Rob Erenstein, born in Semarang, Indonesia, in 1939. Ph.D. from the University of Amsterdam. Senior Lecturer in Dramaturgy at the University of Amsterdam († 2017).
VNC Fellow (1 September 1994 – 30 June 1995)
As a VNC Fellow at NIAS together with F. Peeters (University of Antwerp) my priority has been to concentrate on preparing for publication the monograph “A Theatre History of the Netherlands”, an interdisciplinary collaboration between theatre historians and specialists in Dutch literature. This book contains 120 short articles by specialists on Flemish and Dutch theatre history from the early middle ages to the present day. It runs to about 900 pages, has more than 500 illustrations and will be published in May 1996.
I had to do the final editing of this book in order to guarantee continuity. In many cases this meant partly or complete rewriting of the contributions. My colleague Peeters, who is a member of the board of editors, assisted me. Additionally, my VNC-colleague Peeters and I took the initiative to start publication of a theatre yearbook “Scenarium, New Series”, that will concentrate on Flemish and Dutch theatre history. The first number is scheduled for early 1997 and will be dedicated to the theme ‘Nationalism and national feelings on the stage’.
For the “Theatre Iconography” working group, I studied the theatre illustrations of Cornelis Troost (1696-1750) as visual documents and as possible sources of informa¬tion for reconstructing the theatrical past and for deepening our insight of the theatricality of the 18th century society. The activities of the “Theatre Iconography” working group reached the conclusion with a successful symposium (12-15 June), to which twenty scholars from Europe and the United States were invited. Since at the end of the symposium the need was felt to continue more systematically with research in this field, the decision was taken to apply for a subsidy from the European Science Foundation to set up a three-year research network for the study of European Theatre Iconography in a multi-disciplinary context.