24 February 2021
Festival from 5 – 22 Aug. with new festival square at Zuiderpark
Theaterfestival Boulevard ‘s-Hertogenbosch is in full preparation for its 37th festival edition. An edition in which the organization still takes into account the continuing measures regarding the corona virus. In order to guarantee the required 1.5m distance between visitors, a new central meeting place with a more spacious layout will be created in the Zuiderpark, just outside the city center. Additionally, for the upcoming edition the festival stretches its traditional 11-day timespan, in order to be able to spread the program and visitors accordingly. The festival takes place from Thursday 5 to Sunday 22 August. The full program is announced in June and shortly afterwards tickets go on sale through festivalboulevard.nl.
More festival days
For the first time in 36 years the festival lasts for more than 11 days. This enables the different program components to be presented over a longer period of time, often with multiple performances per day. This way the festival hopes to be able to sell about half the number of tickets compared to pre-pandemic editions, while at the same time ensuring the 1.5 m distance between visitors. “The desire to be able to present new work and to meet with audiences is bigger than ever and can be felt in all the conversations we have with our makers. Our festival organization is delighted that we can provide perspective and continue to build on a festival in which head and heart are set in motion and where encounters and joy are a vital part of our daily program”, festival programmer Tessa Smeulers says.
More spacious layout
For its 2021 program the festival focuses on performances on different spacious locations in and around the city, preferably in the open air. Additionally, for this edition we will create a new central festival square in the Zuiderpark in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, which offers much more space than the traditional location, the Parade square. This provides enough room to pitch high-capacity theater tents, while at the same time the public space offers enough room for visitors to move around (at an appropriate distance from each other) and to enjoy the catering facilities. Festival director Viktorien van Hulst: “We want to create a safe meeting place that facilitates the need for proximity, for encounters and for sharing stories, we all wholeheartedly feel at the moment. Just like last year, we deliberately opt for a real festival, spread in space and time, instead of going online. The first drawings show us that the Zuiderpark offers a fantastic place for our new central festival square.”
The summer of Den Bosch
Just like last year the festival is part of the Bossche Zomer (The summer of Den Bosch): a city-wide initiative that gives room to entrepreneurs, organizations and visitors (provided they take into account all RIVM-measures regarding Covid19), to get together in well-known and new locations in innovative and creative ways.
