Politicians are selfish comedians constantly fooling us.

But we the people are much better clowns!
Climb off the stage, flood the streets!
BANGS WILL TAKE OVER AMSTERDAM!

Amsterdam BANGS is a politically charged joyride here to make you laugh, flinch, cry, think, enjoy, love and rage, rage, rage against the machine!

The second edition of BANGS will take place
September 18-21, 2025!

Get ready for a BANGING theatre and performance festival, organised by anarchists, artists, and activists, to take over whatever we can. BANGS can take place anywhere: Traditional venues, the squats, the streets, the parks, your local Albert Heijn, your ING help desk, or in the comfort of your own home. How do we have permission to book any place in the city? We don’t. Some places we can ask, some others… we cannot. But that doesn’t mean we can’t play a little, right?

Let imagination be your guide. Right now, stages are kept behind gates, giving space to the same old voices. We want Amsterdam to be our stage and hear the voices of many! Give us soft, loud, ludicrous, experimental performance art and activism. Let’s shake each other up!

BANGS is non-hierarchically and self-organised: anyone can propose their show, wherever they want, create any workshop or performance. The acts do not have to adhere to any specific political content. You are free to act as you please, so long as it’s non-commercial and BANGING. Read here how it works in detail.

As Dutch politicians swing to the right and do all they can to not acknowledge their complicity in settler-colonial violence, BANGS will collect donations to send money directly to people in Palestine and Kashmir. Those in power wish for us to stay silent with them, but let’s be loud instead. BANGS will be a burst of performative arts and sometimes quite performative activism (in all sense of that, let’s be real) coming out of every seam of the city, a wild coming together that says:

For this festival, we want to relearn listening to each other and we want to become a benevolent audience. We want to practice being uncomfortable, being joyful, being connected to each other. We want to see neighbours, workers, students, mothers, their children, their teachers, those wearing balaclavas at protests, your grandpa and his dog, the accordion player from the corner getting together in carnival.