Dutch actor Pierre Bokma plays his game

"Listen to me and hear what I'm saying"

Dutch actor Pierre Bokma (56) moves his chair closer. He's totally focused on the conversation and his discussion partner. To seek for confrontation, for contact seems a living condition for him. A woman falls in love with a man for less. The best Dutch actor, according to many people, is touring with Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanja, directed by Gerardjan Rijnders. Bokma: "Someone once said to me: 'You are a magician.' Then I think: very sweet, but I wish I was. Of course I wanted to be a magician from my fifth, because then you don't have to worry anymore. Being a magician is an aim, but being the best Dutch actor... Who decides that? Do you know a 'best-Dutch-actor-meter'?"

By Dominique Verschuren

What is acting all about?
Bokma: "With the knowledge of who I am and how I move into the world, I want to convince the audience that the man who is playing is also someone else. Therefore you have to find out if there are possibilities which connect with what you think a character requires. That doesn't have to be something you use every day. If you are not a psychopath and you have to play one, then you have to wonder: What is a psychopath? Is it within my possibilities to leave a lasting impression that I am one?"

Where do you get the psychopath inside yourself?
Bokma: "A psychopath is someone who has no conscience. Then you have to consider whether you can transfer it, not only suggest."

 

Aren't that just tricks?
Bokma: "Everything is a trick. If you make a compliment to a woman and you really mean it, she doesn't believe it that easy. If you make a trick of it, she'll accept it sooner. Because she knows it is a game. If it is real and she accepts it... well... then there are other consequences on the horizon. (Laugh) In the game you play with her, she knows more than you. She anticipates on that night and other nights, or maybe never a night or a night over a year. The woman has the strings in her hand. The higher the quality of your game, the more interesting it is."

 

Do you play the same game with the audience?
Bokma: "Yes."

 

But the audience won't go to bed with you?
Bokma: "No, the audience identify themself with me, with the role and the play. They want to go far and compromise. The more the audience is ready to take distance from the intimate atmosphere, the better your work is. People consider time as one of their innermost possessions. Their time. If people forget time, they forget everything. Also their concerns."

The secret of Pierre Bokma

 

Bokma studied drama school in Maastricht, the Netherlands, between 1978 and 1982. For twenty years at the Theater Group Amsterdam, he played Richard III, Henry VI, Henry V, Hamlet, Othello... and won many Dutch prizes. In 2010, he started playing in German theaters. He was also seen in many movies. For The Chosen One (De Uitverkorene) Bokma won an International Emmy Award, in 2007.

If you have those experiences, then you must have an answer to the question: What is an actor? A creative artist?
Bokma: "No. He is an incredible artisan. And on top he can become an excellent artist. Once."

 

How?
Bokma: "He can play a role in which he can transcend himself, in such an outstanding way that both, the scriptwriter and the director would be amazed. Then you approach the hazy area of a creative artist. Then you are not an executive artisan anymore, but you sublimate. Beyond control for others. The others have to think: 'I could do that too', but it must remain impossible. Only you can do that because you are the artist."

 

How often have you reached that level in the past thirty years?
Bokma: "Hardly. There is also the holy moment on stage. The moment when something is so dreadful good, that it transcends space and time. Almost a quantum physical experience. David in Night is mother to the day (Natten är dagens mor) by Lars Norén was such a role. When I think about that level, I also think about the Dutch actor Guus Hermus. Unfortunately I never played with him, he was too old. I’ve seen him playing in Cyrano de Bergerac. In particular the last apotheosis of the play was so incredibly beautiful. If you can convince me only with: 'Listen to me and hear what I'm saying. Hear what I'm saying.' It was fabulous. With so little, such simple means. And then you think: 'I can do that too'. That is quality, if everyone starts thinking: 'I can do that too'. That is talent."

 

Guus Hermus

Where do you get your talent from? What is your secret?
Bokma: "If I knew it, I would not tell you of course."

 

Why not?
Bokma: "Come on! You write it down and then everyone knows it. Then I lose my secret."

 

No, because you are the only one who can do it. You are the magician, the others are impersonators.
Bokma: "Alchemy. If you knew the secret, then you could do it. If I knew it I would say: I don't know, I don't know. I think. I'm not stupid and I think. About what I'm doing. You have to possess an intuitive kind of thinking. Sometimes you're allowed to purely thinking, but only when it tends to go wrong: how do I solve it? Before and after that moment you have to think. Afterwards you ought to be very honest: that went wrong. I can hope or lie against all odds that it was good, but it wasn't. How come? What did I do? Often it's a matter of vanity. At that moment, I wanted yesterday's success again. But the situation was different today. Then I have to forget everything and start all over again. To avoid repetition. How you do that? Everyone has to find out for themselves."

 

What is intuitive thinking?
Bokma: "You let your intuition rule over your thinking. You need a highway between your head and your heart. One of the two must take over. In times of emergency the head has to take it over, then you have to calculate, your heart subordinates. On stage it is the other way around. The intuition leaves enough room for the thinking. If you force something, then it goes wrong. It is out of control. If it really goes well, well, those are magic moments. Then you are a magician. That is a quantum mechanical moment. You are independent of time and space, regardless of strength and load."

"Love is always utterly selfish”

"Short term loves are the deepest loves," you once said. What did you mean?
Bokma: "That was about my parents. They felt in love in a terrible way when they were very young. In the end it didn't go through by circumstances, but I was the result. They carried that for the rest of their lives. They hadn't the chance to let it go out like a candle. Those are the deepest loves. The loves that remains elusive, which are unfinished. The beginning is incredibly deep; you really almost collapsed into each other. If circumstances don't allow it, you leave behind with that desire to return."

 

Does that also apply for the non-consumed loves?
Bokma: "Yes. Love is desire. Love is the desire to be somebody else. Because then you have complete control over the other person. You want that other person; he or she has to be yours. Back to the symbiosis."

 

That sounds like possessing each other. Isn’t that a very unhealthy kind of love?
Bokma: "There are many unhealthy loves. Also loves which are being called loves, but aren't. You also have love affairs with both sides of an equally strong desire to go away from each other. Also a kind of love."

 

You also have said that it's impossible to love each other?
Bokma: "Yes. This is a state of being that the body simply does not allow. People who say to love each other continuously, float on the memory of an earlier time. They try to experience it continuously, but that love almost never returns. Maybe in emergencies such as death or heavy loss."

 

Is that not a straw that you want to appropriate?
Bokma: "That is love: to keep the other person. You want the other in your own aura. Love is never altruistic. It is not possible. The monk who scourge himself for thirty years to be as close as possible to God. The nurse who wants to help others... Because they think: I do it great, I'm a good person, so I deserve something later."

 

If you label 'to love' as something pure selfish, how do you perceive the love for your children?
Bokma: "That's parentage. Complete other kind of love. That's an obvious love. I said when

I got my kids: 'I never knew love could be so obvious.'"

 

Obvious?
Bokma: "I don't have to do a thing. It's there. They are your descendants, so it should come out as strongly as possible, as well as possible maintained."

That is also selfish, because it suits you best: 'Look how biological capable I am!'
Bokma: "Everything is selfish. That you are sitting here is selfish. And I try to give the best answer to impress you. I get the best out of myself when I speak with someone who sits on the same level. Two can do more than one. With children as well, who have priority. Only I'm not sure that it is always wise. "

“Maybe I'm looking forward to anyone, also with their mistakes"

How do you experience your own talent? Do you have to work hard or do you float on it?
Bokma: "Talent is what you have. You don't have to do anything for it. I have especially talent to know that I have talent. Talent to know how to develop, to know what it is and how to dose. That's a big part of your intelligence and I think I have that. In that way I'm not stupid."

 

You also mean that psychological? Can you see people?
Bokma: "Yes, I think so."

 

Have you often been disappointed?
Bokma: "Why do you say disappointed? Maybe I'm looking forward to anyone, also with their mistakes. All those people are unique. If you like them or not, if they block you or not. I'm not easily disappointed. People are as they are. Why should I be so arrogant to think: My way is best and everyone who is at another level disappoint me. That's vain."

 

Take for example the mothers of your children?
Bokma: "They didn't disappoint me."

 

Those three women gave you a real fait accompli. In the same period they confront you with the news that all three were pregnant of you.
Bokma: "Yes. Period."

 

That's too laconically.
Bokma: "Yes, but that's the only way to survive. If you are in a situation where there is no remedy against it, then you become ill. You can't see your children anymore and it leaves you with rancor. People who do that disappoint me. Of course there were moments when I suffered, but I never had something against the children. With the mother I argued, but that's logical in such a situation."

 

What kind of fight you had with the mother's?
Bokma: "It would have been easier if we agreed earlier. For the child it would be more ideal. But I put over it very quickly. After two years I was over it. It doesn't make sense to keep complaining about it. Make the best of it."

 

And do you succeed?
Bokma: "It works wonderfully. By trial and error."

Have you always been so pragmatic?
Bokma: "If you, like me in my youth, went from one host family to the other, you learn improvising. You can anticipate faster, you see things coming, you feel it. That's intuition. Feeling where the good, the bad and the worst things are coming from. The knowledge to identify, to define and to take appropriate measures against this. That ... is intelligence."

(Thanks to Helen Williams)