Poster: StudioMatusiak | Photo: Olivia Schenker

 

“Magic is one of our most powerful allies in the fight against patriarchy and industrialisation”

– queer activist and writer Arthur Evans

 

Queering Puppets Festival Amsterdam is queer, feminist, activist and above all stands out in quirkiness. It is the only festival in the Netherlands that links puppetry and object theatre for adults to queer imagination. In the safe space created by puppetry, everyone can be who they, she, he want to be. Expect a challenging mix of bodies, stories that refuse to conform to existing dominant structures, visual and erotic outbursts, edgy performances, stimulating lectures, queer food, and clubby afters.

 

Breaking binary

The festival aims to break with binary thinking. Man versus woman, human versus animal, nature versus capitalism, and normal versus deviant. These boundaries are implicitly violent, oppressive, and never neutral—they are instruments of power, linked to exclusion, discipline, and destruction.

But the nature of things cannot be pinned down. It is fluid, changeable, rebellious. It reveals itself in bodies that do not fit into a single category, in biodiversity that refuses to be silenced, in voices that have been suppressed for centuries.

 

International premieres

The festival, under the artistic leading of Cat Smits (theatre maker, puppeteer) and Berith Danse (director of Plein Theater, theatre maker), will feature five premieres, including four international productions: exciting, adults-only and pleasantly unsettling shows and performances in which puppetry and object theatre break through the boundaries of identity. During the Queering Puppets Festival Amsterdam, you will let go of the obvious and move along with transformation and alternative worlds.

Come to the Plein Theatre and embrace the magic, not as an escape, but as resistance, as a collective source of strength.

 

Festivalprogram

Wednesday April 1 

19:30 | CAFÉ
Opening Festival & Exhibition ‘In Touch’ by Queer Gallery
Berith Danse, Cat Smits (Queering Puppets Festival Amsterdam),

Prins de Vos (Queer Gallery), Myrtille Danse (COC Nederland),

Special Ke (drag performance)

20:30 | THEATERZAAL
Body Concert – NL Premiere
Lone Wolf Tribe (USA)

21:30 | CAFÉ
DJ JXSSX & DRINKS

 

Thursday April 2

20:00 | THEATER
Pleasure Parts (for de(con)struction) – NL Premiere
An Kuper & Lucian Squid
Productiehuis Plein Theater

21:00 | CAFÉ
Talk: Nature of Things
Selm Merel Wenselaers

22:00 | THEATERZAAL
Verbotene Lieben 3000 – NL Premiere
Duckie L’Orange & Die Puppenspieler (DE) 

 

Friday April 3

19.30 | CAFÉ
Talk/ lezing
Teatro Walabis (HN)
Topic: rechten inheemsen & dekolonisatie

20:00 | THEATERZAAL
En god zag dat dat het bijna goed was….
Dienke Groenhout en de Maakfabriek

22:00 | CAFÉ
Ladies
Vera Kaye, Maj van der Mersch, Anneriek Bekhuis 

 

Saturday April 4

19:00 | CAFÉ
Filmvertoning Soya & Piet
Filmhuis Transketeers

21:00 | THEATER
Queere Tiere – NL Premiere
Soya the Cow & Piano Prince (CH)
+ Q&A na voorstelling

22:00 | CAFÉ
DJ JXSSX & DRINKS

 

Sunday April 5 // Queering Easter

13:00 – 16:00 | PLEIN
Café The Glowing Pickle
Electric Circus

13:00 | CAFÉ
Talk: Queer rights in Hongarije
Bori Oláh-Bebesi (HU) 

13:00 – 16:00 | CAFÉ
Queer Paasbrunch
#getinvolved

14:00 & 16:00 | THEATER
Raíz de la Ceniza – NL Premiere
Teatro Walabis (HN) 

 

Monday April 6

10:00 – 16:00 | THEATER
Masterclass door Thommy Kraft
Topic: Slug

 

More information and tickets via: www.plein-theater.nl

Queering Puppets Festival is a co-production by Plein Theater and Cat Smits Company.
Queering Puppets Festival Amsterdam is made possible in part by Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst, Fonds voor Cultuurparticipatie, Fonds Podiumkunsten, Fonds 21, Cultuurfonds NH, Pro Helvetia, VSB Fonds en Gemeente Amsterdam Stadsdeel Oost.