With a two-person executive board within Stichting De Theaterdagen, the Nederlands Theater Festival (NTF) and Amsterdam Fringe Festival (AFF) are consciously opting for a different form of leadership. Tobias Kokkelmans and FarnooshFarnia will serve as co-director-managers of the organization.
This step is more than just an internal organizational change: in a time of polarization and growing complexity, good governance requires more than one dominant voice. With this new model, NTF and AFF aim to demonstrate that power, responsibility, and legitimacy can be organized differently: with more dissent, multiple voices, and an equal distribution of authority.
The choice for a two-person executive board stems from the conviction that classic top-down structures no longer always suit organizations in a complex societal context. In institutions representing different types of visitors, artists, and stories, good governance, according to the festivals, requires not only efficiency but also multiple perspectives and a healthier distribution of responsibility.
Tobias Kokkelmans, Managing Director of Stichting De Theaterdagen:
“Why would you want to give up a piece of your power? For me, there is another, very concrete question underlying this: how do you actually make way as a director or board member? Not only when you leave, but especially while you are still in office. Not just symbolically, but also anchored within the structure of your organization. I am a man, white, born in the Netherlands, and 45 years old: by definition, those are all kinds of structural advantages. With that position, I also have a responsibility to bear to break open existing, dominant power structures. Not by avoiding responsibility, but by consciously sharing it.”
How do you organize leadership in a way that makes room for multiple forms of knowledge and structural dissent, without losing strength? According to NTF and AFF, this is a particularly relevant management question for public institutions, civil society organizations, and HR professionals.
This is taking shape with the appointment of Farnoosh Farnia as co-director. Until now, Farnia was artistic director of the Amsterdam Fringe Festival and brings a perspective to Stichting De Theaterdagen in which equality has long been central: between festivals, between creators, between venues, and between the various audiences they represent. The fact that she now stands alongside Kokkelmans as director marks the governance choice to allow dominant power structures and a diversity of perspectives to take the lead.
Farnoosh Farnia, Managing Director of Stichting De Theaterdagen:
“If the sector wants to make room for new voices, new makers, and different audiences, this also has a direct impact on how we organize responsibilities and resources. A Fringe maker should not only be able to stand symbolically alongside an NTF maker but must also actually count in how we assign value, determine position, and allocate resources.”
For NTF and AFF, shared leadership is therefore not only about collaboration, but also about the quality and legitimacy of governance. According to the festivals, who decides, who corrects, who is given space, and who is a structural part of power are not merely technical questions, but real choices about how an organization understands and accounts for itself.
Moreover, the two-headed model is being created precisely now, during a period when the organization is doing well. By doing so, the festivals aim to prevent fundamental questions regarding right to exist, priorities, and resource allocation from only arising in the event of a crisis. According to NTF and AFF, it is precisely in stable circumstances that an organization can consciously choose a fairer distribution of responsibility, rather than falling back on centralization and short-term governance under pressure.
The festivals do not view their choice as a blueprint for every organization, but rather as a contribution to a conversation about leadership, equality, and democracy within institutions. How do you organize leadership in complex organizations without resorting to solo governance? How do you make institutions more multi-voiced without losing administrative clarity? And how do you ensure that equality not only remains an explicit value but also becomes visible at the top of the organization?
According to NTF and AFF, shared leadership is a conscious governance choice. Not because a single director would be incapable, but because organizations can become stronger when diverse perspectives, experience, and knowledge are part of the board. With this, NTF and AFF aim to demonstrate that other forms of governance are possible — not as a symbolic step, but as a concrete choice to organize power, responsibility, and legitimacy differently.