Euripides en Aischylos

Ivo van Hove (Belgium, 1958) has been the general director of Internationaal Theater Amsterdam since 2001 (previously Toneelgroep Amsterdam). He started his career as theatre director in 1981 with productions of own works (Ziektekiemen, Geruchten He started his career as theatre director in 1981 with productions of own works (Ziektekiemen, Geruchten). He then held positions as artistic director at AKT, Akt-Vertikaal and De Tijd. Between 1990 and 2000 he was the head of Het Zuidelijk Toneel. Van Hove was the artistic director of the Holland Festival from 1998 to 2004. Since 1984, he has been one of the artistic leaders of the Dramatic Arts department of the University College Antwerp. 

Van Hove’s productions have been performed in many countries. He has directed companies including the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg, Staatstheater Stuttgart, the New York Theatre Workshop, La Comédie-Française, the Flemish Opera and the Dutch National Opera. In 2014 he staged the world premiere of the opera Brokeback Mountain at Teatro Real. In 2015 he directed the musical theatre production of David Bowie Lazarus in New York. On Broadway Van Hove directed A View From the Bridge (2015), The Crucible (2016) and Network (2017).

Under Van Hove’s directorship, the ITA ensemble has won prizes for many of its productions, including the marathon performance Roman tragedies, The Taming of the Shrew and Kings of war (all based on Shakespeare), Tony Kushner's Angels in America, Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage, Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and John Cassavetes' Husbands and wives, and Opening Night.

Van Hove has received many accolades, including two Obie Awards for off-Broadway productions in New York (for More Stately Mansions and Hedda Gabler). He was made a knight of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France in 2004. In 2007 he received the prize awarded by Dutch theatre critics and in 2008 he also received the Prosceniumprijs, the Dutch oeuvre prize, together with Jan Versweyveld, his stage designer for many years. In 2016 they also received the Amsterdam Art prize. In 2016, Van Hove won two Tony Awards, two Drama League Awards, two Drama Desk Awards, two Outer Critics Circle Awards and two Grands Prix de la Critique. King Philippe of Belgium appointed him Commander of the Order of the Crown and he received the Flemish Culture Prize for Cultural Merit in 2015. In 2019, Ivo received the Johannes Vermeer Award, the state prize for the arts, as well as the VSCD Oeuvre Award.

In February 2020 Van Hove and choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker created a radical remake of the musical West Side Story that premiered at the Broadway Theatre in New York.

Immediately afterwards, in March 2020, Van Hove's production La Ménagerie de verre followed with star actress Isabelle Huppert, which had its world premiere at Théâtre de l'Odéon.

ITA-Ensemble is one of the Holland Festival’s regular co-producers. In recent years the festival has presented ITA co-productions of The Cherry Orchard (2019, Simon McBurney), Roman tragedies (2008 and 2018, Ivo van Hove) and Obsession (2017, Ivo van Hove). The ITA ensemble members are nationally and internationally famous. At its core is a large troupe of world-class actors and a team of prominent directors that performs on more than one hundred stages world-wide in addition to their Amsterdam base.

The ITA regularly welcomes high-profile international guest directors such as Thomas Ostermeier, Johan Simons, Krzysztof Warlikowski, Katie Mitchell, Grzegorz Jarzyna, Luk Perceval and Guy Cassiers, and representatives of the new generation like Simon Stone, Maren E. Bjørseth and Robert Icke. ITA’s acclaimed production of Een klein leven, based on the book A Little Life by American Hanya Yanagihara, had its premiere in 2018, and actor Ramsey Nasr received the Louis d'Or (the award for best male lead) in 2019 for his portrayal of Jude in the play.