Wieteke Van Dort

Wieteke Van Dort was born in Surabaya in what was then the Dutch East Indies under the Japanese occupation of Indonesia. While there, she attended two primary schools, and began attending the HBS. When she was thirteen years old, the Van Dort family went on vacation to The Netherlands. While they were abroad, Sukarno nationalized Indonesia and the Van Dort family lost everything. Her family settled in The Hague. In The Hague, she left middle school without a diploma. Because she was too young for the academy of dramatic arts, she first underwent training to become a nursery school teacher. Although she did not receive a diploma, she did complete three years of HBS (roughly equivalent to a diploma in MAVO – regular high school - in The Netherlands). In 1962 and 1963, she attended Toneelgroep Rederijkers (the academy of dramatic arts). While at the academy, she played Laura Wingfield in a performance of The Glass Menagerie. In 1964, she dropped out of the academy and signed a contract with the Nieuwe Komedie. In 1968, she began working with Wim Kan and Corry Vonk as a comedienne.