We are proud to announce: the associate artist for the 77th Holland Festival in 2024 is Brazilian theatre director, filmmaker and writer Christiane Jatahy (Rio de Janeiro, 1968). One of the works Jatahy will present is Hamlet, a coproduction with Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe from Paris. Shakespeare’s play will have a female title character and serve as a basis for reflecting on the world we live in, and how to change it.
2024 will mark the sixth consecutive year that the Holland Festival invites an associate artist to inspire the festival programme. The associate artist is an international maker with a broad perspective on key issues who typically works in a variety of disciplines, has their own artistic practice of interest and is a key contributor to the festival.
Emily Ansenk, director Holland Festival: “Christiane Jatahy is a major theatre director and filmmaker whose recurring subject is Brazilian society in all its complexity. In her work, she acts not as an objective observer, but rather scrutinises existing mechanisms with her keen, critical eye. She is attentive to marginalised groups and their stories, which deserve to be seen and heard. Hers is a unique visual language, where – using the camera –she constantly plays with the role of the audience, with reality and fiction, both visually and physically. With her knowledge of Brazil’s cultural context and her experience working with European theatres and classic texts, she will present not only her own new and existing work at the Holland Festival, but also introduce new perspectives and new artists, thinkers and musicians to the Netherlands.”
Chistiane Jatahy: “When I started to realise what it meant to be invited as an associate artist at the Holland Festival, an image that often inspires my creation immediately came to mind: the circumferences when a stone falls into the water, spreading its impact in ever wider and wider waves. This image came with the joy of the invitation, but also with the notion of the many possibilities for artistic encounters. From the presentation of my creations and the exchange about the processes, through – and this is when the circumferences expand – the relationship with different audiences, creators, spaces, geographies, in this festival and in this city has always filled me with passion.”
From 2003, Christiane Jatahy has been building an oeuvre that explores the intersections of various artistic disciplines. She makes multi-disciplinary work, text-based theatre and community theatre where she collaborates with local artists. Besides her theatrical work, she also makes (documentary) films. Her first feature-length film, A Falta Que Nos Move (‘The Absence That Moves Us’) came out in 2010 and is based on a theatre piece of the same name. In 2012, she contributed to the London Olympics’ cultural programme with the project In the comfort of your home, a series of interventions, documentaries, films and performances by thirty Brazilian artists in London homes.
Christiane Jatahy’s What if They Went to Moscow, a modern-day adaptation of Chekhov’s Three Sisters, was featured at the 2015 Holland Festival. The Walking Forest (Holland Festival 2016) was inspired by Shakespeare’s Macbeth and asked what would happen if the cruel king Macbeth was in power in Brazil currently.
During the 2022 Venice Biennale, she was awarded the Golden Lion for her theatre oeuvre. The jury report described her as being “a harsh and acute observer of the violent cruelty of our world”. Christiane Jatahy works together with Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe in Parijs, Schauspielhaus in Zürich, Arts Emerson Boston and Piccolo Teatro de Milano.
Associate artists at the Holland Festival
Previous associate artists include ANOHNI (2023), Angélique Kidjo and Nicolas Stemann (2022), Gisèle Vienne and Ryuichi Sakamoto (2021), Bill T. Jones (2020), and Faustin Linyekula and William Kentridge (2019).
