VIRAL THEATRES
Pandemic Past / Hybrid Futures
Symposium
Tieranatomisches Theater Berlin & Streaming
28. – 30. April 2022
Exhibition
Tieranatomisches Theater Berlin
Philippstr. 13, Campus Nord, Haus 3, 10115 Berlin
28. April – 3. Juni 2022
Open to the public, Mo – Fri, 14:00 -18:00
How hybrid is the future of theatre? In what ways has the pandemic changed how we work in theatre and gather in it as a public space?
We would like to invite you to our Exhibition Opening & Symposium Viral Theatres: Pandemic Past/Hybrid Futures as we explore these questions. In three days of events we will take stock of how pandemic time has moved from state of exception to new normality between viral outbreak and containment and what that means for theatrical production.
The exhibition offers a look into the Living Archive with video and audio documents of pandemic theatre making and audience experience via interviews, rehearsal shadowing, video documentation and digital interactions.
The symposium brings together theatre practitioners and scholars in a series of workshop and roundtable discussions and the VR performance experiment “Marionette Theatre 3.0,” specifically developed for this exhibition. The performance collective Fevered Sleep will present their project This Grief Thing. The opening will also feature the guest performance Deep Godot by the independent performance group Interrobang.
THURS, APR 28
DIGITAL & HYBRID SPACES
(events on Thursday take place in German and English)
We are focusing this first day on specific digital theatre projects that have managed to create new worlds and formats, have imagined the role of remote audiences and experimented with streaming beyond the mere idea of broadcasting. How have these performances been developed and what effects did working digitally have on future work processes generally?
14:00 – 15:30 CET Welcome and introduction to the exhibition (Rotunde)
Welcome:
Florian Becker (Bard College Berlin)
Andrew James Johnston (EXC 2020 “Temporal Communities”, FU Berlin)
Doris Kolesch (EXC 2020 “Temporal Communities”, FU Berlin)
Wolfgang Schäffner (EXC “Matters of Activity”, HU Berlin)
Introduction with Viral Theatres – Janina Janke, Ramona Mosse, Christian Stein, Nina Tecklenburg
Marionette Theatre 3.0
with performers: Jungsun Kim & Lajos Talamonti
15:30 – 16:30 CET Panel: Hybride Spiele – Turbo Pascal trifft Interrobang (Helmholtzsaal)
Eva Plischke & Angela Löer & Janina Janke (Turbo Pascal)
Nina Tecklenburg & Lajos Talamonti (Interrobang)
30min Coffee Break // Optional: Marionette Theatre 3.0 with performers Jungsun Kim & Lajos Talamonti
17:00 – 18:00 CET Dialogue: Convening Post/ Pandemic Audiences (Helmholtzsaal)
Doris Kolesch (FU Berlin)
Ben Walmsley (Leeds University)
30min Coffee Break // Optional: Marionette Theatre 3.0 with performers Jungsun Kim & Lajos Talamonti
18:30 – 20:00 CET Panel: Was kann digitale Liveness? (Helmholtzsaal)
Moderated by Ramona Mosse
Lasse Scheiba (Schauspiel Düsseldorf)
Tillmann Drews (Junges DT)
Cosmea Spelleken (punktlive)
Jonny Hoff (punktlive)
15:00 -20:00 CET Performance Interrobang’s Deep Godot (1h time slots available)
Drinks Reception
FRI, APR 29
THE PANDEMIC & SOCIETY
(events on Friday take place in German and English)
On our second day of the symposium, we focus on the political dimension of the pandemic and the radical restrictions on social encounters of any kind and the public sphere at large. How do we have to rethink theatre’s structures and institutions to allow digitality in the arts to flourish and to enable geographically dispersed artistic practice? How does performance address new precarities and questions of trauma, loss, and grief? But also, how can we think about the pandemic as part of the Anthropocene?
13:00 – 14:30 CET Praxis: Exhibition Exploration
or
Praxis: Workshop with Fevered Sleep: This Grief Thing (12 participants)
15min Coffee Break
14:45 – 15:45 CET Dialogue: Pandemic Grief and Other Digital Feelings (Helmholtzsaal)
Moderated by Lindsey Drury
David Harradine (Fevered Sleep/Royal Central School of Speech and Drama)
Fintan Walsh (Birkbeck, London University)
15min Coffee Break
16:00 – 17:30 CET Panel: Expanded Theatre: Welche Infrastrukturen braucht digitales Theater?(Helmholtzsaal)
Moderated by Doris Kolesch
Thomas Fabian Eder (Ludwig Maximilian University Munich)
Rainer Simon (Komische Oper)
Anna Krauß (HAU Hebbel am Ufer Theater)
Ingo Sawilla (Berliner Ensemble)
30min Coffee Break
18:00 – 19:00 CET Praxis: Tour through the Exhibition & Marionette Theatre 3.0
With performers;: Jungsun Kim & Lajos Talamonti
19:00 – 20:00 CET Dialogue/Dialog: The Pandemic and the Anthropocene (Helmholtzsaal)
Moderated by Ramona Mosse
Vicky Angelaki (Mid-Sweden University)
Christiane Kühl (doublelucky productions)
13:00 -19:00 CET Performance Interrobang’s Deep Godot (1h time slots available)
SAT, APR 30
POST/PANDEMIC FUTURES
(events on Saturday take place in English)
What is the future of theatre in the post/pandemic? We will explore this question in our final day of workshops and conversations and provide sites to explore digital technology hands on. How can we imagine theatre and performance differently? Which new paths do we want embark on? Specifically, we focus on the potential of Virtual Reality as another alternate stage.
12:30 – 13:45 CET Praxis: VR as Theatre (Rotunde)
gamelab.berlin: Making Marionette Theatre 3.0
With Performers: Jungsun Kim & Lajos Talamonti
30min Coffee Break
14:15 – 15:15 CET Dialogue: From Mediaturgy to Virality: What Concepts Do We Need for Post/Pandemic Performance? (Helmholtzsaal)
Moderated by Torsten Jost
Miriam Felton-Dansky (Bard College Annandale) – via Zoom
Seda Ilter (Birkbeck, University of London)
15min Coffee Break
15:30 – 17:00 CET Panel: Virtual Stages: XR in performance (Helmholtzsaal)
Moderated by Christian Stein
Sarah Ellis (Royal Shakespeare Company) – via Zoom
Tina Lorenz (Staatstheater Augsburg) – via Zoom
Björn Lengers (Cyberräuber)
Chris Ziegler (movingimages.de)
30min Coffee Break // Optional: Marionette Theatre 3.0 with performers Jungsun Kim & Lajos Talamonti
17:30 – 19:00 CET Panel: Theatre’s Hybrid Futures (Helmholtzsaal)
Moderated by Nina Tecklenburg
Christian Rakow (Nachtkritik)
Magda Romanska (Harvard metalab; theatertimes.com) – via Zoom
Ulf Otto (LMU)
13:00 -19:00 CET Performance Interrobang’s Deep Godot (1h time slots available)
The Viral Theatres Research Project, a collaboration of the Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt University Berlin & Bard College Berlin, is funded by the VolkswagenFoundation. The Opening/Symposium is co-financed by the Research Project “Extended Audiences” at the EXC 2020 “Temporal Communities” and takes place with kind support from the metalab@Harvard, the Harvard University Mahindra Humanities Center and the Open Society University Network.
