Eric de Vroedt creates the theatrical marathon De seizoenen (‘The seasons’) based on the books Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer by Scottish author Ali Smith. Blending poetry, politics and unexpected encounters, Smith’s writing explores what it means to remain hopeful in turbulent times. We spoke with De Vroedt about his first encounter with Smith’s work, the urgency of her themes, and how adapting The Seasons transformed his own approach to theatre.
Het Nationale Theater, Eric de Vroedt
27 - 29 June
Internationaal Theater Amsterdam
Let's start with Ali Smith. She is a relatively unknown writer in the Netherlands. What was your first impression of her work?
When I started reading Autumn, the first part of the Seasonal Quartet, I was completely unfamiliar with her work. In a very nice way, it was a complicated introduction. She will take you into totally different registers. Autumn, for instance, begins with a kind of trip, a near-death experience that is quite difficult to follow. Next, you find yourself in an incredibly recognisable and witty scene set in a post office. And then these totally different storylines somehow come together...
What was it about the work that appealed to you so much that you decided to create a piece with it?
You might not think it, but Ali Smith intended to write very calm books about art and literature in the rhythm of the seasons. However, at that very moment in Britain, she found herself in that whole populist Brexit period, when things like migration and climate were so brutally questioned. So, she combined all sorts of timeless topics, in which she had already immersed herself, with those hysterical current affairs that affected everything. As a result, those books essentially were also about everything, and I was immensely captivated by that. What initially stuck with me after reading them was the idea of one day, in 2025, making a big play that, like those books by Ali Smith, would be about everything. Only, at that time, I didn't know that we would do that with those books themselves.
What do these books – after all, from a different country and from a few years ago – say about our current society?
A tremendous amount! A great deal of that whole Brexit madness a few years back, has now also become our reality. We live in a time when political debate is completely distorted, polarised and violent, and all kinds of systems are stagnating. Solutions are increasingly sought in borders, barriers and exclusion. You could say that Britain was a few years ahead of us in breaking down democracy. The question Ali Smith so rightly asks is: what is left? What gives hope, how do we remain human? Her answer lies in unexpected encounters. In her books, people from completely different bubbles have a lot to offer each other, and this produces particularly sparkling dialogues.
There are some very specific British elements in the work as well, which are less familiar to Dutch audiences. Why did you choose not to adapt those?
When you start working on an adaptation such as this one, you make a choice to either change everything to the Dutch situation, or to work with the original British context. I chose the latter, to keep a bit more distance from current affairs here. It is precisely by talking about a situation that is very similar to ours, but not identical, that you retain the power of metaphor. In the Summer part, for instance, British politician Boris Johnson and his adviser appear. We could have replaced them by Dutch politicians Wilders and Bosma, but I personally would have found that very annoying. This way, everyone will make that connection themselves, without us having to spell it out. That is the power of theatre. We're not going to use snowflakes to show when it's winter either, we'll find other ways to do that. A further advantage of working with the British original is that the typical, understated humor from the book also works very well here.
How did you go about translating these books to the stage setting?
The books are very poetic and almost elusive. This is why they seemed to me very suitable and at the same time totally impossible for the theatre! We initially asked several playwrights to make an adaptation, but each of them returned the assignment with the message: ‘Wonderful books, but impossible for stage!’ The fact that all these other people thought it impossible, gave me a sense of freedom to do it my own way, to be selective and choose my own emphasis. And when Ali Smith gave me her blessing, I was confident.
You met the author, how did that conversation go?
I was a bit nervous to ask her permission for this adaptation, but she was very enthusiastic about my plan. That meeting made me realise that, although the work is very intellectual, it is very playful and associative. And that a central theme is the possibility of change and transformation. I decided that I also wanted to transform myself in the way I work.
What did your own transformation look like, in which aspects did you change?
For a long time, I was accustomed to working in a certain, rather controlling way. I always wanted to set every action of the actors very precisely. That urge to control is a form of distrust in a way. I am now trying hard to work more from trust, less hierarchically. I open myself up to suggestions from the group, for instance to rehearse a day in the woods or in a museum. Opening up to other peoples’ ideas like that, brings you to very different places than when you invent everything yourself.
How is this new way of working reflected in the play?
A good example is that I'm not very used to working with movement. I usually set scenes quite rigidly, to be able to determine the focus very precisely. But working with movement and music suits this piece very well. In fact, there is little dramatic conflict in it, and that is also not what matters the most. It's really about the sparkles that occur on the square inch. It is about a group of actors conveying a poetic creation to the audience. By letting go of control, that creation is given much more space to flow. It is an exciting new way of working, which is why it was nice to try out each season on an audience once, before turning it into a long marathon in June.
You are turning four seasons into one long performance. With those four separate parts, is it difficult to make a single long story arc totaling seven hours?
The separate parts stand well on their own, but in the fourth part all storylines and elements come together, making the marathon a whole that transcends the sum of its parts. The books are very ingenious in that way. On stage it's possible to show this even better – maybe that's an added value of theatre – because you can emphasise these long lines and really get to the heart of the matter. I also hope that seeing this adaptation will make people pick up the books again and appreciate how well they are put together. That also lies in subtleties, which can easily stay hidden at first reading.
What is that core you want to emphasise?
Despite the heavy subject matter there is a lot of playfulness and light-heartedness in the work. It contains many moments when everything is dead and broken, and yet it turns out there is always a small plant growing between the rocks. People meet each other, inspire each other, move each other forward. They help each other to look at nature or art in a different way, and they rebel for what they believe in, in very playful ways. This makes the work, in my view, genuinely optimistic.