BANGS 2026: Ghoula
Ghoula
the wound is a home too
shadow of theatre
maybe
In the tale, a Ghoula
Ghoula is a ritual assisted by performance art, poetry, storytelling, soundscapes and music
BANGS Festival: Ghoula
4 October 17:00
AstaroTheatro
Sint Jansstraat 37 Amsterdam
An AstaroTheatro Production
https://amsterdambangs.nl
BANGS Festival: Blabylonia
work-in-progress showcase
Who are they? On an unknown land they come together. At first, they don’t seem to understand each other but surely they carry with them histories/herstories, poetry, words, insights, music, movements, chanting and images. What if the so-called lingua franca is removed or rendered unimportant on purpose? What does it mean to speak one’s language where you’re expected to do otherwise? What communicates beyond or beneath languages? They’re searching.
Маці родная, Маці-Краіна!
具身為乾坤之象,
大地之臍帶滋養
Triremi rubate ai porti coloniali
لای لای نهمامی ژیانم
Ayrılık Ayrılık, aman Ayrılık.
Her dertten olan, yaman Ayrılık.
BANGS Festival: Blabylonia
work-in-progress showcase
3 October 18:00
AstaroTheatro
Sint Jansstraat 37 Amsterdam
An AstaroTheatro Production
https://amsterdambangs.nl
BANGS Festival: On War & Images. Surprise Performance.
After three explorative sessions we are now ready to surprise you and us!
A participative encounter where images, materials, words and practices are provided with the aim of creating an organic performance flow.
Using the tools provided by theatre practice, this interactive session explores the pervasive narrative of war and how images produce its imaginary.
BANGS Festival: On War & Images. Surprise Performance.
2 October 21:15
Lola Lieven
Rodenrijsstraat 43 Amsterdam
An AstaroTheatro Production
https://amsterdambangs.nl
BANGS Festival: The Universe or the University
An ever shifting pièce rooted from our frustrations with the Numb city and the Arrogant intellectuals. It imagines the fictional quiet village as the antithesis of our present surroundings – the rigid, superficial city, abundant only of insecurities disguised as over-developed rationale. While the fantasy village soothes and weaves sorrow and slowness in life, the city blocks, swallows, confuses and spits you out dismembered. 𝘖𝘩, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘮𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘶𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘳 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳.
The Mask intervenes as a friend, a movement, a reminder of closeness in chaos.
The clown appears in order to remind of loss, but they also ask a crucial question: which one is bigger, the universe or the university?!
How to live in this cosmos of prefabricated opinions, midnight deadlines and real-estate havens? Suffering in joy with your friends.
BANGS Festival: The Universe or the University
1 October 12:30
Nieuwe Achtergracht 127/Roetersstraat 11. Roeterseiland. UvA Campus
An AstaroTheatro Production
https://amsterdambangs.nl
BANGS
is an autonomous theatre and performance festival taking place for the third time October 1-4, 2026.
BANGS is not part of their Empire, and BANGS shits on their borders!
BANGS doesn’t give a damn about art institutions trying to control what the heck art should be like.
BANGS invites everyone to make art we can’t imagine yet!
BANGS needs neither curator nor any other kind of exploiter.
BANGS is self-organised, for your delight!
BANGS receives no funding, BANGS raises funds! This year, for Palestine and Lebanon.
Ghoula
when two girls inhabit a wound, maybe it’s a home to sleep, eat, be naked and sheltered from the sun or the late night cold
the wound is a home too
shadow of theatre
maybe
Ghoula is a ritual assisted by performance art, poetry, storytelling, soundscapes and music
12 July
Door: 19:00
Start 19:30
AstaroTheatro
Sint Jansstraat 37
Amsterdam
www.astarotheatro.com
www.ourfootsteps.nl
Entrance by Donation
Movie Screening নধরের ভেলা (Nadharer Bhela) / The Slow Man and His Raft
Pradipta Bhattacharyya · 2025 · 179 mins | Bengali Spoken | Subtitles English
RSVP: https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/E6GFPWBOINJyca4tZ-SMPHV6nI5s1lFmV…
AstaroTheatro · 26 June 2026 · Doors 18:30 · Film 19:00
Sint Jansstraat 37, Amsterdam (5 minutes from Centraal Station).
“Nadhar, a man deemed dysfunctional for his extremely sluggish movements, becomes part of a travelling circus, where his condition turns into spectacle.”
What happens when a body does not align with the speed at which the world decides value. Around the body, a world is being sorted too quickly into what can be used, what can be shown, what can be kept as “culture”, and what can be left behind. The Manasamangal lore, a six-hundred-year-old poem most people remember as a love story and which is not, is underneath this: snake, deity, fear, protection, not as heritage, but as something still active in how life is divided, who is held and who is left outside.
The film’s journey has been as unusual as its subject. Rather than relying on conventional theatrical distribution, Nadharer Bhela has travelled through a network of independently organised screenings, community halls, town theatres, cultural spaces and self-organised gatherings across Bengal and beyond. Its circulation has depended not on multiplexes or streaming platforms, but on audiences willing to create spaces for collective viewing and conversation.
Though it travelled to Rotterdam, this is not a festival film seeking prestige from afar.
It is a film that has found its life in rooms filled with people sitting together for an evening, allowing a story to unfold at its own pace. AstaroTheatro is one of those rooms.
Suggested donation: €8–15 (sliding scale). Less is welcome, more helps support independent filmmaking and the space
The Want
Theatre and Talks
Bear in mind that “you must want something”!
Or would you rather live in the mountains and play your bilur?
Be aware that you are nothing but a consumer in a consumers’ world. Unless you don’t want The Want.
We perform a short excerpt from ‘In the solitude of the cotton fields’ by Bernard-Marie Koltès where our dramaturgical analysis underlines the consumerism and the commodification in society.
We sit together and we engage in an open conversation about the topics highlighted by the theatre performance: from commodification to war, from environmental disaster to autonomous communities, from the manipulation of love to anything we would like to discuss.
Harun Turan: Performance and Bilur
Roberto Bacchilega: Performance
An AstaroTheatro and A La Muntagna Production
Friday 19 June 20:00
AstaroTheatro
Sint Jansstraat 37
Amsterdam
www.astarotheatro.com
www.ourfootsteps.nl
Entrance by Donation
A solo performance that weaves together physical theatre, drama, and storytelling to explore the resilience of identity. Drawn from Halina’s personal journey and the geopolitical unrest surrounding her, the piece follows a protagonist torn between cultures and languages: searching, endlessly, for a place to belong.
On stage: a suitcase full of potatoes. Humble objects loaded with meaning: symbols of survival, of connection and universality, of something stubbornly rooted in the earth.
Do roots provide stability, or do they hold us back?
She Is Growing Potatoes pulls you into one woman’s search for belonging, and an unshakeable drive to keep becoming.
Credits Concept, acting, text, sound & video editing: Halina Mihutskaya | Original soundtracks: Bexley Mellish | AI Visuals & Animation: Kseniia Saraieva | Powered by ZID Theater
Admission: Free. Donations warmly welcomed to support the artist and space (cash only).
Saturday 13 June 20:00
AstaroTheatro
Sint Jansstraat 37
Amsterdam
www.astarotheatro.com
www.ourfootsteps.nl
