Adam, Roel (Netherlands)

Roel Adam was born in 1953 in The Hague. From 1972 to 1976 he studied dramatic instruction at the Academy of Expression in Word and Gesture in Utrecht. Since 1976 Roel Adam has been working in young people’s theatre as an actor, director and playwright. Two of the theatre groups with which he has been connected in the past are Lijn Negen and Theater Eldorado. He is presently a member of the artistic management at one of the most important young people’s theatre companies in the Netherlands: Huis aan de Amstel. Roel Adam has written many plays for the artistic director of this company, Liesbeth Coltof. For both Adam and Coltof, the often perilous position of the child in today’s society is an important theme. Roel Adam has a great fondness for the possibilities that language offers. In his pieces he uses words which appear to be everyday at first glance, but which tend toward a sort of philosophy for children. Of this he once said: ‘I’m actually always searching for what is behind the words. A real conversation is about what people mean. Not about what they are saying, but about what they are trying to say.’