Theater maker Madeleine Matzer received the Culture Prize 2025 from the Culture Fund North Brabant this evening. The award ceremony took place at the Verkadefabriek in s-Hertogenbosch, immediately after her performance Broos. Commissioner of the King Ina Adema, who is also the chair of the Culture Fund North Brabant, presented the award.
Matzer started her career more than 30 years ago and has grown into the grande dame of Brabant theater – and beyond. Her work bears a recognizable signature: layered, transparent, and contemporary theater that is poetic and sincere. It poses questions that creep under your skin: How do you deal with guilt and vulnerability? Where does responsibility lie, with you or with the other? How do you ensure that you do not lose yourself in caring for another? With minimal means, Matzer achieves maximum expressiveness. Her directing of actors creates disarming performances, allowing identification with characters that may seem easy to condemn, but whose motivations become palpable.
“Madeleine Matzer shows humanity without a mask: free of judgment, full of compassion. Once you have seen one of her performances, you will be forever enriched by it,” the jury stated in its laudation.
Theater Beyond the Walls
With the Verkadefabriek as her home base, Matzer created theater with her company about the essence of our existence. These performances address themes such as loneliness, guilt, identity, and connection, always seeking dialogue with the audience. Increasingly, the company steps outside the walls of the theater: from council chamber to university, from hospital to social organization. Matzer always finds new contexts in which the power of coming together, from heart to heart, becomes palpable. Thus, she brought imagination into the heart of society.
About the Culture Prize Culture Fund North Brabant
The Culture Prize is associated with an amount of € 10,000 and a work of art. This year, Amina Zemouli created a 3D-printed sculpture especially for Madeleine Matzer, in which the abstraction of mathematics transforms into visual poetry. The work invites one to not only understand the beauty of formulas but also to experience it deeply from within.
The Culture Fund North Brabant awards the prize annually to a person or organization that has made a special contribution to culture and/or nature in North Brabant. Previous laureates include trumpeter Eric Vloeimans, actor and director Frank Lammers, choreographer Pia Meuthen, visual artist René Daniëls, saxophonist Paul van Kemenade, cartoonist Gertjan van Leeuwen (Gummbah), dance company de Stilte, landscape architect Frank Meijer, and the Storioni Trio.
About the Culture Fund
The Culture Fund invests € 50 million annually in culture and nature. This money is used for more than 4,000 projects in the Netherlands, the Caribbean part of the Kingdom, and Suriname. With support from the VriendenLoterij, Nederlandse Loterij, donors, and partners, the fund enables various initiatives. Foundations, associations, cultural institutions, nature organizations, and individual artists can apply for financial support. The Culture Fund North Brabant is one of the 12 provincial departments.
See also: www.cultuurfonds.nl/brabant (refers to another website)
