Bosco Theatre: "A brand new start"

2000 until today

Between 1950 and 2000 the Bosco Theatre was renovated from time to time. Many parts had to be finally replaced. Still, she always was a sturdy structure that had stood the test of many a storm. Also thanks to the revival of street theatre and festival culture, she stayed in business.

When the theatre came in the possession of Flip Jansen, he decided that the tent deserved a new start and decided to replace what was left of the old seating construction. So he built a small ‘amphitheatre’ that can accommodate nearly 200 spectators.

It is a half moon shape on which the audience ‘embraces’ the performer and simultaneously keeps the spectators aware of each other as one audience, as they can also see each other. There is no border between spectator and performer.

Flip got his inspiration in Indonesia and Thailand, watching the local cock fights. The excited crowd is there seated on a very steep, round tribune almost falling into the little arena where the drama takes place.

Such a fight is executed with dazzling speed and is sometimes over in seconds. High sums of money are being gambled and the roosters are the product of years of training and breeding by their owners. When the fight starts, all the eyes of the spectators are on the roosters with such intensity, that it would dig a hole in the ground.

Until today, a cock fight has never occurred in the Bosco yet, but a good performer can easily keep the audience captivated in the same way, also without microphone.

In the beginning of the twentieth century, the tent was transported on a vessel tugged through the canals in Holland from village to village. A hundred years later, the Bosco Theatre is back on the water: These days she is being regularly shipped between Australia (Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne), Scotland (Edinburgh) and Ireland (Dublin).