There are still so many gentle things to do. That sentence appears at the top of the Female Economy website, and it captures the essence of the site better than any press release ever could. The Amsterdam-based theater company creates theater to engage deeply with “the Other,” and has been doing so for more than twenty-five years with a radicalism that few Dutch companies can match.
Everything can and must be made public
At the helm is Adelheid Roosen, a theater maker and artistic director whose work is set just as easily in urban neighborhoods as in large theaters. She doesn’t shy away from any topic: honor killings, domestic violence, sexuality in the Muslim world, her mother’s Alzheimer’s, and saying goodbye on stage alongside a dying friend. Everything can and must be made public.
The foundation of her work is the so-called adoption method. Since 2010, actors and theater artists have been staying with local residents to truly reflect on themselves through encounters with new strangers. They hop on their bikes, ring residents’ doorbells, and let themselves be “adopted”; they literally sleep in their beds for several weeks and eat the food prepared by their own hands. The scenes emerge from those shared lives. The method has taken root around the world, from neighborhoods in Tehran to Mexico City, and from Tangier and Suriname to an asylum seekers’ center in Utrecht.
Adelheid Roosen (l) met Katrien van Beurden (r)
No contradiction
Female Economy is a collective of Dutch and foreign nationals, outsiders, and neighborhood nomads, whose mission is to address a social issue through an art form and transform it into an inspiring new proposal. Real-life stories serve as the starting point. The name “Female Economy” celebrates the power of feminine values. Not as a contrast, but as a complement to a world that has been operating on a different wavelength for too long.
Tireless advocate
Recognition followed: Among other honors, Roosen received the Harper’s Bazaar Woman of the Year People’s Choice Award, the Gilder/Coigney International Theatre Award in New York for artistic excellence, the Van Praag Prize as a tireless advocate for humanity, and, in 2023, the Cultuurfonds Prize for her exceptional contribution to culture.
The Procession
In June 2026, you can join Female Economy, Troupe Courage, Calefax, and Cappella Amsterdam De Stoet Walking: a 2.5-hour theatrical experience through Amsterdam (Nieuw-)West, directed by Katrien van Beurden, featuring a four-meter-tall puppet, live music by Calefax and Cappella Amsterdam, and stories about grief, saying goodbye, and the will to live. Adelheid Roosen puts it this way:
“The funeral procession has left the city, and I want it back. The significance of this has been forgotten. The procession is a transformative journey through the city, filled with cultural rituals in which everyone participates and, in connection with one another, experiences and shares their grief.”
This is exactly what Female Economy has been building for more than two decades: a place where vulnerability doesn’t have to be hidden away, but can be shared—right out in the open, right in the midst of life.
