Imagine you’re out on the town, having a drink or a coffee, when your table suddenly becomes a stage and the noisy patron turns out to be an actor. The Café Theater Festival (the CTF) is where the performing arts and hospitality meet. Once a year, over the course of four days, dozens of bars, restaurants, coffee houses and other hospitality establishments in Utrecht turn into stages for exciting artists and performers.
Curate your own line-up from a wide variety of performances, from theater, dance, and music to circus acts, and everything in between. For people who do not understand Dutch, we offer a variety of English and dialogue-free performances under the banner of Language No Problem. The respective performances are labeled as such in the program.
The next edition of the CTF will take place March 3-6, 2022 in Utrecht.
For some practical information, keep reading.
For wheelchair users, locations that feature wheelchair accessible entrances and bathrooms on the ground floor are indicated in the program with a wheelchair icon.
It can get very crowded at the CTF. To make sure you don’t end up standing in front of a closed door, keep an eye on our constantly updating crowd gauge in the timetable to see if there is enough room in the locations. We recommend arriving at the location 15 to 30 minutes before the show. Each show lasts no more than 30 minutes.
The CTF uses a Pay What You Can pricing model, meaning we ask attendees to make a voluntary contribution of €4, €7 or €10 after the performance. An average of €7 per visitor is needed for the CTF to break even. Your contribution not only allows us to keep the lights on and pay our staff, partners and performers, but also directly benefits the performer who’s act you just watched, as a share of each contribution goes directly to them.
If a one-time contribution just doesn’t feel like it’s enough, you can support the CTF for the long haul by becoming a so-called Stamgast. Starting at €15 a year, Stamgasten sign up to donate annually, thereby helping us ensure that the festival can continue to take place year after year. Their donations are used to partly cover a wide variety of festival-related costs, from administrative and marketing costs to fees for classes for performers. If you sign up, as a thank you you will receive our Stamgasten newsletter, which will keep you informed about all relevant developments as well as exclusive promotions. As the CTF has an ANBI-status, your annual donation is 125% tax deductible.