2019 is the year of the 50th anniversary of the so-called "tomato incident", in which a 1969 Amsterdam audience of theatregoers performed a historic intervention into the antiquated institution of Dutch theatre by pelting the stage with tomatoes. The audio documentation of this incident’s afterlife is part of the vast collection of the Dutch theatre sound archival collection of “Theater Klank en Beeld” (Theatre Sound and Vision). In this presentation the sound documentation of “Aktie Tomaat” serves as a case study for strategies of recent public re-use of recordings, connecting past, present and a potential future of an archive of “theatre on tape” (Hoefnagels, IASA Phonographic Bulletin, 4, 1972). Who listens to theatre culture’s historical recordings? How does a 1969 heritage of sound reconnect with a 2019 theatre culture? What are the challenges of the current internationalization in education in making local historical recordings accessible? And what are the opportunities for access strategies? These are the questions which in this paper will be centrally discussed.
