Gijsbert van der Wal
Biography
Gijsbert van der Wal is a Dutch art historian and journalist. He studied Art History at the University of Utrecht. For sixteen years he interviewed artists for the VPRO radio programs De Avonden and Nooit Meer Slapen and he wrote articles on fine arts for the newspaper NRC since 2004. In recent years he has made four exhibitions for the Fondation Custodia in Paris. Van der Wal is also known for his collaboration with the comedian Micha Wertheim as his director/"partner in crime".
Known For & Full Filmography1 Titles
Movie - 2017, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
The bigger the audiences for Dutch comedian Micha Wertheim’s shows became, the less he had to do to make them laugh. In one early show, he suggested that the audience would be better off without him. So in 2016, he acted upon this suggestion with an experiment that made theater history: he wasn't physically present onstage but somewhere else. The audience wasn't aware of this in advance, though they did get a hint in the form of a pre-recorded "live" radio interview from a remote studio. "I see my audience as my children," Wertheim says in this interview. "You have to educate them, and that’s what I’ve been doing for the past 15 years. At first you have to constantly be there watching them, but there comes a time when you have to trust them to get on with it without you." With some help from a robot, a printer, a stereo and a set of headphones, the members of his audience were able to make their own performance.