Sytze drags you along to the iconic club RoXY
Sytze Bouma
Drag Me [2] RoXY is a sparkling drag monologue about Amsterdam’s most famous nightclub. A thrilling and intimate ode to the ‘second home’ of an entire generation of night owls. World-famous stars, extravagant outfits, sensational performances, and the infamous door check: RoXY was an iconic safe haven.
Thirty years later, actor and drag performer Sytze Bouma longs to bring RoXY back to life. Armed with a stack of interviews with former RoXY regulars, and using characters, performances, old photographs, and pounding house music, Sytze explores what remainstoday of the ‘paradisiacal refuge’ that RoXY once was. A visually rich as well as exhilarating solo performance about the longing for a queer home. And an invitation to breathe new life into freedom past. Drag Me [2] RoXY drags you along to the legendary club, which went up in flames in the summer of 1999.
Sytze Bouma is an actor and theatre maker. He graduated in 2024 from the theatre school in Arnhem, where he discovered his joy in physical performance and further explored his playful inner world. Sytze writes queer stories in which he explores personal fascinations and nostalgic longings. Since the fall of 2024, he has been working on a series of solo performances around his desire for a queer home. In these drag solos Sytze combines charming text-based theatre with playful drag performance.
Drag Me Home — the first solo in this series, about the mysterious attic performer Bob — won the Audience Award at last year’s Café Theater Festival in Utrecht. In addition to his work as an independent maker, Sytze is involved as a physical performer with interdisciplinary theatre companies such as MAAS and KASKO. With the latter, he is performing this summer at De Parade, in Paradise Circus Love, a theatrical love letter to the sex worker. Drag Me [2] RoXY is Sytze’s second drag solo. Following its premiere at Amsterdam Fringe Festival in September, the performance will tour across the Netherlands this autumn.
Concept, text, performance: Sytze Bouma
Final direction: Mara van Vlijmen
Text coaching: Nic Bruckman
Performance coaching: Lars Brinkman
Costume: Jacqueline Steijlen
Decor: Oene Bouma
Tech and light design: Robin van den Berg
Sound design: Dorian Kreso
Photography campaign and poster: Ies Kaczmarek
Poster design: Hannes Schievink
Thanks to: Lisa Donia, Janivo Stichting, Gemeente Utrecht, Stichting NORMA, Theater Ins Blau, Villa Concordia, Theater Utrecht, ITA, De Sloot, Pleintheater, Yannick Loman, Derk Stenvers and Roosmarijn Brans