Ivo van Hove
Ivo Van Hove was artistic director of ITA from 2001 to 2023. As a director he created numerous groundbreaking and highly acclaimed productions, including The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand) and Een klein leven (Hanya Yanagihara), and the two Shakespeare marathons Roman tragedies and Kings of war, which took the company around the world. After twenty-two years, Van Hove decided to leave ITA and concentrate on his international directing work. He also serves as artistic director of the Ruhrtriennale for the 2024–2026 editions.
At Toneelgroep Amsterdam, now the ITA Ensemble, Van Hove directed productions including Tony Kushner's Angels in America, the marathon productions Roman tragedies and Kings of war after Shakespeare, Opening Night and Husbands by John Cassavetes, Rocco and His Brothers and Obsession by Luchino Visconti, Teorema after Pier Paolo Pasolini (a co-production with the Ruhrtriennale), Antonioni Project by Michelangelo Antonioni, Cries and Whispers, Scenes from a Marriage and After the Rehearsal / Persona by Ingmar Bergman, La voix humaine by Jean Cocteau, Summer Trilogy by Carlo Goldoni, Children of the Sun by Maxim Gorky, The Miser by Molière, Mourning Becomes Electra and Long day's journey into night by O'Neill, De Russen! by Tom Lanoye after Anton Chekhov, The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, Maria Stuart by Schiller, and The Hidden Force, The Things That Pass and Small Souls by Louis Couperus.
In the 2026/27 season his production of Angels in America (Tony Kushner) returns to the stage.
CV
Ivo van Hove (Belgium, 1958) began his career as a theatre director in 1981 with productions of his own devising (Ziektekiemen, Geruchten). He was successively artistic director of AKT, Akt-Vertikaal and De Tijd. From 1990 to 2000 he was director of Het Zuidelijk Toneel. From 1998 to 2004 Van Hove ran the Holland Festival, where he presented his annual selection of international theatre, music, opera and dance. Since 1984 he has been one of the artistic directors of the Dramatic Arts department at the Hogeschool Antwerpen. In 2001 Van Hove became director of Toneelgroep Amsterdam.
Ivo van Hove's productions have been performed at the Festival d'Avignon, the Edinburgh International Festival, the Venice Biennale, the Holland Festival, Theater der Welt and the Wiener Festwochen, among others. He has directed the companies of La Comédie-Française, the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg, the Staatstheater Stuttgart and New York Theatre Workshop. For Joop van den Ende he directed the musical Rent. At the Vlaamse Opera he staged Lulu (Alban Berg) and Wagner's complete Ring des Nibelungen (2006–2008). At the Nederlandse Opera in Amsterdam he staged Janácek's De Zaak Makropoulos and Tchaikovsky's Iolanta. In 2014 he directed the world premiere of the opera Brokeback Mountain at the Teatro Real. Van Hove directed A view from the Bridge (2015) and The Crucible (2016) on Broadway, David Bowie's stage musical Lazarus in New York, and Network (2017) in London and New York. For Dutch television he made Thuisfront, and in 2009 his first feature film, Amsterdam, was released.
Van Hove's work has been honoured time and again, with awards including two Obie Awards for best direction of an off-Broadway production in New York (for More Stately Mansions and Hedda Gabler), the Oeuvre Prijs van Oost-Vlaanderen (1995), the Theaterfestivalprijs (1996), the Archangel Award at the Edinburgh Festival (1999) and Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2004) in France. In 2007 he received the Prijs van de Kritiek in the Netherlands. In 2008 he and Jan Versweyveld were awarded the Prosceniumprijs, a Dutch lifetime achievement award, and in 2012 he received the Amsterdam Business Oeuvre Award. In 2014 Van Hove received an honorary doctorate for general merit from the University of Antwerp, and in 2015 two Olivier Awards for A View from the Bridge and – together with Jan Versweyveld – the Amsterdamprijs voor de Kunst in the Bewezen Kwaliteit (proven quality) category.
In 2016 Van Hove was honoured with two Tony Awards, two Drama League Awards, two Drama Desk Awards, two Outer Critics Circle Awards and two Grands Prix de la Critique. King Philippe of Belgium appointed Van Hove Commander of the Order of the Crown, and Van Hove received the Vlaamse Cultuurprijs Algemene Culturele Verdienste 2015 from the Flemish Minister of Culture, Sven Gatz. In 2019 Ivo received the Johannes Vermeer Prijs, the Dutch state prize for the arts, as well as the VSCD Oeuvre award.
At the National Theatre in London, Van Hove staged Network, starring Bryan Cranston, in 2017. A year later the production transferred to Broadway, where it opened at the Cort Theatre on 6 December 2018. Network was nominated for no fewer than five Tony Awards, the most prestigious prizes in American theatre.
In February 2020 Van Hove, together with choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, created a radical reinvention of the musical West Side Story, which premiered at the Broadway Theatre in New York: ‘a production bursting with frenetic energy, passion, pathos and those glorious Leonard Bernstein-Stephen Sondheim songs. It’s a stunning achievement for van Hove, known for deconstructions of celebrated works such as A View From the Bridge and Network.’ – The Telegraph *****
This was followed immediately, in March 2020, by Van Hove’s production of La Ménagerie de verre starring Isabelle Huppert, which had its world premiere at the Théâtre de l’Odéon and came to Internationaal Theater Amsterdam in autumn 2021.