Arnold Heijmer is one of the board members of the newly reformed association, and one of those instrumental in its return. Heijmer, a previous student of Mechanical Engineering, is a ‘comedy enthusiast’, who really found his calling to the art form during a sabbatical in Australia. He and fellow Contramime board member Paul Boersen (a bachelor’s student of Creative Technology) attended a narration competition organised by NEST and Pro Deo last year. ‘It was about a student struggling to choose an association. The punchline of the story was to bring back Contramime,’ Heijmer remembers. After the competition Boersen and Heijmer began seriously discussing the idea of ‘bringing back Contramime’.
Comedy gym
According to Heijmer ‘many comedians miss a nurturing environment for building comedy muscles’. ‘You can find a gym in every city, but it takes a harder search to practice your funny bone’, he says. There was nothing of the sort in Twente, and while after his return from Australia Heijmer considered moving to the Randstad to find something, he chose to restart Contramime instead. ‘this environment is my environment, I grew up here... If you can’t find a group, you start a group’. Going forward, Contramime aims to be Enschede’s ‘comedy gym’.
Keeping members
The main factor in the collapse of old Contramime was the lack of members. When asked how new Contramime plans to prevent this from happening again, Heijmer gives a couple of reasons. Previously the group was ‘very critical’ and ‘asked too much commitment’. Going forward, the new Contramime will focus less on requiring a high level of commitment and more on providing a place for people interested in comedy to develop themselves. ‘To get new members is important, to keep people is just as important,’ says Heijmer. He adds that ‘we meet every Tuesday in the Global Lounge at 7pm... and it’s free. Whoever likes to, can come and join us.’
So far the new approach seems to be working. Today Contramime has 17 members, to the satisfaction of Heijmer. ‘Contramime has actually enough members now to do a group show. If possible, we will do it this summer.’
