JULY 5: MUSIC IMPROV SPECTACULAR WITH MAYOR FEMKE HALSEMA

Music Improv Spectacular with Mayor Femke Halsema

Opening night at the 3rd Annual Boom Chicago Comedy Festival!

Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema joins the current cast on stage to open the 2023 Boom Chicago Comedy Festival. Music Improv Spectacular features local and international heros to tell personal stories that inspire the comedy show. Then the actors take it form there to create original, improvised scenes, characters and songs about our guest. On this special, festival opening night, that storyteller is our mayor.

Mayor Halsema (1966) grew up in the bright lights and big city of Enschede. Trained as a criminologist, she has held many public positions including party leader in the Tweede Kamer (House of Representatives) and head of GroenLinks.

In 2011 she left national politics to make a more practical contribution to solving social problems. Since her departure, she worked as a director in business, culture and semi-public sector and of course mayor. Halsema published her political memoirs Plush and wrote the essay for the month of philosophy Power and imagination. Halsema has lived in Amsterdam since her student days, now with her husband and their two children.

This is actually Halsema’s second comedy performance with Boom Chicago. In 2010, she joined Pep Rosenfeld, Greg Shapiro and Dutch polster Maurice de Hond live in the interview-comedy show Political Party. Pep and Greg (from Trump Up the Volume) are currently performing Pep and Greg Save America leading up to the American presidential election.

All proceeds from this event will be donated to InterActing, a non-profit theater school for teenagers with autism. Learn more about InterActing here.