Biography
Ivo van Hove (Heist-op-den-Berg (BE), 1958) started his theatre career in Flanders, where he became the artistic director of Het Zuidelijk Toneel in 1990. Between 1998 and 2004, he was in charge of the Holland Festival. In 2001, he became director of Toneelgroep Amsterdam, which, after merging with the Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam, is now called Internationaal Theater Amsterdam (ITA).
In Amsterdam, Ivo van Hove realised productions such as Angels in America by Tony Kushner, Romeinse tragedies (Roman tragedies) and Kings of war after Shakespeare, The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand and – over the past theatre season – Een klein leven (A Little Life) by Hanya Yanagihara and Dood in Venetië (Death in Venice) after Thomas Mann.
Ivo van Hove also directed a large number plays abroad, for instance in Paris, Berlin, London, Hamburg, and New York. In 2015 he directed Lazarus, David Bowie’s last work, in New York. From October 2019 onwards, this special production will be staged in the Nieuwe De La Mar theatre in Amsterdam.
Ivo van Hove has been honoured for his achievements with the Grote Theaterfestivalprijs (1996), the Vlaamse Cultuurprijs Algemene Culturele Verdienste 2015 and – together with Jan Versweyveld – the Amsterdamprijs voor de Kunst (2015). His versions of A view from the Bridge were internationally awarded with two Laurence Olivier Awards (London, 2015) and two Tony Awards (New York, 2016). For Les Damnés (The Damned), which he directed for La Comédie Française, he received the Prize for the Best Production (France) in 2017.
In addition to theatre productions, he has directed numerous operas, such as Salomé and De zaak Macropulous (The Macropulous Affair) at the Nationale Opera, Lulu and Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Vlaamse Opera, Boris Godunov and Don Giovanni at Opéra de Paris and, most recently, Kurt Weill’s Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny for the Festival Aix-en-Provence.
In the 2019/20 season, the ITA will be staging two new productions by Ivo van Hove: Freud and Wie heeft mijn vader vermoord (Who killed my father). On Sunday 1 September, Ivo van Hove will be the sixth and final guest on the VPRO television programme Zomergasten (NPO2). His version of The West Side Story will open on Broadway, New York in 2020. Next, he will direct Isabelle Huppert in Tennessee Williams’s La menagerie de verre (The Glass Menagerie).
Van Hove received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Antwerp, is Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France and Commander in the Order of the Crown in Belgium.