During Lieve Stad 2025, our house, International Theatre Amsterdam, echoed differently. As part of the Lieve Stad festival, ITA welcomed two programs that completely transformed the energy in the building. In one room we had Amber Vineyard bring the house down with Pearl Dive, while Pro Wrestling Holland brought the house down in the other. This was a beautiful reminder that “theatre” lives in the soul and the body.

Since 2024, I have been responsible for programming Lieve Stad on behalf of ITA. For this edition of Lieve Stad, the festival was shaped by a clear thematic focus, The Mental State of the City, and by a collaborative curatorial model. Working with co-curators allowed multiple perspectives to coexist, deepening the program and reflecting the layered realities of the city itself.

We kicked off the Lieve Stad Festival, a collaboration between ITA and Meervaart. With the programming of Lieve Stad we try to shake up our theatres. We chose to explore 'the mental state of our city', challenging ourselves by centering care, rest and resilience in our festival. What would our theatres look like if we do this? How would they make us feel? And how would we use the space and interact with each other? We invited four amazing guest curators to make programmes tha