Festival is over

Tilmann Broszat, Leiter des Festivals:
„Spielart ist so jung wie nie, das konnte man in den vergangenen 17 Tagen deutlich sehen, am Publikum ebenso wie an unseren Künstlern. Aus den Netzwerken, die seit Jahren ausdauernd geknüpft wurden, erwachsen ganz neue Aspekte und Perspektiven. Und dass es Gäste gibt, die uns seit so vielen Jahren die Treue halten und das Bild dieses Festivals kontinuierlich mitprägen, ist wunderbar. Spielart ist ein Organismus, der sich auf einer stabilen Basis ständig erneuert. Darüber freue ich mich ganz besonders.“

Münchens Kulturreferent Dr. Hans-Georg Küppers stellt fest:
„Spielart hat zum 9. Mal bewiesen, dass ein Münchner Festival für neue Theaterformen nicht nur ein Präsentations-, sondern vor allem auch ein generationenübergreifender Diskursort mit sozialer und internationaler Relevanz ist. Es ist fest verankert in München, seinen Institutionen und Szenen, es ist aber auch ein kultureller Global Player auf hohem Niveau - genau wie die beiden Spielmotor-Partner, das Kulturreferat und die BMW Group. Wir können gespannt sein, wie uns Tilmann Broszat, Gottfried Hattinger und ihr Team zum zehnjährigen Jubiläum fordern werden."

Dr. Thomas Girst, Leiter BMW Group Kulturengagement:
„Zukunft braucht Herkunft‘, hat Odo Marquardt einmal bemerkt. Im Jahr 2012 feiert die BMW Group vierzig Jahre kulturelles Engagement. Auch wenn das Unternehmen mittlerweile von Mexico City bis Melbourne und von New York bis Neu Delhi kulturelle Partnerschaften langfristig initiiert, so bleiben Kooperationen in unserer Heimatstadt München für uns essentiell. Wenn es sich dabei um ein derart herrliches, internationales Theaterfestival wie Spielart handelt, das alle zwei Jahre die ganze Welt in München begrüßt, dann freuen wir uns umso mehr über diesen anspruchsvollen Beitrag zum interkulturellen Austausch.“

Laboratorische Gemeinschaften

Fast drei Wochen lang war DO TANK das Labor des Festivals. Internationale Künstler verschiedener Disziplinen fanden sich zu einer temporären Gemeinschaft zusammen und entwickelten zahlreiche Projekte - politisch korrektes Schlafen, Schwitzen im Dampfbad, Wal-Tänze, öffentliche Interventionen und utopische Diskussionen.








Fotos: Simon Emmerlich

You take what you want from Theatre

If you need to deconstruct something to the point of kitty litter then please do it with a little care and a little context.

It seems rare for someone who regularly swallows, digests and regurgitates performance art to taste it. For once my experience of a performance was perhaps, if I can admit it… a little personal. I cringe at this compassion (which is telling).

Perhaps it’s because I make things like this too?

One-woman-shows-at-angst-o’clock.

But tonight this chick made something I have been trying to do for so long and it gives me hope and confidence that a single woman on a stage with a microphone is not only legitimate, but vital.

Von Phoebe Marsh

How to not do things with words

The visual layering of different projections on stage and the many simultaneously spoken texts in the piece Lyrics only have one goal: They should overwhelm the audience so much that the message of each passage gets blurry. The resulting confusion is the concept. It is the same feeling the teenagers on stage have. How can we still rebel against something when our parents have already done it? How can we create open spaces for ourselves when there are no real restrictions and everything is permitted? How can we cope with this flood of possibilities?

These feelings are not new, thinking about Bret Easton Ellis’ novel "Less Than Zero" e.g. Lyrics’ lacks the courage to take a stand though but prefers a disguise, even if it opens up discourses in the first place. Too bad, because those are exciting!

Von Constantin John

As a Mentor and formal advisor, René Pollesch offers Helene Hegemann the opportunity to find a way to express herself. The young and progressive energy she inherits is shown on stage by using Polleschs typical style: a stream of words - written and told, the mixture of media and the impossibility of the audience to understand the whole piece. We are witnesses of a collaboration, which shows the fears of a young generation fraught with uncertainty, illustrated by using the most important parts of a well going party night: good music, friends, cigarettes, playfulness, hilarity and a bit of seriousness. The honesty and frankness Hegemann uses to talk about her generation makes her vulnerable to be attacked by critics, but also makes her a leader of a doubtful generation. Let’s see if she can lead us the way out of the fog of uncertainty.

Von Jan Beller

The actor´s biggest reward is applause. One might think. But Helene Hegemann, this intellectual teenager-Janis Joplin, does not even appear on stage at the end of her play, although she is not only the writer and one of the directors – the other one is Kathrin Krottenthaler – but also one of the actors. The other performers do face the audience. But they seem bored and quite uninterested in the reaction of the spectators. One could even get the impression that they are making fun of them. And this after a performance which was in large parts acoustically incomprehensible, amateurishly acted and nearly without any story.

The behavior of teenagers, which brought our professor to the question: Do they even want to be liked? Well, everyone wants to be liked, even and especially teenagers. But this group does not want to make a great effort for it. Maybe because they cannot fail when they do not even try.

But it is not important whether the bad quality is intended or results from a lack of talent. This is just a group of teenagers doing bad and unentertaining theatre. And the fact that they can do that is the big message of their performance. It´s not theatre, but a comment on it.

Von Christina Lenzen

Who never stumbles has no place to fall...

The performance started while everybody was waiting. Creating a new puppet-friend out of clay. Creating a new population. Whistling together created a connection with the place and the other spectators. But then the Mother came to destroy.

Von Daria Lo Sapio

The atmosphere evolves very differently during the show, first very subtly, a delicate interaction of light and shadow, sound and silence. Then there follows a furiously aggressive outburst destroying everything in its way. The whole experience ends with a single person sitting on stage almost naked, wearing a pagan-like mask made of dried leaves. The use of light and shadow in combination with sounds suggests ancient rituals and divinity.

Von Henriette Hufgard

"I thought we've been playing fighting"

Boxes are on stage. The playground is set. The cave men appear together with beards on their face, trainers on their feet. They sit, they yell, they sing and they play fighting. I laugh, watch and remember those times. They take us back to childhood, to our conflicts and to those small moments that we treasure with a sweet-sour taste. That is exactly what you get from Jake and Pete: The performance is honest, human and creative. It leaves you thinking. I couldn’t ask for more.

Von Bartosz Bandura

A piece of physical performance which contains a lot of symbols and songs. Does simple physical action can become an emotional meaningful expression?

Von Karol Pruciak

“Siblings. Even if we do not know how much you bothered ...
When the danger of a second coming will not hurt ...
We tease each other, but others cannot,
Because I do not love us like we do each other ...
And that's our strength.”

Two brothers...! Boxes...! Sound...”Aaaaa!” ² and... a hair dryer

This is a beautiful story about two brothers, which try to convince us, that their love is much deeper as they show.

Von Josephine Sautier

And even if the world grows old, the human remains a child…

In their “play” - in all his impacts - Jakob and Pieter Ampe abduct us in the more or less distant, well-known world of childhood, of siblings’ relationship. With meticulous accuracy in the matter of “building bricks”, supreme creativity in the hiding of thoroughly full-grown bodies, remarkable skills in the using of their vocal cords (let’s say from a certain dissonance to a special treat of “life-music-presentation in two voices plus special effects as sound changing-box-installation”) they let us experience endless fun. No politics, no moralizing, no criticism. Instead all the more of subtle humor - a welcome alternation to the occasionally heavy stuff we get presented by the Spielart Festival!

Von Katarzyna Baran

From the moment that brothers Ampe appeared on the stage they were in hundred percent present here, now. They didn't have to 'act' in some exaggerated way and create characters. Peter and Jakob represented this kind of actor's presence, which is absolutely required to keep performance on the professional and interesting level.

Collaboration with boxes on the stage showed perfectly differences between body flexibility and stiff geometry of wooden object and how the body is trying to adapt to limitations.

Von Katarzyna Gocal

The performance is the bodily story about friendship. The body language turns out to be a universal medium, which is clearer to the audience than anything else. Body speaks stronger than any intellectual messages.

Von Elena Carr

It was fun. They were there, on stage, being children again – maybe not even again – being young boys somewhere between playing, trying out, experiencing possibilities, annoying each other, fighting and finding each other again – being best friends again.

Von Daniela Komedera

Performers built dramaturgy by relationship between brothers and between voice and movement. On the beginning they screamed. It was without any reason to do it- like children, who use this kind of expression, but after, they very often do not remember why they did it.

Von Sandra Dreher

What is it to be siblings? It is definitely not easy: Innocent teasing turns into a physical competition of the question who is the stronger one; An attempt of emotional expression from the one side meets sarcastic refusal from the other one.

- "I thought we´ve been playing fighting"
- "No, we´ve been just playing Twister"
Jakob & Pieter Ampe

Social Fictions II

Das Diskurs- & Performance-Happening übte sich vergangenen Sonntag in der Kunst des Protests.


Protest Literature

“Theater is a transformation of reality into fiction”. I had to think a lot about this sentence, said by Sanja Mitrovic at the Social Fiction Happening. Transforming reality into fiction means transform reality into a possibility of protest. The fiction of a reality allows a better one. I, too, like to believe in this utopia. Another sentence of Mitrovic was, as an artist, she wants to have an impact on our society like the suicide bombers of 9/11. How far can you go as a performer to have an impact on life? This question seems to be asked by many performances at the SpielArt Festival.

Von Melanie Pyschny

Sanja Mitrovic's talk Theatre as the existing – theatre as the possible

"People are protesting against everything nowadays: Wall Street, Nuclear Energy, Reconstruction of main stations, Educational Systems, Politics. But if you’re always against everything you can’t move anything forward. If you just keep shouting “No” reasons will obliterate. Protesting has become a part of our event culture, it’s free time activity, it’s random.
It might be dangerous: If you’re filmed and registered as ‘potentially aggressive’. Or you can lose an eye to a water cannon. In some places you might even get arrested and simply disappear.

But please... never stop protesting!
Show your opinion. Block. Discuss. Be part in something. Start thinking for yourself. Show. Shout. Be creative. Don’t stop changing the world."

Von Cornelia von Schwerin

In Social Fictions Lounge