4 - 14 SEPTEMBER 2025
EQUALITY, CONNECTION AND EXCHANGE AS THE NEW FUNDAMENT
Amsterdam Fringe Festival and Nederlands Theater Festival are jointly launching Amsterdam Fringe X NTF PRO, the national conference for theater professionals. This extends the content of NTF PRO, which has been successful for years. From now on, the two festivals will conjunctively organise the two-day professional program, which will take place on September the 4th and 5th.
Where Amsterdam Fringe Festival (AFF) focuses more on the work of emerging creators and experimentation, Nederlands Theater Festival (NTF) focuses on the more established and most promising creators and presents the most impressive performances of last season. Together, the two festivals fall under the umbrella of Stichting De Theaterdagen, and both 11-day festivals combined showcase a very broad palette of performing arts. While the target audiences are somewhat different, they complement each other very well. The same applies to the networks of professionals.
MUTUAL CROSS-OVERS
For festival directors Farnoosh Farnia (AFF) and Tobias Kokkelmans (NTF), it was a logical step to have those two professional networks get more intertwined during the PRO days. “The idea of Tobias and me is to work on fundamental equality for the networks of creators, professionals and audiences. We want PRO to be a place where we discuss pressing issues from the theater arts field, where different perspectives are allowed to coexist, from different generations and from different networks and educational backgrounds. These perspectives should be allowed the space to be juxtaposed and discussed, without feeling that one is worth more than the other,” Farnoosh said. Tobias adds: “In recent years, PRO has focused primarily on the NTF network and to a limited extent on Fringe creators, who tend to surround themselves with a different network. We noticed that there were many pressing issues among Fringe makers. Moreover, the topics of both networks coincide extremely well.”
MULTI-VOICED AND MULTI-LINGUAL
Practically and content-wise, the new set-up means that the topics were proposed from both festival networks. The current state of the theater was depicted by both festivals and both determined what topics really need to be discussed. By brainstorming together, involving more networks and partners together, there has been a more multi-voiced approach this year, which will also be reflected in the program. Whereas previously the content was curated by Tobias Kokkelmans, this year he has done so with programmers Lara van Lookeren and Brandon Oelofse. There is also a change in language: there will be an approximate 50/50 balance between Dutch and English program components as of this coming edition, as will be the case for the communication to the outside world, which stems from the fact that the Fringe network is much more international.
With this new format, the festivals aim to provide more connection, encounters, a sense of equality and exchange of ideas and perspectives within the theater field. “I am already incredibly looking forward to the encounters that will take place between activist artists and theater programmers, the commercial and the subsidized companies and emerging and seasoned creators. Especially now it is important that we keep connecting with and know how to find each other,” Kokkelmans says.
Amsterdam Fringe X NTF PRO will take place on September the 4th and 5th, the first two days of Amsterdam Fringe Festival and Nederlands Theater Festival (September the 4th-14th). The launch of the PRO program and the start of ticket sales happen on June the 10th. All information about the program and tickets will be available from that moment on at www.ntfpro.nl.
