ExploreZ Festival

Amsterdam 17/9 – 10/10 2021

From September 17 to October 10 you can immerse yourself in a program of fifteen performances at various locations in Amsterdam. ZID Theater produces the festival and also uses its own theater as a festival location.
After a period of 18 months of the corona crisis, this 6th edition of the festival explores the theme of hope for new perspectives.
Performing artists were hit hard during this period, because their own DNA – performing live – was taken away from them. This raised the question: is the creative process or showing my work to an audience more important? This essential question was seen as crucial by all major theatre movements: what is the role of the artist in society?

But the corona crisis made one question even more urgent: what is society’s responsibility towards the artist? In the preparations for ExploreZ 2021, we assumed that the role of the individual artist is currently the most critical, because if the theatre artist disappears, there will be no theatre anymore. That is why this edition is all about hope for new perspectives, which artists can offer to society.

Various solo performances at the festival are personal testimonies about topics that the makers experience as urgent. The group performances that were developed during the corona crisis also show more social involvement than before through exploration, personal stories and shared experiences.

In addition to the performances, we organise encounters, conversations, workshops, an open stage and spontaneous experiments. Every day we finish with a joint discussion. Since we are still living in the post-crisis period, the arrival of the international guests remains uncertain. If we are lucky, there will be performances by companies from Serbia, Morocco and England, and by makers from Greece, Australia, Syria, Armenia and Iran who are currently staying here.
Come and share our enthusiasm, explore and go into dialogue with each other.

Karolina Spaic, artistic director of the ExploreZ Festival

More information here