Städtelabor at the Berlin Performing Arts Festival

The festivals of the independent performing arts community – the Berlin Performing Arts Festival and the festivals Favoriten (Dortmund), Hauptsache Frei (Hamburg), 6 tage frei (Stuttgart) and RODEO (Munich) – are coming closer together! 

With Städtelabor, they will each bring two artists from the partner cities to one of the festivals, support their exchanges and networking and make it possible for them to participate in the aesthetic and cultural policy discussions in the host region.   

In 2017, during the Berlin Performing Arts Festival, Städtelabor offered artists from all through Germany the opportunity to travel to Berlin and attend the festival. 

Städtelabor launched in Berlin on June 14, 2017 with the Salon of the Chosen Families, a performative space for discussion and encounters in which the artists got to know each other as well as their different methods of working. Afterward, they met the visiting industry professionals attending the festival and the festival team during the event Who's Here, before the second edition of the Berlin Performing Arts Festival was officially opened. 

During the entire time of the festival, the participants, together with two colleagues from the other four cities, discovered the aesthetics and working methods of more than 120 Berlin productions. They also attended the discussion events in the schedule of programming for visiting industry professionals and benefitted from the diverse networking opportunities provided by the Berlin Performing Arts Festival as well as entering into exchange with Berlin’s independent performing arts community.

After an exciting week, the observations and experiences of the past days were assessed together with the directors of the festivals Favoriten, Hauptsache Frei, 6 tage frei, RODEO and the Berlin Performing Arts Festival. In doing so, the first prospects for possible collaborations in the future were weighed. 

The participating artists were: Katja Beil, Maria Isabel Hagen, Nana Hülsewig, Hyunsin Kim, Carola Lehmann, Fender Schrade, Boris Schwarzmann, Rosalie Wanka, Caitlin van der Maas