For 10 days in September, Amsterdam is in the grip of the stage arts, with the Dutch Theatre Festival and the accompanying Fringe Festival taking place from 1 to 11 September. While the Dutch Theatre Festival revisits last season's most successful productions, the Fringe ensures that avant-garde theatre isn't left behind.

Staging around 80 productions by cutting-edge home-grown and international producers and artists at over 25 locations, the Amsterdam Fringe Festival turns the entire city into a stage. From theatres to clubs, the streets and even living rooms, the eccentricity that is the Fringe occupies the edges of both stage and performance with all the bizarre, brooding and brilliant performance art we've come to attribute to fringe festivals from live art, theatre, musical theatre, comedy and dance.

With such a fantastic line-up of international productions, the festival promises a wide selection of events that are 'Language No Problem' (i.e. accessible to non-Dutch speakers), for those whose Nederlands is not quite up to scratch. Look for the 'LNP' marker just to be sure.

http://www.fringefestival.nl/

On September 10th, get across the river to the former NSDM shipyard for Festival 5D, a happening that stimulates all the senses with a combination of theater, music, food, workshops and more. Try eating in a pitch-dark restaurant, making a hudge spider web or dance the samba. Come see, hear, feel, smell and taste!

http://www.festival5d.nl/

September - Valtifest - On Saturday, 3 September, the wild child of Amsterdam's summer festival programme comes to the NDSM-Wharf in Amsterdam Noord. With a heavyweight line-up of DJs playing dance, electro and thumping house as well as dubstep, hip-hop and punk, Valtifest caters to all tastes. 

There's as much for the eyes as for there is for the ears at Valtifest, as the festival changes its dress code theme each year. And almost all festivalgoers take this very seriously. This year, the theme is 'All in the Family'. Confused? A wide range of possible interpretations is encouraged: think Sisters of Mercy, Daddy Cool, Meeting of the Partridge and the Manson families...

Your Name In Lights (1 - 26 June) - The Holland Festival and the Stedelijk Museum jointly present the interactive artwork Your Name in Lights by John Baldessari, one of America’s best-known Conceptual artists. This extraordinary artwork will be installed on Museumplein from June 1 to 26, 2011.

Your Name in Lights draws on our society’s obsession with celebrity and recalls Andy Warhol’s oft-quoted statement from 1968, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” Inspired by historic markers of show-biz celebrity, such as the neon lights on Broadway and the marquees of Hollywood cinemas, Baldessari offers spectators a chance to seize 15 seconds of fame by presenting their names on a 30-metre L.E.D. screen.

Your Name in Lights premiered as the 23rd Kaldor Public Art Project, in collaboration with the 2011 Sydney Festival; its appearance in Amsterdam is the second and only other planned presentation of the work.

http://www.yournameinlights.nl/about-this-project/