26e Editie: “WIJ GAAN ERVOOR!"

Theater aan de Schie opened on the Stadserf in Schiedam on 15 April 1998 with a series of trial performances, followed by the official inauguration on 12 September 1998. It replaced a much older cultural landmark: the Passage Theater, a cinema built in 1933 that had been the site of the first Dutch sound film before closing in 1982 and being demolished in 1994 to make way for the De Nieuwe Passage shopping centre. The current building was designed by architect Hans Ruijssenaars and features a spacious foyer and a main auditorium that now holds 800 seats after an expansion of 100 seats in 2022, with sightlines described as uniformly good from throughout the hall. A second, smaller space, the Wennekerpand on the Vijgensteeg in Schiedam's historic centre, seats 204 and hosts around 30 productions per season. The two venues are about five minutes apart on foot, and Theater aan de Schie itself is within five minutes of Schiedam Centrum railway station. The annual programme runs to roughly 150 professional theatre productions and 200 additional events, covering a wide range of genres and age groups. Concerts, opera, ballet, musicals and organ recitals all feature regularly. The organ connection has a particular resonance here: the Dutch Organ Federation organises recitals at the venue, and in 2025, as part of Schiedam's 750th anniversary, a celebratory organ concert was given by Hague organist Patrick Hopper alongside the Koninklijk Schiedams Mannenkoor Orpheus and the Koos Mark Bigband. On the popular music side, recent seasons have brought in artists including Danny Vera, Trijntje Oosterhuis, Fay Claassen and The Kik. In the 2017 to 2018 season the theater welcomed around 105,000 visitors, and the 2023 to 2024 season marked its 25th anniversary. The organization was nominated three consecutive years, in 2016, 2017 and 2018, by the ANWB for the title of Most Hospitable Theater in the Netherlands.