When we made a bang with our travelling tent street ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’ in Amsterdam in 1984, Willem Hol – having worked very hard for the business being an experienced inventor, scene builder and business man – told all of us: ‘I want to build a tent myself, and I want it to be the most beautiful tent that will ever be built.’ It was up to us to say what kind of tent we needed… And, well, we didn’t have an opera yet on the Boulevard. ‘Then I will build an opera,’ Willem said, and he built The Opera.
De Opera tent is still a big hit today… But what I was worried about… Willem Hol was on a roll and wanted more. He invested in the Carvalho, a beautiful wooden construction that can suit multiple purposes, and besides a few smaller tents that can be used as bars or for children’s activities, Willem went for the jackpot, the most beautiful theatre tent in Dutch theatre history; the Work Theatre Tent.