From Amsterdam to Middelburg to Utrecht to Amersfoort and onwards. Sites of Memory continues to take the hidden and under-represented stories of a shared cultural heritage of the Netherlands and the former colonies to the streets.
Friday, June 16 was the première of the first ever performances from the groups’s latest performance series, Free to be Free. Starting from Amersfoort’s Sint Aegtenkapel and ending at the Koppelpoort, the public was taken on a journey through space and time to unravel buried local colonial histories and interrogate what it means to be free.
Founded by cultural historian Jennifer Tosch and theater maker Katy Streek, Sites of Memory has been making site-specific theater about underexposed colonial histories in the Netherlands and internationally since 2016. Multidisciplinary creators work together to bring these stories to the attention of audiences in an accessible way.
Free to be Free will be traveling throughout 2023 and 2024 to different cities in the Netherlands and beyond - with each iteration focusing on each location’s specific historical colonial context. The next performances in Deventer are free for the public as part of the international outdoor theater festival Deventer op Stelten - the performance will be taking place on Saturday 8 July (16:00 & 20:00) and Sunday 9 July (16:00 & 20:00).
After that, Free to be Free will be traveling to Utrecht between 7 and 14 October 2023, and Amsterdam, Haarlem and Willemstad (Kòrsou/Curaçao) in 2024.
More information about the Deventer performances and tickets for Utrecht can be found alongside the latest Free to be Free updates on the Sites of Memory website: www.sitesofmemory.nl
