25 Jun

19:30

Frascati

Nes 63, , Amsterdam

In Dutch. A program about what it takes to stay standing in rebellion against oppressive systems, focusing on the queer community.

Soft Tactics for Hard Times '26

More info & tickets

How do you fight for your freedom without hardening? How do you create safety for yourself and others in a world that constantly puts you on edge? What do you need to stay standing during the fight? And what role can practicing martial arts play in this?

In Soft Tactics for Hard Times, theater maker Merel Severs brings together different voices for dialogue, performative interventions, and playful assignments. Following Soft Tactics for Hard Times '25, this second edition at Frascati departs from the growing physical and verbal threat against the queer community, both on the streets and in legislation worldwide. From micro-aggressions to rights under pressure or being taken away, from family expectations to systemic challenges, how do you deal with this growing threat?

Merel Severs will be in conversation with Simcha Zijlstra about the necessity of a queer fighting squad. As violence against queer people continues to increase, Merel and Simcha are searching for ways to send a clear signal: we are a community that, when necessary, can fight back and stand up for each other. Can we also fight with softness, as a way to connect rather than to harden? Soft Tactics for Hard Times is about care and connection as resistance. Together we are stronger.

You are invited to think along. What does it mean to protect each other? What forms of solidarity are possible, and which ones do we still need to invent?

Guests of this evening

Simcha Zijlstra

Simcha is a campaigner at Greenpeace Netherlands and a theater maker by origin. In his spare time, he creates educational content about Palestine from a Jewish perspective and is an opinion maker and activist. In his free time, Simcha loves to be in the kitchen.

Ahmed El Gendy

Ahmed is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores the wonders and weight of entanglement and encounter. They are currently developing a performance project around the Mediterranean Sea, working with the power of water, the politicized gaze, and kink. In addition to their artistic practice, Ahmed facilitates queer play-fight grappling sessions, creating space for physical negotiation, intensity, and humor as ways of being in the world together.

Yun Lee

Yun Lee is a Taiwanese-American artist working with the disciplines of sound, movement, and workshops. In his work, he uses martial arts movements to explore themes of intimacy and conflict within queer identity and community. He views martial arts not only as a sport or fighting technique but also as a cultural and political archive, and as an embodied technology that enables expression and connection.

About Merel Severs

Theater maker, performer, and martial artist Merel Severs (1991) creates engaged, confrontational, and physical performances, inspired by intersectional feminism, body politics, and martial arts. With her distinctive signature, she uses the transformative power of the body to question violent structures in the world.

Merel's performances Let me tell you something you already know (2020) and Try Not To Know What You Know (2022) were both nominated for the BNG Bank Theater Prize. In 2024, she toured with her performance Coerced & Freely Given. During her residency at Frascati Producties, Merel collaborated with Milou van Duijnhoven this spring on slow and steady wins the race - research II: DEATH. Besides being a maker, Merel is the co-founder of Dance Space Destiny: an open space in Amsterdam where community building, artistic exchange, and experimentation are central.