Nina van Tongeren

Nina van Tongeren (1999) is a Dutch playwright and dramaturge. Since 2022 she has been a permanent dramaturge and in-house playwright at De Toneelmakerij, a theater for young audiences in Amsterdam. In 2024, she wrote Giselle (8+), a radical stage adaptation of classical ballet that deals with classism. Nina completed her studies at the Utrecht University of the Arts (HKU) in 2022 with the youth theater piece Ndumbé and the Wolf Gang (9+) and a theoretical work on the meaning of meaningful representation in theater. In the same year, she wrote Swimming to Ndakaaru (8+) with De Toneelmakerij and Urban Myth, a story about the lingering effects of colonial history from an African perspective. Their play KUCKUCKSNEST (10+) is about two sisters whose mother climbs onto the school roof one day and can't get down. It was awarded the Kaas & Kappes Prize for the best youth theater text in the German-Dutch language area in 2024. Together with the head dramaturge of De Toneelmakerij, Paulien Geerlings, Nina also writes and researches representation, care dramaturgies and the position of marginalized voices in the performing arts. She is currently writing Dachshund for Amsterdam's Theater Bellevue - her first play for an adult audience - which will premiere in 2026.