus specifically on how to reimagine ‘classics’ for a young audience. How is Mozart’s Don Giovanni adapted to communicate to a VMBO (pre-vocational secondary education) audience? What dramaturgical choices are made when Monteverdi’s Orfeo is turned into a 20-minute flash-mob? What are the stakes in creating a reading opera for a children’s audience of 4-year-olds? The session will be moderated by Annelies Andries and Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink.

Ewout Ganzevoort (1994) is a dramaturg, actor, singer, director and graphic designer in (music) theater, often for young audiences. After studying Theater in Education at ArtEZ University of the Arts in Zwolle, the Netherlands, he completed the Master programme in Contemporary Theater, Dance and Dramaturgy at Utrecht University. In his Master’s thesis, he brings the debate on the apparent dichotomy between Werktreue (true to the original) and Regietheater (Director’s theatre) to a new level by seeing them not as opposites, but as discursive notions that stand in a dynamic relationship to the actual practices of staging opera. Ewout primarily works as dramaturg and editor within the education department at Dutch National Opera & Ballet. He has also been teaching dramaturgy and research at Fontys Academy of the Arts since 2021 and creates musical theater performances himself, including with his youth theater company Het Trojaanse Kalf. Specifically in creating work for younger audiences, Ewout is inspired by theater’s potential to create new worlds on stage and offer fresh perspectives on how to deal with life’s complexity and (sometimes) hardships.