Since 1985, Theaterfestival Boulevard has offered a stage to several thousand artists from Holland and abroad. They played at a total of 247 different locations in and around 's-Hertogenbosch, the city that is linked to the festival. This year, Boulevard once again offers a summer festival experience for both theater fans and people who like to have a drink en enjoy the culinary options at the festivalheart. 

Boulevard 2025 will take place from August 7 to 17 in the city of Den Bosch. The festival heart is once again on the Parade.

A Fortress

My father-in-law came to me with a scrap of paper. The last paragraph of an article from de Volkskrant — the rest was missing. A yellow post-it note was stuck to the crumpled piece of paper: “Nina, something for Boulevard?”

My father-in-law, who lives in our garden house, is an activist. He gets worked up about things and turns that into action. He writes letters to the newspaper, attends demonstrations, brings people together, sets up all kinds of initiatives, and likes to place signs in what is now also our front yard.

Standing there, he added: “Maybe you could have these four sentences from that article printed on a sign or something for Boulevard.”
“I’ll have a look,” I replied.

Radical Wonder

Theaterfestival Boulevard 2025 is about shared wonder. Not as an escape, not as daydreaming. Wonder is neither lazy nor frivolous. It is radical. A way to remain receptive. To keep looking — at each other, at the world, at what is difficult.

Wonder is what happens when my son says: “I hate Putin, he always wins,” and his friend replies: “No, that’s Max Verstappen.” A misunderstanding? Certainly. But also a glimpse of something else: a moment when logic cracks and the world can be seen anew. That is wonder. The willingness to not immediately know. To learn to look again.

Theatre as a Training Ground

For us, theatre is a place to practise this. To remain curious in a world that increasingly locks itself into certainty. To learn to play with what is — with people, things, the space between us. To keep feeling, even when it gets complicated.

In times of polarization and algorithms that trap us in our own rightness, we want to form a community of people who dare to wonder. Not as a solution for everything, but as an invitation to keep moving together. To remain human together.

When I come across that scrap of paper again the next morning, I read a report about the brave theatre director Oleksandr Kniha from a theatre in the besieged Ukrainian city of Kherson:

“Then the technician dims the lights. The actor and violinist begin their performance. The faces of the visitors show emotions that have long disappeared from the streets. Amazement, emotion, laughter. When the lights come back on, just a few hundred meters away from the Russian army, thunderous applause erupts.

‘This is our fortress,’ says theatre director Kniha. ‘This is what our boys are fighting for.’”

My father-in-law was right. These are indeed sentences for Boulevard. Four sentences about what happens when we dare to look, to feel, to wonder together. About the fortress we build — not in shelled theatres, nor with signs in the front yard, but with stories, with presence, with the courage to be moved.”

Nina Aalders
Head of Programme