Workshop
Documents-Fiction-Falseness by Kai Tuchmann

Fri, 25.01.2019 -
Sun, 27.01.2019
Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Bangalore

Starting Realities | An International Workshop Series on Documentary Theatre
Curated by Anuja Ghosalkar & Kai Tuchmann

The seed for Starting Realities was planted way back in 2013, when Anuja Ghosalkar attended a workshop by German dramaturge Kai Tuchmann, then bangaloREsident@Jaaga. Anuja's interest in documentary theatre continued to grow apace and is now manifest in Starting Realities.

Starting Realities is a workshop series designed to build audiences, pedagogy and new practitioners for documentary theatre in India. A three-city workshop in 2018 was facilitated by Anuja Ghosalkar. Extending from this series, Documents-Fiction-Falseness by Kai Tuchmann, supported by the Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Bangalore flags off the global series in January 2019.

The workshop Documents-Fiction-Falseness investigates the relationship of documentary truth, fiction and falseness.
 
As an entry point participants will look at a Youtube broadcast as a “document”. This is a video clip of Chinese scientist Prof. He Jiankui's claims to be the first to create genetically edited twins. The veracity of this claim remains unproven. However it has been widely covered by major press across the world.

Can social media and self-publishing challenge the working routines and methods of a free and independent press? Is the press a privileged source? What is the impact of these challenges on classical documentary theatre?

In addition, through the workshop process, the questions if and how one can uphold one's own agency while dealing with truth claims associated with documents will be addressed?

The workshop will investigate the fine line between documentary truth and fiction - a relationship in which one part constitutes the other. The participants will also critically examine the promises of authenticity that go along with theatre's utilisation of documents.
 
Participants will be required to bring documents in response to Prof. He’s case. These documents can be in the form of photos, art work, videos, sound, images, gestures, recipes, newspaper articles, case studies.
 
During the two-and-a-half-day workshop, strategies of retelling and re-presenting the varied documents by applying different literary genres - fairy tale, political manifesto and science fiction will be developed. These retellings will be juxtaposed with the alleged realness of the initial document (Prof. He’s video clip) - thus questioning the truth claims of this document and its related discourses, one's own worlds, and what one holds valuable.

On the final day there will be an informal sharing - performances/iterations/responses.

Workshop dates & timings:
January 25, 2019: 7.00 to 9.00 p.m. 
January 26 & 27, 2019: 10.00 a.m. to 4.00 p.m.
 
Limited participation

Kai Tuchmann | Workshop Facilitator

Kai Tuchmann is a German director, dramaturge and programme maker. He graduated from Berlin's Ernst Busch Theatre Academy. He has been Director at several influential German Theatres like Maxim Gorki Theatre, Berlin, German National Theatre Weimar for almost three years. For two seasons he held the position of Head Dramaturge of Mainfranken Theater Würzburg. But it was with his work with people and artists in Palestine, Sudan and Iraq that Kai discovered the potentials of amateurism, collaborative script developments and documentary techniques.
 
Since 2013, Kai refined his interest in these practices through regular collaborations with independent Chinese theatre groups. His collaborations with Shanghai-based Grass Stage were invited to the most prestigious Chinese theatre festival in Wuzhen as well as shortlisted for Berliner Theatertreffens' Stückemarkt. Red, a collaboration with Beijing-based Living Dance Studio, toured Europe (Theaterspektakel Zurich, Festival d`Automne à Paris), Asia (I Dance Hong Kong) and USA (Asia Society New York).

Kai Tuchmann teaches at Beijing Central Academy of Drama, Frankfurt's University of Music and Performing Arts and at the Marvin Carlson Theatre Centre in Shanghai and New York.

Anuja Ghosalkar | Workshop Curator

© Anuja Ghosalkar

Anuja Ghosalkar is the founder and artistic director of Drama Queen. The focus of her art practice is undocumented narratives, archival absences and gender in performance. Research, oral history and iterations around form and process are critical to her performance and pedagogical work. Through her performance company Drama Queen, she is evolving a unique form of documentary theatre in India. The aim is to build pedagogy around this form through a national and international workshop series, leading to Asia’s first festival of Documentary theatre in 2020.