The run in the wheels of late capitalism is fading out. What follows, is a collaborative preparation of the ground for a sustainable future. Energy transition means retreating from fossil fuels and shifting more and more to regenerative sources of energy.

If we look at this process through the perspective of the body, questions arise: How can I protect myself from exhaustion and end (self)exploitation? What helps me to regenerate my energy? What are the sources I access for this purpose? How can we support each other in this process?

The dance performance runners sets out to investigate how loops of exhaustion can be transformed and modulated as continuous processes of recalibration, regeneration and resourcing.

In a universe situated on the edge of the now between future pasts and ancient futures, the performers are navigating through technological and virtual forms of labour, which we are developing, cultivating and projecting today.

The runners’ bodies are multidimensional: deeply material, fully vibrational, really virtual and still just totally human.

In a field of information between quantum physics, agriculture, sports, labour and dance, the runners are modulating energetic structures in shared responsibility to explore possibilities of collaborative regeneration.

Foto: Alicja Hoppel

PROTEST4 / documentary devised theatre, 2020, 120min, German and English
Theater Erlangen, premiere 12.09.20
Winning concept of the Regienachwuchswettbewerb 2020 (young stage direction contest) at Theater Erlangen / Vol. IV Umbrüche
supported by Goethe Institute Chile
photos: Jochen Quast

PRESS

Extract from Nachtkritik / the Regienachwuchswettbewerb 2020 (Young Stage Direction Competition) jury's statement :

"The concept is convincing on several levels: It is theatrical, open to real encounters, pursues a concrete political approach yet manages to appear both playful and light. The concentrated energy, the uncompromising seriousness, the curiosity about other people and their lives and last but not least the humour of the submitted concept give hope for a project that manages to connect and enrich different people in different countries.”
FULL ARTICLE (GERMAN)

Extract from Erlanger Nachrichten, 15.09.20:
"The winner of the Erlangen Theatre's Young Directors Competition does not venture onto dramaturgical ice, but thinks through her subject and its staging in all directions. (...) A multi-perspectival juxtaposition and coexistence that serves its purpose perfectly (...) The director cunningly lets the actors stage the possibilities and pitfalls of the play. (...). A daring, but functioning course.
FULL ARTICLE (GERMAN)

Extract from Bayrischen Staatzeitung, 18.09.20:
"The (theatre) here becomes a reflection of the real world, a space for reflection. PROTEST4 clearly has a political dimension that informs but not in a schoolmaster way. The viewer is left to think for himself (...) Chamber theatre - with immediate proximity to what is happening - which sharpens the view of the subject and makes one ask about motives and those rebelling. The winning concept works, remains exciting and lively throughout."
FULL ARTICLE (GERMAN)

PROTEST 4 focuses on the personal stories of young protesters from Beirut, Santiago de Chile and Hong Kong and their relation to the social movements.
What would prompt me – actor, theatre maker, member of the audience, member of a society – to take to the streets. What kind of circumstances, events, coincidences make a person change from being a (mere) observer to being an active protester? And what can we learn here from each other – geographical, national and cultural borders notwithstanding?

„He's gotta be strong, and he's gotta be fast, and he's gotta be fresh from the fight.“
BE MY MAN is a play about men. It tries to be an honest portrait of young manhood in the 21th century, by reflecting the role of men in our society and showing a new healthy manliness in a playfull and self aware way. The actors talk about their life experiences and their own manlyness. Fears, insecurities, desires and dreams, community and pressure, rock bands and sport teams. An uncompromising evening in which they talk about things the actors, and probably most men never talk about.

People stuck in the mud for years, overcrowded tent camps, illegal push-backs at sea. The catastrophic situation for refugees off and on the Greek island of Lesbos reveals the impending failure of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Five characters - based on five real experts and selected in a months-long research process - tell their stories and perspectives: A Greek farmer whose 300-year-old olive trees are repeatedly cut down by refugees for firewood, a German human rights lawyer from Bavaria who stands up against post-colonial injustice in Moria, a former Greek NGO worker, the Austrian political scientist and architect of the EU-Turkey deal Gerald Knaus and the Swedish EU Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, who is working on her challenging mission. The audience finds itself in the middle of conflicting perspectives and is guided by a voice who has survived arriving in Europe.

What do places like Moria say about us as Europeans, what do they say about the European idea? Looking at international law and agreements such as the Geneva Conventions: who bears political responsibility for the humanitarian situation and the violations at the EU borders?

In Landschaft im Sturz Icarus draws circles at the bottom of the sea long named after him. Around the abstract sculpture on the mirror-smooth stage and around himself. This Icarus questions his story, tries to remember, to make himself understood to us, and he rages. Who should hold the narration about what his flight and fall means? Who is to know wether we haven't always left some parts out? Perhaps the over centuries repeated story about the one who wants to fly higher and higher, who presumes to be the hero who overcomes all resistance and is punished for it, who falls and falls - perhaps this story overlooks the essential. The somewhat crooked mouth of Icarus, the time before the much sung about and supposedly failed heroic journey, the father, who himself always flew away from Brueghel's oil painting, while the son disappears into the sea. "Thanks, Pieter Brueghel, thanks! You must paint me, but then you paint me as a crazy bum who plops into a pond..."

Landschaft im Sturz reveals itself as an evening in seemingly disparate images - and in different disciplines - when we suddenly discover a naturalistic installation in the ebbing of the desperately comical monologue monolith of Icarus in our backs, behind the rows of seats. This installation is not a great myth of the world conquest, nor is it the meaningful emptiness of the seabed or the theatre stage: a simple living room, a narrowly defined space of an old woman - a relative? - who reads in her armchair, who quietly mumbles about what she has lost, sometimes looking out of the window into a landscape that may only vaguely coincide with what she remembers.

The following third picture of Landschaft im Sturz is again a completely different one, but perhaps it is a parenthesis: At first on the TV, but soon also on the big screen in the background of the stage, the astronaut appears in his capsule, fresh from the dream factory, with the right soundtrack, with the right messages from Earth. Is he the missing person? Will he carry out the attempt for which Icarus is atoning over?

In Svenja Viola Bungartens drittem Stück MARIA MAGDA trifft Horror auf Diskurs. Maria ist eine Schläferin und wird von ihren verzweifelten Eltern auf ein Kloster-Internat für schwer erziehbare Mädchen geschickt. Es heißt im Kloster der Magdalenerinnen sei einst der Hexenjäger Heinrich Kramer bei lebendigem Leibe verbrannt worden. Es heißt sein Geist geht um. Oder ist es doch der heilige Geist höchstpersönlich? Erst vor zwei Monaten ist ein Mädchen verschwunden. Das Mädchen, in dessen Bett nun Maria schlafen soll. Was verheimlicht ihre neue Zimmernachbarin Magda, welche verborgenen Kräfte schlummern in ihrer Freundin Hildie und was summt die Oberschwester Mutter Väterin nachts allein auf dem Gang vor sich hin? Wer ist hier Hexe und wer ist Nonne? War die unbefleckte Empfängnis in Wirklichkeit eine Vergewaltigung? Und ist Gott eigentlich ein Hund namens Chayenne? In MARIA MAGDA dekonstruiert Bungarten schonungslos misogyne, antifeministische und ausbeutende Erzählungen von Weiblichkeit und Sexualität. Dieses Stück ist ein Gewaltakt und eine Persiflage auf das Patriarchat.

Ispired by the means of popculture and social media we tell the myth of Orpheo in all it´s inconsistency and plurality with a postmodern gaze where information is democratised.

HOLD ME TIGHTS was an evening with several performances. I did a 20min long performance about "The society of singularities" by Andreas Reckwitz.