Amsterdam BANGS x Joe's Garage: Voku; "Soft-Boy Turkish Oil Wrestling", "Tea and Land Stories", "Sesten Sese"
19:00 Voku
BANGS
is an autonomous theatre and performance festival taking place for the third time October 1-4, 2026.
BANGS receives no funding, BANGS raises funds! This year, for Palestine and Lebanon.
Volkseten Vegazulu is a people’s kitchen existing since the very beginning of Joe’s Garage, June 2005. Your donations are welcome. Food is vegan, no reservation. All benefits go to social & political struggles. Joe’s Garage is a space run by volunteers. Without a collective effort, without your active participation, we’re remaining closed. Get in touch in you feel like giving a hand. We’re always looking for cooks. Any help is welcome in the kitchen. Experience not required. If you want to know which days are still available, mail us.
https://radar.squat.net/en/amsterdam/joes-garage
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20:00 Soft-Boy Turkish Oil Wrestling
Ozan is a Turkish man who failed at toxic masculinity. This combination of stand-up comedy and performance art is a high-energy crash course in cultural subversion and absurd physical clowning. He performed this show at Fusion Festival and various places in Berlin, and now he wants to bring a violently funny, unapologetically weird celebration of modern masculinity to Amsterdam!
By: Ozan Pekmezci
Length: 15-20 min.
Is this suitable for children? No. 18+ preferred (or at least 16+).
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20:30 tea and land stories
Tea and Land Stories, Stories of the cultivation of the cultivator. a middle play (Orta Oyunu, Commedia dell'Arte or what ever ) based on an unwritten script. Kind of a non-musical, it is open to imagination, interactions, and improvisation. “Imagine; One day somebody wanted to drink some tea. they just went to others land, end.” No worries, this is an imaginary story, the only reality is tea. Tea and land is a storytelling performance with melodies and memories while serving some tea to digest stories.
By: kivanc
Length: 30-40 min.
Content Warnings: not a show for nationalist people or who proud of colonial history ( actually this is a show for them to learn about reality <3) . People with migration back ground feel more heavy in this show, im doing my best for my audience to not feel heavy or get trigger.
Is this suitable for children? Yes.
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21:00 Sesten Sese: A Curated Evening of Shared Voices
This evening brings together three musical practices connected through voice, community, and collective memory. Opening with the intimate songwriting of Anllel Maria and Doğa Ak, followed by the mother–child musical practice of Dilden Dile, and concluding with the collective polyphony of Queer Choir Amsterdam, the programme moves between queer community, Anatolian folk traditions, diasporic memory, couragous worlds and intergenerational exchange. Together, these performances invite audiences to experience singing as a living practice of gathering, listening, and carrying stories forward. Doğa and Allel Doğa Ak and Anllel Maria are a kuir duo of songwriters and singers from Turkey and Ecuador, currently based in the Netherlands. Blending their voices through vulnerable songwriting, they compose in English, Spanish, and Turkish.
Their songs explore intimacy, brave other worlds, and shared futures, inviting audiences to tune in, to themselves, to one another, and to the worlds that can be imagined together. Opening the evening, their performance offers a gentle invitation into the programme. Queer Choir Amsterdam Queer Choir Amsterdam is an artistic initiative and a safer space where various queer and trans identities and voices are celebrated and heard. The choir performs original compositions, written by its members and arranged by conductor Vera Morais, in which soundscapes, improvisation and audience participation often play an important role. The choir's songs are rooted in both politics and introspection and allow for authentic forms of self-expression. During rehearsals and performances, choir members give voice to stories they want to share and to ideas about the futures they wish to imagine together. By bringing together many different voices, the choir not only creates new harmonies, but also celebrates the diversity and expressive potential of the human voice.
For this evening, Queer Choir Amsterdam will perform a selection of original repertoire, moving between playful, joyful songs and works rooted in solidarity, resistance, care, and collective imagination.
Dilden Dile is a three year old practicing band rooted in singing, listening, and making music together. It exploresinheritance, memory, language, belonging, and the ways traditions continue to transform through the people who carry them.
Over three years of singing and playing together, Meli, Tuncay and Aydin, usually accompanied by Mürset (Meli’smother) have come to understand music as a language beyond words. Rooted in Anatolian folk traditions, particularly those of the Alevi tradition, while embracing the rich legacy of politically engaged songwriting from Turkey and Kurdistan, Dilden Dile movesthrough the musical worlds of artists including Kazım Koyuncu, Selda Bağcan, Âşık Mahzuni Şerif, Âşık Veysel, and Ahmet Kaya, with a particular affinity for the musical landscapes of the Black Sea (Karadeniz).
At its heart, Dilden Dile is an invitation to gather around songs that have travelled across generations and regions.Turkish-speaking audiences are especially invited to sing along, remember, and recognize melodies that may already live within them. In this shared act of listening and singing, the songs return to what they have always been: living traditions, shared, transformed,and passed from voice to voice.
By: The Queer Choir Amsterdam, Dilden Dile, and Anllel & Doğa
Length: 1½-2 hours.
Content Warnings: no
Is this suitable for children? Not specific but they can be there
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Part of Amsterdam BANGS, an autonomous theatre and performance festival taking place all over the city, Oct. 1-4, raising funds in support of Palestine and Lebanon. All shows are free or on donation. More info on the website https://amsterdambangs.nl/bangs-2026-programme