Theaterlabor Bielefeld: Meanwhile, in a parallel universe
Ort: Calgary
Ereignis: Das Goethe-Institut Toronto zeigt die erste Tournee von “Body Fragments”, einer Performance des deutschen Ensembles “Theaterlabor Bielefeld”.
In the early 1980s, when One Yellow Rabbit started stirring up the local scene, another experimental theatre troupe was getting started in West Germany. At this year's High Performance Rodeo, the doppelgängers appear in the same festival for the first time. […] For Michael Green and Siegmar Schröder, the experience [of their first meeting] was invigorating, not least because it took place in Prague and beer was involved. The two theatre artists--Schröder is the artistic director of the German company Theaterlabor, Green is a founding member of One Yellow Rabbit and curates its annual High Performance Rodeo--met at an international theatre festival in the Czech city eight years ago. […] "I started to understand that Siegmar's [Theaterlabor Bielefeld] company was ensemble-based, it was started in 1983 and had its own theatre," he says. "They have a school, they create their own work--the more he spoke, the more it started to sound familiar." […] Bielefeld is not Berlin or Hamburg, just as Calgary is not Montreal or Toronto. And starting a theatre company in these smaller centres can have advantages. […] Theaterlabor [was] committed to experimentation and developing its own style. And for that, a small, somewhat isolated city is often ideal. […] These initial experiments were done in a kind of vacuum. The artists were focused only on the work, and didn't really think about their influences or about similar projects in theatre history. "The discussions about esthetics and different approaches and methods came later," Schröder says. […Now,] the Rabbits have organized a tour for Theaterlabor that includes performances in Lethbridge, Edmonton, Toronto and Montreal. […] Body Fragments […]"re-paints" [Bacon’s images] with movement and juxtapose[s them] with the words of, among others, the influential French actor and director of the 1920s and '30s, Antonin Artaud, and the American absurdist George W. Bush. […] It is probably fitting that when these two companies finally appear in the same festival the differences between them will be highlighted. It will become clear that, although both are grounded in experimentation, their inquiries have yielded divergent results. Still, the fundamental goal of all these artists is the same. […]
Ereignis: Das Goethe-Institut Toronto zeigt die erste Tournee von “Body Fragments”, einer Performance des deutschen Ensembles “Theaterlabor Bielefeld”.
In the early 1980s, when One Yellow Rabbit started stirring up the local scene, another experimental theatre troupe was getting started in West Germany. At this year's High Performance Rodeo, the doppelgängers appear in the same festival for the first time. […] For Michael Green and Siegmar Schröder, the experience [of their first meeting] was invigorating, not least because it took place in Prague and beer was involved. The two theatre artists--Schröder is the artistic director of the German company Theaterlabor, Green is a founding member of One Yellow Rabbit and curates its annual High Performance Rodeo--met at an international theatre festival in the Czech city eight years ago. […] "I started to understand that Siegmar's [Theaterlabor Bielefeld] company was ensemble-based, it was started in 1983 and had its own theatre," he says. "They have a school, they create their own work--the more he spoke, the more it started to sound familiar." […] Bielefeld is not Berlin or Hamburg, just as Calgary is not Montreal or Toronto. And starting a theatre company in these smaller centres can have advantages. […] Theaterlabor [was] committed to experimentation and developing its own style. And for that, a small, somewhat isolated city is often ideal. […] These initial experiments were done in a kind of vacuum. The artists were focused only on the work, and didn't really think about their influences or about similar projects in theatre history. "The discussions about esthetics and different approaches and methods came later," Schröder says. […Now,] the Rabbits have organized a tour for Theaterlabor that includes performances in Lethbridge, Edmonton, Toronto and Montreal. […] Body Fragments […]"re-paints" [Bacon’s images] with movement and juxtapose[s them] with the words of, among others, the influential French actor and director of the 1920s and '30s, Antonin Artaud, and the American absurdist George W. Bush. […] It is probably fitting that when these two companies finally appear in the same festival the differences between them will be highlighted. It will become clear that, although both are grounded in experimentation, their inquiries have yielded divergent results. Still, the fundamental goal of all these artists is the same. […]
von Bruce Weir, Calgary Herald, 9. Februar 2009
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