Visitors to our exhibition Backstage, an exhibition on making theatre, discover that a performance is built up from several disciplines. The six most important parts of theatre making are introduced: text, directing, play, costumes, scenery, light and sound.
Daily in the Theatermuseum.
There is a lot more to producing theatre than you could ever imagine sitting in your comfortable seat in the auditorium. Theatre-makers have thought long and hard about everything you see and hear on stage. A deeper understanding of the message producers are trying to put across will help you to enjoy a performance to the full.
Backstage provides a glimpse behind the scenes of Dutch theatre. Putting on a theatre production involves many different branches of expertise. The exhibition presents six of them: direction, script, acting, scenery, costumes, sound & lighting. The emphasis is on stage plays, but other theatre forms such as opera, mime and dance also feature in the exhibition.
In one of the room you’ll get a brief introduction to the six aspects, whereby a number of Dutch theatre-makers explain what they find so fascinating about their work. In the other room, you can see exactly what each aspect involves, how it works and how it has evolved. You can also have a go yourself. And at the end of the exhibition, you can give your own answer to the question: What is theatre?