Museumnacht: The Archive Is Alive
Nov 7
Internationaal Theater Amsterdam
An archive isn't only found in boxes. It's also in your body, your voice, and the stories you carry with you. During Museumnacht, performers, musicians, and artists bring this living archive to life.
The archive is alive. Let’s unbox it.
- Date
- November 7, 2026
- Duration
- 420 min, no interval
- Genre
- Perspective
- Language
- English
- Location
- Bookshop
An archive doesn't only live in documents, display cases, or boxes of acid-free paper. It lives in bodies, voices, rhythms, alter egos, desires, and stories that keep haunting us from generation to generation. Some pages are missing. Some stories were never written down. It's precisely there that space emerges for new stories and imagination. Who ends up in an archive, and who doesn't? Which stories do we preserve, and which are in danger of disappearing? During Museumnacht, makers look at what we inherit, what we pass on ourselves, and how we make room for stories that have long gone unrecorded. At The Bookshop, the archive literally comes to life this evening. Alter egos appear, bodies tell stories, and old music sounds again.
Free admission with a Museumnacht wristband, or sign up for free via the website.
Tickets and times
Zaïre Krieger
7:30 PM and 10:30 PM
Who says you can only be one version of yourself? During Museumnacht, the blue-scaled, extraterrestrial, foul-mouthed alter ego Zireïa takes over Zaïre Krieger. She introduces us to other versions of Zaïre who don't easily fit into a box.
Theatre maker and pianist Djuwa Mroivili combines music, words, and movement into a form of storytelling all their own. Perhaps Djuwa's underwater alter ego Mx. CoelaCunt will also surface: a glittering being who is fish, human, auntie, ancestor, god, archive, and griot all at once, and deliberately remains elusive and undocumented.
Kyara Harley
8:30 PM and 0:30 AM
Kyara Harley builds her own worlds. Inspired by fashion, ballroom culture, and music, she transforms The Bookshop into the Mothership during Museumnacht.
At its heart plays her hit Activate, Kyara's explosive empowerment Pride anthem. Heavy drums, pumping bass, and ballroom attitude form a call to the girls, the gays, and allies: take up space, move loudly, and refuse to be erased.
Foxy Roxy
9:30 PM and 11:30 PM
What can a body preserve? London performer Roxanne Pratt, also known as Foxy Roxy, tells stories through pole dance, twerk, heels, and body language.
Drawing on her Sierra Leonean and Zimbabwean background, she sees the body as a living archive. Rhythms, memories, sensuality, joy, and resilience live on in the way we move. With her performance, Roxanne doesn't just tell those stories, she passes them on.
DJ NYAMECMPLX
11:00 - 11:30 PM
0:00 - 0:30 AM
1:00 - 1:30 AM
