‘How many kilometres does the average Oerol visitor cycle? Wrapped in a rain jacket, pedalling across the island against a fierce headwind, legs burning with lactic acid? Ending up without a single drop of rain on their clothes because, once again, the weather app got it wrong? Searching for signposts to hidden theatre venues while stuck in a queue of bicycles? A great many.’
Not only audiences, but also the press are well represented at the festival. Today, the first glowing reviews and reports appeared online. Maimoena Hulshof clocked up her first cycling miles as an NRC reviewer at Oerol and wrote, among other things, the reflections above.
And Sander Janssens of de Volkskrant wrote: ‘Hope and unease frequently converged during the opening days of Oerol, in a first weekend where overt engagement and poetic contemplation alternated in abundance. The festival opened on Friday afternoon with a collective mosh pit among hundred-year-old pine trees, in a one-off ritual rave in which Collectief Nau celebrated the apocalypse with unwavering optimism: ‘Everything is turned upside down / all about hope.’
Would you like to keep up with reviews of the performances? Visit the ‘In the Media’ page on our website. And, above all, get out there and experience it for yourself – then make up your own mind!
