Ellen ten Damme

The Noorderkerkzaal in Sneek occupies a former Reformed church on the Westersingel that dates to 1881. The building served its congregation for over a century before the congregation departed in 2001, after which it briefly functioned as an apartment building. A thorough restoration carried out between 1993 and 1998 preserved the structure, with additional work on the small tower completed in 2003 and 2004. It opened as a performance hall in 2010 and has since become the home of Theater Sneek, the theatre company founded in 2008 that previously operated from a former post office across the canal. With a capacity of around 200, the Noorderkerkzaal sits within what the city regards as its Cultural Quarter. The programming spans a broad range: theatre productions, concerts ranging from classical to pop and ambient, and community gatherings. The church's architecture gives the space a particular acoustic character that required careful management, and in recent years a permanently installed Martin Audio system was added to address that profile, using a left, centre, right configuration of loudspeakers together with frontfills and cardioid subwoofers to control bass buildup on stage. Amplification runs through Dante networked iKON units, giving the hall a flexible, modern routing setup. The combination of a nineteenth century ecclesiastical interior and a relatively intimate audience capacity makes the Noorderkerkzaal something of an unusual proposition for the Frisian region. It is a venue where a solo harpist such as Remy van Kesteren fits as naturally as a pop duo, and that range reflects the broader ambition of Theater Sneek to serve a varied local audience from a single, architecturally significant building.