Participants 2018

AGENTUR FÜR ANERKENNUNG is a performance company as well as a platform for social recognition. Next to literary and theoretical texts we particularly focus on personal experiences of the participating artists. We condense their stories to dramatic scenes, and by adding comments, songs and various stage actions we develop an adequate form for each of our topics. Through this personal approach we invite our audience to participate in our research into new forms of society.

Anat, born in Israel, is a singer, songwriter artist and a vocalist with European as well as Yemenite roots. She toured with her band in Germany, performed in festivals such as Pop d’europe, Rudolstadt Festival, Morgenland Festival and many more. She has won the Ruth prize and the Musica Vitale prize. Her discography includes the albums: Zoriya’s Reaction, I will be whatever I will be and Olam, amongst other musical collaborations. Her music and singing were featured in some Israeli as well as German film. Anat has created a few solo shows and Love Style is her most recent musical work in the art of documentary.
Anat is also a vocal instructor who made a breakthrough in reality shows. She helps artists to find their authentic voice.  Anat experiences music and especially the human voice as a tool for deep insights.

The artist collective andcompany&Co. was founded in Frankfurt am Main in 2003 by Alexander Karschnia, Nicola Nord and Sascha Sulimma. Working together as co-directors, they form an open network that new artists from various disciplines are constantly joining, working at the interface of theater & theory and politics & practice. andcompany&Co. is based in Berlin at HAU Hebbel am Ufer, with other co-producers including the FFT Düsseldorf and the Künstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt am Main. The group is regularly invited to international theater festivals. Aside from performances, andcompany&Co. often develops lecture-concerts, play developments with ensemble actors as well as audio plays.

Andrea Posca was born the September 20, 1985 in Corigliano Calabro (Cosenza, Italy). At the age of 22, he began his studies at the drama academy Scuola di teatro Colli in Bologna. After he graduated, he received a Master’s of Arts in Rome at EUTHECA – European Union Academy of Theatre and Cinema, Rom. He is a multiple award winner of Italian theater competitions such as the Monologue Festival of Cassano allo Ionio and Rogliano in the province of Cosenza. In January 2014, he moved to Berlin to broaden his horizions in the art world. It was in Berlin where he decided in 2016 to revive The Story of a Tiger.

Andrew Kerton is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work has centered around performance and includes video, drawing and sculpture. He received his BA in sculpture at Brighton University before attending de Ateliers post-graduate studio program in Amsterdam. His work has been seen internationally including at the ICA, London, HAU, Berlin and Migros Museum, Zurich. In recent years, he graduated from the SoDA program at HZT, Berlin, having pursued research into somatic awareness, its choreographic potential and conceptual significance. Hannah Holland is an international DJ, music producer and label boss from London, who has remixed the likes of Goldfrapp and Planningtorock. Outside of clubland, she works on theater and film music, as well as playing bass for the band Black Gold Buffalo.

INSTITUTET (SE) is a touring Swedish theater company based in Malmö and Berlin that works to create international alliances within the contemporary performing arts, focusing on critical thinking and an artistic approach to life. INSTITUTET deals with theatrical practices beyond representation and drama. The work has received several awards and continues to search for its own methodology.

Angela Fegers received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the New World School of Arts in Miami Florida. Shortly afterward, she moved to New York City to dance for Erick Montes and Lindy Fines. Here, Angela began to concentrate on choreography and teaching, enjoying regularly presenting her own work. She founded DalioArts in 2013 and has produced since then between Amsterdam and Berlin with Monica Sharon. Together, they have worked in Iceland, German, the Netherlands, New York City and Miama.

After their studies at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts Berlin, long-term engagements followed on Bühnen der Stadt Magdeburg, the Berliner Ensemble, Theater 89 in Berlin, Klassik am Meer and at Shakespeare & Company in New York and Boston. Angelika Perdelwitz has performed numerous leading roles in feature films and television films.

Anna-Lise Marie Hearn and Britt Davis are both dance artists, makers and educators based in Berlin. They have recently collaborated in choreographic, improvisational andperformance practices to connect movement with other mediums of visual, audible and performance art.
VERA is a Berlin-based singer/songwriter.
They began collaborating late 2017, performing the first variation in February 2018, Berlin.

anne&ich is a theater collective including Anne Rietschel & Anton Krause. Previous works at Thalia Theater HH (Ich rufe meine Brüder by J. Khemiri) and with AFROTAK TV cyberNomads (Remains. Eine Rede). Their current piece Wahnsinn aus Heimweh premiered in March at Medizinhistorisches Museum HH. The concept and text for DJIN is co-created with the performer Nils Malten and the media designer/author Ricardo Gehn.

AnniKa von Trier works as a performance artist with voice, accordion, literature and humor. She was a dramaturg and assistant director at Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz from 1992-94 before she began creating her own productions in 1993. Since then, she has performed her stage characters Palma Kunkel, Die Handtaschenträgerin, Mademoiselle Papillon and AnniKa von Trier at theaters and festivals in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, USA, Australia, India, Italy and more.
In 2017, she premiered her Dada performance #DIPTAM # DADA #DIGITALIS or I will not shut up my Loewenmaeulchen – Hommage to Hannah Hoech. She performs her own songs RIGHT NOW! solo and also in a trio with Kalle Mews (drums) and Yoyo Röhm (bass).

Bharata Natyam is a dancer, performer, actor, educator.
Born and brought up in Mumbai, India, I now live and work in Europe. I have been largely concentrating on Indian dance while collaborating with artists practising other dance forms. Having performed extensively as a Bharata Natyam dancer, my focus now is to experiment with contemporary dance, free movement, visual arts and acting techniques.

B.E.T. - Berlin Expat Theatre is a theater-oriented think tank”of eleven artists based in Berlin. B.E.T was founded by Alessandra Giuriola and Michele De Vita Conti in 2017 and its first production was Berlin Parade. The goal of our research, amongst other things, is trying to the direction the sudden and violent transformations that are happening in Berlin are pointing to. Utopia or dystopia?

How can we relearn how to deal with mourning and loss? Over the last year, at the invitation of HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Barbara Raes has intensively researched this question along with Berlin artists. This resulted in eight personal works all about bidding farewell, which were seen at HAU in 2017. An extensive documentary now collects interviews, images and reports on the topic of loss.
www.beyondthespoken.eu, www.anguezomo-bikoro.com, www.claudiahill.com, www.hindij.blogspot.de, www.jasminihrac.net, www.ligialewis.com, www.mariafscaroni.wordpress.com, www.mixcloud.com/MIEKO, www.hauptaktion.de

Lea Barletti and Werner Waas met each other many years ago in Rome. They have lived and worked together ever since: first in Rome, then in Munich, later in Lecce and now in Berlin. Together, they have made several plays and two children.

Ben Zachariah has lived and worked in Calcutta, Cambridge, Sheffield, London and Berlin. He studied music and history at various points in his life, and now works with textual archives, sound, visual material and bodies. He is interested in the production of awareness of the past and the future.

Betty Despoina Athanasiadou is an actor from Greece. She has performed in theater pieces within Berlin’s independent performing arts community for eight years and has also acted in a variety of video productions and short films. Helena Kountoudakis has worked as an assistant director in theater and film since completing her studies in acting at Schauspielschule Basel in 2016. She also writes texts and directs her own pieces.

Birte Flint absolvierte in Hamburg das YOP-Year of Performance mit Auszeichnung und anschließend ihre Schauspielausbildung an der Berliner Schule für Schauspiel, die sie mit Diplom abschloss. Seit 2009 arbeitet sie freischaffend für Bühne und Film als Schauspielerin und Performerin. Stationen waren u.a. das Deutsche Theater Berlin, Societaetstheater Dresden, Theater der Jungen Welt Leipzig und das Tiroler Festspielhaus. Sie wirkte auch in diversen TV-Produktionen mit und war 2016 neben Heiner Lauterbach, Martin Brambach und André M. Hennicke erstmals im Kino in der Produktion „Frauen“ unter der Regie von Nikolai Müllerschön zu sehen. Zuletzt stand sie für den Kurzfilm „Win Win“ vor der Kamera, der zur Zeit auf diverse Filmfestivals zu sehen ist. Seit 2017 ist sie in der freien Produktion „Drei Engel für Bert“ als Jill, im Theater unterm Dach und in Hamburg im Monsuntheater auf der Bühne zu sehen.

Bisu ro is a collective of freelance dancers, performers and mediators initiated by Susi Rosenbohm and Birte Opitz with changing collaborators. We like to question the borders between art and daily life.

Half Japanese, half Zimbabwean/South African, trained in martial arts, street dance and contemporary dance theater, he seeks to communicate beyond culture and form(ality). Kazuma works in a versatile and wide spectrum, performing in close collaboration with political and environmental activists, touring with internationally renowned choreographers, teaching and dancing alone in nature...
Kazuma has worked with Richard Siegal (Forsythe Company) on a site-specific project in Egypt after the revolution as well as with Tsuyoshi Shirai and Takayuki Fujimoto.
Currently based in Lake Studios Berlin as a founder and permanent resident creating work in theaters and outdoor settings, he always challenges physical and mental boundaries.

The company borgtheater (formerly lapama), based in Berlin and Paris, was founded in 2003 by Rolf Kasteleiner. Highly regarded for its successful production of Waiting for Godot in sign language, the company took the piece on tour to various theaters in Germany and France and to the Beckett Festival 2006 at Scandicci. After the Internet theater project Invocation (with text by Martin Heckmanns), which was presented simultaneously in two locations, borgtheater began working on the translation of virtual rooms into the context of the stage without video technique. The trilogy Internet Identity marks a new step in which the theater stage is suspended, the story takes place in different rooms simultaneously and the audience take on a central role.

Brandon Miller and Kitty Solaris are both Berlin based singer-songwriters. Brandon has been writing and performing his music at Theaterdiscounter for the Gog Magog internil production in 2017 and2018. Kitty has been organizing the Lofi Lounge in Schokoladen and runs the record label Solaris Empire.

Filmemacherin und Videokünstlerin, Mitglied der freien Theatercompagnie spreeagenten, arbeitet außerdem mit verschiedenen Performance-Künstler*innen als Cutterin, Kamerafrau und Videokünstlerin zusammen, u.a. Nezaket Ekici, Elana Katz und Thomas Bratzke. Mag Krimi-Bücher, (Dokumentar-) Filme und Häuser mit Geschichte(n).

The Berlin performer Bridge Markland is a virtuoso of roleplay and transformation. An artist who effortlessly crosses boundaries between dance, theater, performance, cabaret and puppet theater, her speciality are gender performances in which the change of woman to man (or vice versa) can be experienced. Markland is pioneer of drag and gender performance in Germany and has organized Drag King events, tours and festivals since 1994. She has toured her productions in Germany, Europe, the USA, Canada and Australia. Her main focus are collages of classical German theater pieces with pop music – performed as lip-synced solos using role change and puppets plus short performances: silent movie expression, drag, erotic comedy, audience interactions. Alongside her solo performanes, she also works for other companies.

Britta Kerger dances since 1983 and teaches since 1998.
After a one-sided amputation of the lower extremity she kept dancing under the guidance of Pierre Boulez in Straßburg/Avignon.
2006 she founded her own dance school/ Tanzkraut, which she closed because of economic reasons.

musiktheater bruit! is an interdisciplinary collective of four theater artists and musicians. bruit! explores the boundaries between concert, theater, installation and performance.

bücking&kröger is the union of the two dancer/choreographers Florian Bücking and Raisa Kröger. In 2014, after ten years of bustling activity both in and outside the Berlin dance community, they founded bücking&kröger in order to transfer their extensive combined experience into collectively choreographed pieces. As a creatively working union, they engage with dance in the broadest sense, as well as with architecture, performance and social plasticity. Thus far, they have developed three short pieces, two full-length productions and a concert evening. Their work is characterised by a clear focus on the body and the physical states that accompany movement. They often develop their work in collaboration with artists from other fields such as the fine arts or music.

The company Sapharide was created in February 2013 out of the duo Infiniment Double created by Mélanie Favre. In this work, she investigates through choreography topics dear to her heart such as “body”, “gender” or simply “being”. The intensity of her work is embedded in a choreographic world truly her own. In 2015, Melanie Favre presented her second performance, the solo Corps, which questions androgyny through the female body. The company Sapharide has also cooperated with other artists such as the collectif KikiBronx for the performance High and Tight at Le 192 and the young puppeteer Emeline Gouverne for the exhibition Traces during the company’s residency at the Massenet Theater in April 2015. In 2016, Julie Botet joined the Sapharide company.

The independent performers Marianne Kjær Klausen and Katarzyna Kafel have worked together artistic and strategically since 2012. In their work, they combine their theoretical and artistic backgrounds in order to develop their own theatrical language Concepts, performances and productions are created together. Starting from an interest in socially engaged art, they search for new forms of theater that transcend institutions.

Club Real is an artist collective, working interdisciplinary, mainly between performance and installation. We have developed an art form we call scenic installation, a participatory kind of installation where you meet with performers and experience an altered form of reality. We also often use the format of interventions in public space in order to create and share art with as many different groups using public space as possible. Club Real was founded in 2000 in Berlin. The permanent members are Marianne Ramsay-Sonneck, Georg Reinhardt, Mathias Lenz and Thomas Hauck. We are very pleased about our continuous cooperation with the Finnish group Todellisuuden Tutkimuskeskus and the Cuban Arte Contextual center LASA in Havana.

We are a collective of three people. In our artistic work, we combine aerial arts, theater and electronic live sounds. We see theater as a form of dealing with social structures and power relations, critically reflecting and presenting content. This is the basis for our performative projects; the overall concept is created by selecting the appropriate artistic means according to the content of the statement. We address the audience with absurdity and abstraction, using exemplary images to stimulate their own reality of life. With this emphasis on substantive debate and the decision not to work programmatically, we see ourselves in the context of contemporary circus.

In its theater projects, Collective Malouba questions the political and social condition of the Arab world against the backdrop of recent rebellions and illuminates the taboos of Syrian and Arab society. Smaller artistic projects of thematic relevance such as installations, exhibitions and workshops accompany the theater projects. These are shown in NRW, Germany and abroad, thus creating transnational meeting places. The events are realized in Arabic with German subtitles and are addressed to both an Arabic and a German-speaking audience.

At TATWERK in Berlin, late 2017, Compagnie des Wanderers met A Dog's Heart Theatre. They both wanted to go back to the raw foundations of live theater and radically experiment. And so they embarked on a piece together, Artes Moriendi - Ways of Dying, using their guts and the diversity of their cultural background to fuel their creativity and beautiful dissents. All scattered between Argentina and several European countries and meeting only to make art, both groups look for ways to be local and produce art while being aware of its environmental impact and attempting to reduce its carbon footprint.

Ethiopian- German artist based in London and Berlin working with photography, installation,
film and performance art.

Daniela Ehemann and Carron Little have been developing a series of collaborative projects, like “Cities of a Floating World or “Hitchhike To Utopia” since 2013 after meeting in 2012 at an international group show at 6018North, Chicago USA. Carron’s public performance series Out of Site Chicago considers reshaping public space as a site for cultural enquiry highly influenced by the New Situationists Carron’s projects often start with interviewing a specific demographic of the population and she transforms the material into poetry, song and sculpture. Daniela explores the relation between space and identity, whereas the working area of her interest is connected to several media from installation, performance and video and urban intervention.

For 25 years WEITES THEATER for puppets and humans has been representing a professional and large variety of puppet theatre both at home and abroad. With its charming venue WEITES THEATER offers young and old audiences the opportunity of attending high quality theatrical performances.
Specifics of the theatre are: Integration of different forms of the performing arts. Besides using traditional forms of puppet theatre, the plays often integrate and incorporate several techniques. Live-music also plays a vital part in several performances.

Dasniya Sommer is a choreographer who works with forms spanning from Japanese Kinbaku (bondage art) to classic ballet. In the Haus Sommer lab, they document and conduct research with collaborators from all artistic disciplines. She works with Silke Schönfleisch on the new description of body images, which includes an attempt at cultural criticism and a desire for free forms of expression. Silke Schönfleisch Backofen worked as an attorney in Frankfurt am Main. Since 2012 she is Speaker in the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection. She commits herself to the interests of people with disabilities. 2010 Silke startet dancing. She participated in a variety of dance workshops and received a Danceability Teacher Certification by Alito Alessi in 2012. One year later, she already taught Danceability at ImPulsTanz Festival. Since then she participated in many different works. 2017 she danced Bondage Duell with Dasniya Sommer for the first time at Sophiensæle.

The label Derivat uses its work to question the distribution of powers and rights, whereby the interest is passionately concentrated on events at the edges of society. Aurora Kellermann and Chris Wohlrab have led TATWERK | Performative Forschung, Studio und Produktionsstätte für die darstellenden Künste in Berlin since November 2014.

Despina Kapetanaki, born in Athens, Greece, holds a degree in theater studies and a certificate in acting. She has performed her own projects in Ireland, Greece and Germany. Inspired by daily life, ordinary people and the contemporary sociopolitical situation, she develops her work with a focus on physical theater, dance and performance. She is interested in performing without using a separate stage, enhancing in this manner the communication between the performer and the audience.

Diana Shepherd is a movement artist from Illinois, USA. She studied and received her BFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. There, Diana worked with choreographers Kirstie Simson, Tere O’Conner and performed her senior thesis entitled “Selfs”.  Diana has participated twice in the International University Global Theater Experience’s Art Oasis program in Italy and in Austria, where she was an assistant to the program.  She has been a dance teacher for 8 years and has recently started her own children’s dance classes in Berlin at the K77 Studio. Diana is currently living and working in Berlin, pursuing her choreographic ideas on international bodies and how they interact with the society that exists, and restricts, around them.

In 2009, the collective die elektroschuhe was founded by the four dancers/ choreographers Ini Dill, Daniel Drabek, Elly Fujita and Katja Scholz. They created a platform for interdisciplinary theater. Successively, several artists joined the collective: the composer Alexander Spree, the musician Masu, the photographer Thomas Jacoby, the performer Eliane Krauer, the performer Erol Alexandrov and the actor Nabil Cherkit. Most recently, the dancer Lysandre Coutu-Sauvé and the media scholoar Di Huyen Vo Dieu joined the group. The collective serves as a melting pot for its members to critically discuss political and social issues. Cooperations with artists of other disciplines provide new impulses and generate interactions with the diverse landscape of our society.

Improbanden - The repertoire of the experimental nine-member improviser ensemble includes a lot from short forms to self-developed long forms. In the three years of their existence, the improvisers have primarily performed on stages in the Neukölln / Kreuzberg area. Die Improvsionäre are the funniest, most original, most unique and humble improvisational theater group in the world. Be there when a complete piece emerges that has never been rehearsed and will never be seen again, based on the ideas of the audience.

Lukas Hanus (*1991), Güner Künier (*1990) and Lisa-Sophia Schlüter (*1988) founded Die Spalter in 2016 in Berlin. Martin Jurk (*1984) dedicates himself to the intimacy of thought in his work. Meaningfulness and sensuality form the pillars of the artistic work which is driven by a basic thought: how can I make that what I am conceivable and able to be experienced through performance?

dollytakesatrip is made up of actors, dancers and a director. The work of the artist collective focuses on the interface between movement and text. In doing so, the performers initially proceed from their own personal background in their work, using their own biographies, experiences and perceptions.

Societal loneliness? Narcissistic isolation? Within the gap between self-understanding and belonging, one increasingly hears the slog “Just be yourself!” Oddly enough, being yourself seems to be harder than expected. What is that supposed to even mean, anyway, “yourself” or “self”? If there happened to be something even close to that, should we actually be proud of that singularity inherent to our identity? Is it worth searching for “togetherness”? This group consents: the line between group-attachement and dependency, autonomy and egoism is thin. Nevertheless, we would like to accept the challenge – is the group able to prove the existence of singular plural-utopy?

Elektro Kagura is an interdisciplinary artists' group founded in 2016 that lives and works in Berlin: Ichi Go, a female Japanese dancer, Yukihiro Ikutani, a Japanese scenographer and visual artist, and Axl Otl, a French composer. Yukihiro Ikutani has created a new stage design method for Elektro Kagura: using a projector, pen tablet and computer, he paints and projects images on the stage and the perfomer. The aim of Elektro Kagura is to create a double dialogue between two epochs and two cultures through a fusion of contemporary dance, digital projection and electronic music. On the one hand, between the sacred dance form of kagura and the modern subculture, on the other hand between Japan and Europe.

Elpida Orfanidou (*1981) is a Greek choreographer & performer based in Berlin. She studied dance in Athens in parallel to her degrees in piano & pharmaceutical studies. She continued her dance studies in Arnhem, Montpellier and London. For her studies abroad, she received the Greek State Scholarship. In 2009, she was the Greek recipient of the DanceWeb scholarship for the Impulstanz festival in Vienna. She creates works alone or in collaboration with other artists such as Hermann Heisig in United States, Juan Perno in Elpid’arc and lately with Alma Toaspern in Zeitfischen. Her works have been presented in a variety of venues and festivals in Europe such as Tanz im August, HAU – Hebbel am Ufer, Sophiensaele, Athens Festival, Onassis Cultural Center Athens, Tanzquartier Wien, La Casa Encendida Madrid and the Brisbane Festival.

Emmilou Rößling is a choreographer, performer and author of texts. Born in Berlin, she studied dance and theater in London and Dublin. She graduated from the Master’s program in choreography and performance in Gießen with the piece Cascase. Emmilou’s works can take different forms, from solos, to DJ sets to performances. They often evolve around questions of representation and perception of the body and objects in search of a performance mode beyond the spectacular and always striving towards some form of camouflage. Emmilou works with Antonia Baehr, Valérie Castan, Ivana Müller, Monica Duncan, Romuald Krezel, Quast&Knoblich and others. In 2017, she received the DanceWeb scholarship and began PAP Berlin’s three year Mentoring Program with Alice Chauchat.

Etoile Chaville (voice/movement), Meltem Nil (voice/movement) and Julian Datta (six-string-banjo) form an ensemble performing in different constellations. The narrative, visual, and musical patterns they create are informed by the world they live in, personal experiences, hopes, fears, joys, and doubts. Their instant compositions are a unique blend of emotional intensity, architectural geometry, embodied poetry, and absurd beauty.

Etoile Chaville is a dancer, singer, choreographer and creator of interdisciplinary performance and dance-theater works. Her work merges contemporary dance, physical theatre, opera, chanson, humor and poetry. Improvisation is the backbone of each of her projects. She regularly performs pieces composed in real time at Berliner locations for experimental theatre and has worked for diverse dance & theater companies.
www.etoilechaville.com

Meltem Nil has been improvising on stage since 2008. Since 2014 she has also been showing 60-minute solo improvisations. Her work is influenced by visual art and music.She shows her work also at festivals and she worked as a choreographer with the youth orchestra Ludwigsburg. She studied visual art.
https://meltemnil-improberlin.weebly.com/

Julian Datta is a guitar player based in Berlin. In the field of contemporary improvisation, he prefers the six-string-banjo. He has performed improvised music with Steffen Faul, Benedikt Bindewald, and Adam Caine, as well as playing solo. He has also worked with Santiago Blaum's music theatre company, film composer Christian Conrad, rapper Sister Fa, and many others.
www.juliandatta.com

Eva Baumann is a freelance dance and choreographer working mainly in interdisciplinary projects connected to visual art, music and new media. Currently, she is working on a series of projects about forgotten female artists in history. herstory I is the prologue to this series.
The musican of herstory I is Biliana Voutchkova. She is a thoroughly engaged composer-performer/interpreter whose work combines regular performances of major solo violin/ensemble works, new works by contemporary composers often written for her and improvisation. Her research as a creative improviser spans the widest possible range of sound/music/movement and extends the sonic and technical capacities of her instrument, evolving into the development of a highly individual musical language. She works as a soloist and collaborates with the Splitter Orchestra, Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop, Ensemble Modern, Ensembles United Berlin, Mozaik, Zeitkratzer, LUX:NM and Sasha Waltz & Guests, amongst others.

Eva Baumann is a freelance dance and choreographer working mainly in interdisciplinary projects connected to visual art, music and new media. Currently, she is working on a series of projects about forgotten female artists in history. herstory I is the prologue to this series.

Evgenia Chetvertkova is a dancer, choreographer and performer. She began to dance in early childhood and received her initial education and stage experience with the Troitsk dance ensemble for young people (ballet and folk dances). While studying psychlology at Moscow State University, she moved towards more contemporary and improvisational forms of dance and theater. After graduatin in 2007, she took part in performances of the Derevo Theatre and began her own experiments in dance, physical theater and the visual arts. Being a member and later choreographer for the Russian PoemaTheatre dance theater over 6 years, she developed a unique practice and created over 10 choreographic pieces. Some of them were presented in Berlin in 2015 and 2016. She began her Master’s studies at HZT in 2017.

Film Riss Theater has been evolved from the collaboration of Miriam Sachs with artists from different fields. The artistic team always focuses on the interfaces of various disciplines, enjoys staging contrasts and is interested in the interaction between theater and film. Often, the productions are based on literature (such as Kleist or Kafka). The team is interested in finding new perspectives on the material and has began collaborating with scholars in recent years to do so.

Flinn Works(Berlin/Kassel) has independently produced and presented more than 20 productions in a wide range of different venues and festivals. Always engaging with current social and political issues, the company devises its work in collaboration with professional artists and performers. Flinn Works has expanded its activities beyond Europe, with the input of writers, performers and musicians from other countries, including India, Bangladesh, Tanzania and Nigeria. Through the investigation of questions that resonate globally, performance, music and text are created with artists who work in different art forms and locations. The style of each production varies, as determined by the key artists and performers and their specific skills and experiences.

France-Elena Damian ist eine rumänisch-deutsche Regisseurin. Ihren Abschluss machte sie an der HfS "Ernst Busch". Sie arbeitete deutschlandweit u.a am Schauspiel Magdeburg, Staatstheater Darmstadt, Landestheater Schwerin sowie am Deutschen Theater. Seit wenigen Jahren entwickelt sie unterschiedliche Interaktionsformate für die freie Szene Berlins. Ihre Arbeiten wurden beim 48h Neukölln Festival, in den Sophiensælen am Heimathafen Neukölln in Halle, Leipzig, Bukarest und New York gezeigt. Sie ist Gründerin von Pro Quote Bühne und seit Januar 2018 leitet sie zusammen mit ihren Kollegen das tak Theater Aufbau Kreuzberg am Moritzplatz.

Franziska Rattay was born in 1991 in Halle an der Saale. She completed her studies in contemporary puppet theater at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Art Berlin from 2011 to 2015. She was hired at Schauspiel Köln and Bühnen Halle while still a student.

Frauen und Fiktion (FuF) are researchers. With their performances, they open space for thought experiments on the topic of being a woman at the border between theory and theater. The scenographer and director Anja Kerschkewicz and the actor and applied theater scholar Eva Kessler came together in 2014 to form the interdisciplinary core team of FuF.

A playful international collective of process-orientated theater makers with a strong emphasys on devising theater. Our projects are a combination of different tools: objects, shadows, video art, space installations, music and spoken world in order to create powerful and affective performances.

Frank Heuel founded the fringe ensemble in 1999. Since the 2004/2005 season, the fringe ensemble (along with the dance company CocoonDance) directs and performs in the Theater im Ballsaal: from its beginnings until today, 50 fringe ensemble productions have emerged under the artistic direction of Frank Heuel and continue to be shown in Theater im Ballsaal. In addition, fringe ensemble has organized numerous guest performances bringing the highlights of the independent performing arts community to Bonn. In cooperation with other theaters, event series have been developed and staged in Theater im Ballsaal.
Since 2001, fringe ensemble has repeatedly sought and realized international collaborations. These co-productions have always been defined by both the partner institutions and the collaboration with the artists from each country. It has created four productions with Dutch artists and theaters, two Latvian and one Swiss production. Rehearsals and performances have taken place in both Germany and the partner country, with artists from both countries on stage, performing in both languages.
Festival appearances include: Theaterfestival Ruhr, 2002, Dortmund – auawirleben, 2004, Bern – Politik im Freien Theater, 2005, Berlin – Theaterzwang, 2005, Dortmund – scene: estland lettland littauen in nrw, 2006, NRW – favoriten, Geschichten für das neue Jahrhundert, 2006/2007/2008, Düsseldorf, Münster, Leipzig – 2008, Dortmund – Biennale Bonn, 2008, Bonn – Geteilte Geschichten, 2009, Düsseldorf – Deutsche Geschichten, 2009, Leipzig – Soldaten, 2010, Bremen – Statements, 2010, Münster

The Galli Group is a worldwide umbrella organization founded by the philosopher, actor and playwright Johannes Galli. The theaters and training facilities in nine countries are operated independently. The Galli Theater communicates important social issues through modern adaptations of fairy tales from around the world. The plays highlight their symbols and help to illuminate wisdom that is highly relevant in today’s society. They awaken a sense of liveliness in audiences and actors alike that can help reveal the genuine person and their inner vision and power, thus celebrating childhood. Galli achieves this mission through its mainstage productions, educational programs and its Dr. Fairytale Program. The Galli Theater has worked in Berlin since the year 2000.

In 2017, the ensemble GANG presented their eponymous first dance piece. GANG explores the interplay between individual and group behaviour using a distinct movement language developed from everyday and pure movements and a score of tasks that can only be fulfilled collaboratively. The ensemble draws from common know-how in real-time composition, strongly informed by the postmodern dance currents emerging in New York in the 1960s which made the body and its movement the main topic of dance. GANG approaches settings and situations to extract movements, spatial patterns, rhythms and dynamics out of which the choreographies are built. The result is far from representation yet evocative, the dance is pragmatic and at the same time fresh and lively.

Gianni Maccaroni is a theater and performance collective in Berlin. Gianni Maccaroni deals with processes of perception, communication and experience. We experimentally explore how people live together and experience their environment. Gianni Maccaroni develops interactive plays, performances, installations and participatory projects in public space. The theater becomes a space that stimulates the perception and the fantasy of the visitor, a space that enables thinking about social processes and utopia and allows a transfer to the daily life.

Is a choreographer, dancer, performer and dance educator. She became a member of the board of the K77 Studio e.V. in April of 2016. She has directed various dance projects (with professional artists, children and youth, immigrants, blind and deaf people) and site-specific projects.
In her work, she combines contemporary dance, improvisation and contact improvisation with somatic practices and visual arts.
Her performances and choreographies with her participation were shown, amongst others, in Sophiensaele Berlin, K77 Studio Berlin, Cankova Gallery and Kunstqarter Bethanien. Choreography as a visual art form, image and identity are in the focus of her creative work.
She is a scholarship holder of the Alternative Dance Academy 2017, The Old Brewery New Dance, Art Stations Foundation by Grazyna Kulczyk, Poznan/Poland.

Gretchen Blegen works as an interdisciplinary artist with an interest in sound, text and space. The focus of her work is the translation of space through light. She understands light as a means to substantiate a space, and highlight its sound, motion and structure. The sound artist Christina Ertl-Shirley creates radio pieces, sound installation and composition and puts sound and storytelling into a diaolog.

“I want to present life in all of its seriousness” is something that Katharina Grosch certainly never said. After all, Katharina Grosch only does one thing seriously: struggle against the seriousness of life.

Grupo Oito is an independent dance company that has been working in Berlin for over 10 years. Their collaboration is based on the Get Physical method of choreographer Ricardo de Paula from Brazil, bringing together elements from various contemporary, classical and transmitted approaches for working with dance, body and consciousness. In their dance pieces, the group engages with virulent social and political questions, how these appear in personal lives and how they can be transformed. Their work has been presented in various locations in Berlin (Mimecentrum, Hoftheater, Ballhaus Naunynstraße) as well as festivals in Istanbul and Kenya.

Regina Gyr studied at HFMT in Hamburg. The content determines the text material, the performance style, the formal language as well as the location of the production. Ludmila Skripkina studied acting in Switzerland and has acted in productions directed by Matthias Hartmann, Ivan Stanev and Frank Castorf. Petra Klabunde studied in Bielefeld and at the art academy in Bergen (Norway). Their work combines sound, installation and performance at the threshold between public space and private space.

Hilla Steinert shifts between dance and performance art. She started her dance studies 1978. In the mid 80s she got involved with performance art. Since 1989 she established herself as a freelance artist in Berlin. She creates her own work, performs in the work of others and teaches internationally.

Howard Katz & Liz Williams have both had extensive careers in the performing arts. Howard, a choreographer/performer/musician, has choreographed, directed & produced more than 50 productions worldwide and has released nine CDs. He has received funding from the Berlin Senate & the city of Düsseldorf, Hauptstadtkulturfonds and Fonds Darstellende Künste. He has worked with partners such as Tanzhaus NRW, ARTE TV, Temps d'Image, Staatstheater Bremen & Podewil. He created the 5Q Movement System, which is designed to support & improve natural human movement. Liz is an aerial circus artist & dancer working in theaters including: Wintergarten, Chamaeleon, Friedrichsbau, Staatstheater Ingolstadt, Podewil and many other festivals and events. In 2017, they opened Q Space, a rehearsal, training & performance space to support the physical arts in Berlin.

Howool Baek is a Korean choreographer, based in Berlin. In the beginning, her choreographic works were focused on limited space and the discovery of movements that could be created in limited space. Through that, her work has been developed in a direction to explore the human body and to change body perception. Recently, she has focused on discovering the movement possibilities and own expressions of individual body parts.

Hoyoung Im is a South Korean actor, musician and visualizer. He graduated with a BA in art, film and theater after studying in Seoul, South Korea. He is one of the members of the theater company Elephant Manbo and a director of the art project group UmZikßi. As an actor, Hoyoung has worked with Dong-Hyun Kim from Elephant Manbo, National Eater Company of Korea and Evgeny Kozlov from DO Eater. In 2013, Hoyoung received a prize from KUFF as best actor. Not only an actor, Hoyoung has also worked as a visualizer and, in 2012, he received a prize from the Los Angeles Film Festival as a director and actor with his debut film Unwelcome. He began his career in Berlin, Germany in 2016. South Korean director/writer So Young Kim participates in this project as dramatic advisor.

i:kozaeder e. V. is a young artist collective has set itself the task of realizing interdisciplinary projects. It provides a platform for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary work.

INNER is a Berlin-based company for dance and üerformance. It was founded by the dancers Cathleen Rabe and Marlene Naumann in June 2017 after many years of working together in various productions, shootings and projects. Inner distinguishes itself by a unique and reduced approach to movement that builds their very personal aesthetics. Elements of dance, performance and acting are combined in a minimalistic and functional way. They bring psychological topics in a unique, very precise and yet widely diversified language on stage.

The Institut für angewandtes Halbwissen (The Institue for Applied Half-Knowledge) was created out of the collaboration between the composer/performer Leo Hofmann, director and visual artist Leonie Böhm and the music theater director Benjamin van Bebber. The Institut see itself as a music theater intervention and production collective.

The Institut für Widerstand im Postfordismus (Institute for Resistance in Postfordism) is a project by theater/performance/label müller*****, which was founded by Elisa Müller in 2008 and has realized 16 projects in cooperation with LOFFT.Leipzig, Ballhaus Ost Berlin, Fleetstreet Hamburg, LICHTHOF Hamburg, Sophiensæle Berlin, FFT (Freies Forum Theater) Düsseldorf, FKT (Freies Kunst Territorium) Bochum, Vierte Welt Berlin and Theaterdiscounter Berlin as well as HU Berlin and UdK Berlin.

Room 555 is a collaboration between Ira Hadžić (writer) and Harm Coordes (fashion designer). The foundation for IH´s work is her book Evacuation of Nada, 2013. Over longer periods, she elaborated the narrative fragments initiated within the book into self-standing stories. Thematically and aesthetically, she is constantly researching the exchange and conjunction of different possibilities of expression, in case of the malfunction of those familiar. Within the project Church of the Hand, HC is investigating the possibilities of reaching down to the human being’s fundamental desires by the use of participatory performances and multisensory room installations. The work questions current marketing strategies, fashion show rituals and pursues the question of “Where do we find faith?“ at the same time.

Cia. Irene Cortina is a collaboration between Irene Cortina Gonzalez (choreographer),Paul Dill (composer) and Christin Noel (costume design). Since 2013 the company has been performing in Holland, Germany, Poland, Israel, New York and Spain. The company's vocabulary is defined by the combination of movement, live music, design and sculpture. The work is rich in technic and content and based in a continuous research for new languages.

Irina Demina (Russia/Denmark) is a freelance choreographer, dramaturg and dancer. She received a MA degree in choreography from Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz Berlin. As a freelance dancer/interpreter, she has worked with the choreographers Xavier le Roy, Jochen Roller, Angela Guerreiro, Soodong Jung, Halla Olafsdottir, amongst others. In 2013, received the 3rd prize in the competition The best German dance solo in Leipzig. She has developed her own projects since 2008. Tobias Leira (No) is a freelance lighting designer and stage designer. He graduated from Dramatiska Institutet im Stockholm, Sweden (Bachelor of Fine Arts with a major in theater lighting design and works with various theaters and artists worldwide.

Irina Kowallik began her artistic work with contemporary mime to expand her artistic work in the direction of dance theater. Trained in masque play, contemporary mime and body theatre, she performed mainly on stages of Berlin's independent theatre scene. She has been a theater educator since 1992 and completed her stage experience by studying theater studies (1995-2001), which culminated in an academic paper on the work of choreographer Pina Bausch with Tanztheater Wuppertal. In 2003/2004 she created the solo productions KEIN ZURÜCK and NOCTILUCA. After further years as an actress and director, she produced her third solo in 2016: OPHELIA-Triptychon.

Davine’s productions walk a formal tightrope between chaos and order, using philosophy and mythology to investigate themes of social ideology, fantasy and taboo. His work seeks to engage the audience’s collective cerebral and physical responses to time, space and causality composition. By counterpointing poetic text, visual art, spatial design, color and light, theme, myth and music to the performers’ bodies, Davine aims to create a total audience experience. In this way, he endeavours to define a new form of performing arts, one that stands independently from other art forms to offer the unique possibility of an extraordinary group experience, influenced by the historic human necessity for tragic celebration, ritual and cathartic connection.

Performances of the Berlin/Prague-based artist Jan Mocek combine elements of visual art, new media and theater. His works encompasses a wide spectrum of themes ranging from the personal to the political. He collaborates with various artists such as Matthias Hesselbacher, Irina Andreeva and others, who each contribute concepts and ideas to the performances that are result of a long artistic process.

In Jana Korb’s artistic research, she searches for and finds outstanding yet forgotten women whose stories she works with using the tools of aerial artistry. Jennie Zimmermann and Gisbert Schürig are phyla. The duo phyla combine minimal music and improvisation to create sound surfaces of lyrical tenderness and archaic force woven from voices between the scarcely audible to rumbling throat singing, supported with electronic sounds.

Site specific physical theatre and costume
Founder of the group ZooiD. She loves to throw her body around, to dance in animal-costumes and can never have enough coulour in life. As director and mover she creates interdisciplinary movement shows.
As costume maker she upcycles animalistic costumes for the bodies of artists and movers.
Has been working in various european places in contemporary dance, new circus, physical theatre and costumedesign.

AAAA is a collaboration between four people with various backgrounds: in terms of methods, formats used (photography, performance, painting, digital image production) and countries of origin. János Brückner, Xaver Hirsch, Astarte Posch and Victoria Sarangova share a common interest in patterns, language, music and realism and are fellow students in the Art in Context postgraduate MA program at the Berlin University of the Arts.

Jens Heuwinkel studied directing at Drama Centre London. He worked as an assistant director in Wilhelmshaven and Potsdam. He has worked as a freelance director since 2012. He worked as a director and dramaturg at Landestheater Dinkelsbühl in the 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 seasons. He has been based in Berlin since 2015. He is member of the artistic team of the 24h Theater at the Brotfabrik in BerlinThe most recent project he directed was Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte at Euro Theater Central Bonn. Stefanie Steffen studied acting at AdK Ulm. Her first engagement was at Landestheater Dinkelsbühl. For her part as Gelsomina in La Strada, she won the theater prize of the Fränkische Landeszeitung. She has worked as a freelancer since 2015, for example at Stadttheater Ingolstadt and for Kulturmobil Niederbayern.

The American, Berlin-based artist Jeremiah Day studied art at the University of California, Los Angeles and subsequently completed the residency program at the Rijksakademie .  Visual artist Jeremiah Day is also trained in movement, working regularly with the pioneer of postmodern dance Simone Forti.  His work establishes a montage/narrative form, where political and personal realities intertwine through different techniques, including photography, video and movement. He is represented by Arcade, London and Ellen de Bruijne Projects in Amsterdam. 

Politics is the core of my practice. Through recognizable set-ups, I shift reality and push it to a point of no return to trigger an awareness. Therefore, what seems to be “normal” is called into question, its structure is revealed and people have to take a position and/or realize their own situation, responsibility and power. Like Mona Hatoum, “I try to articulate the political through the aesthetics of the work”, but “I choose to see art as an educational tool used to potentially reach out to everyone”, “A mean of action against social and individual reality.” (Collectif d’Art Sociologique, 1968-1980).

The Company el contrabando develops dance productions that are presented as part of national and international guest performances and festivals. The company devotes itself to experimental, contemporary flamenco and follows the question of how this art form, which is shaped by traditions and, in part, fraught with clichés and pathos, can be placed in new contexts and staged at a distance from its conventional styles and aesthetic obligations. Conglomerations of dance, sound and image grouped around a theme emerge as the result of a close collaboration between artists in the fields of dance, visual arts, composition and lighting design. – Productions are on tour in Europe, Africa and South America.

Julia Maria Koch is a choreographer and works in Berlin. Her work has been invited to numerous international festivals such as the Sarajevo Winter Festival, Alexandria Festival of Contemporary Theater, Gdanski Festiwal Tanca 2017, Mexico City Contemporary Dance Festival and choreographic competitions such as the Stuttgart Solo Dance Theater Festival, Certamen Coreografico de Madrid, Certamen Coreografico Burgos New York, Festival 10 Sentidos / Valencia, Gdansk Solo Dance Festival and others
She has received several prizes for her work, including the special prize at the Arte Laguna Prize / Venice, the second prize from the Certamen Coreografico de Sabadell, the Special Mention at the Inshadow Festival / Lisboa, was finalist at the Solodance Contest / Gdansk and the 7th screengrab / Australia.

Julia Keren Turbahn studied Media and Cultural Studies in Düsseldorf and Dance Studies at the UNSW in Sydney. Currently she studies "Dance, Context, Chorography" at the HZT Berlin. In her own work she is investigates a combination of theory and practice as well as the choreographic quality of everyday movement. As a performer she works in interdisciplinary and collaborative work.

Rachell Bo Clark graduated from Victoria College of Arts in Melbourne and has worked between Berlin and Australia since 2014. She creates and performs her own work and collaborates with various performance groups and artists. Her artistic practice moves between dance and video art and has evolved from the desire to understand the functionality of the body and the world around it

Most of the actors in this ensemble have been training for many years in the Circus Schatzinsel children's circus and have learned and tried various disciplines. They bring a lot of physical know-how and acrobatics into the joint ensemble work. The ensemble consists of only these young people and refugees from Syria and Afghanistan. The refugees took part in a project of Circus Schatzinsel in the summer of 2016 and wanted to continue this work.

Kadir Amigo Memis was born in 1974 in Bilecik, Turkey and came to Berlin at the age of ten. Inspired by the emergent hip-hop culture of the 1980s, he taught himself the dances of the street as an autodidact. In his productions, the individual exchange between dancers from different cultures plays a central role.

The artist team kainkollektiv works internationally and has created theatrical scores between theater, installation and performance since 2004. This work, performed from North Rhine-Westphalia to Poland, Croatia and Cameroon, is dedicated a theater of the contemporary. kainkollektiv received the George Tabori emerging artist prize in 2015.

Kasia Wolińska was born in Gdańsk. She is a graduate of the dance department at Music Academy, Łódź, the cultural anthropology department at University of Łódź and the dance, context, choreography program at HZT Berlin. Dancewebber 2015. She began developing her practice Hi Mary in 2013, which has been presented in Berlin, Gdańsk, Łódź,Norberg, New York, Warsaw, Kalisz, Copenhagen and Amsterdam. She was a Centro Selva resident in 2014 and a resident at the transeuropa Festival in 2015. In 2016 she was a part of the Global Practice Sharing Program ( Movement Research/ Art Stations Foundation) in New York. She received funding through the Berlin Senate’s Einstiegsfoerderung program for 2018. She has collaborated with artists such as R.Crisp, V.Bozek, K.Tyminski, A.Siniarska, J.Plawgo, L.Martini, D.Agullo, M.Ziolek and others.

Katerina Valdivia Bruch is a Berlin-based independent dancer and choreographer who conducts research into dance and other fields of art. She collaborates with different artists, such as experimental musicians and visual artists, focusing on interdisciplinary work. She has performed, created choreographies, given lessons and workshops in Germany, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Peru, Croatia, Serbia, Poland and Spain.

Kathleen Heil is a writer, translator, and dancer who has published in The New Yorker, The Guardian, and other journals, and performed in New York, Madrid, and elsewhere.
More at: https://kathleenheil.net/

Jules Bradbury is an artist whose work investigates the energy of the natural world and the human body; rather than illustrating, she seeks to carry the essence of what is.
More at: https://www.no-still-life.com/

Roderick George studied at SUNY College in New York and worked for the Forsythe Company. His first works were shown at DanceLab of Ballett Basel. His work Dust was shown at Tanztage Berlin 2016 in Sophiensæle.

The laborgras collective was founded by the dancers/choreographers Renate Graziadei and Arthur Stäldi in Hamburg in 1994 and has been based in Berlin since 2000. Their work is anchored in contemporary dance, with a focus on collaboration with artists of different genres, movement research and interdisciplinary experimentation. laborgras continuously investigates dance as an independent art form and language, developing their own artistic signature while remaining open to other artistic currents and aesthetics. This process is made available through an independent, artistic format designed to encourage an ongoing discourse with dance professionals and the public.

Leon Stiehl is a freelance actor from Berlin. After completing his training as an actor at the Berlin University of the Arts in 2015, he worked at Theater Heidelberg. In addition, he participated in various theater productions in Frankfurt, Bonn and Berlin. He is active as a speaker for moderation, dubbing and audiobooks. In 2017, he co-founded the audiobook company MooEntertainment. Jürgen Bartsch What Fucking Bad Luck They Had is the second production Leon Stiehl has directed; he also appears in the work as a performer.

Is a Colombian choreographer and dancer based in Berlin. She received a MA degree in choreography at the HZT Berlin and a BA degree in “Communication of the Arts of the Body” with an emphasis on dance and theater from the Catholic University of Sao Paulo in Brazil. Her recent choreographic research was supported by the 2017 Einstiegsförderung program of the Berlin Senate. She is also supported by the PAP Berlin Mentoring Program “Newcomers” 2017-2019. In additoin, she is co-founder of the Cia. Aberta de Dança of São Paulo-BR (2008) and has been developing works collectively there ever since as a choreographer and performer. Lina has also worked as a dancer and performer with Tino Sehgal, Edson Fernandes and Jorge Garcia, amongst others.

Liz Rosenfeld is a Berlin-based artist utilizing the disciplines of film, video and live performance to convey a sense of past and future histories. Rosenfeld is invested in concepts of how history is experienced, lived and remembered, as well as how and where we identify ourselves with in/out community and social poly-relationship configurations.

Ludmila Skripkina, geboren in St. Petersburg. Schauspielausbildung in Russland und in der Schweiz. Sie spielte u.a unter der Regie von Matthias Hartmann, Anna Bergmann, Ivan Stanev und Frank Castorf. Seit 14 Jahren lebt und arbeitet sie als freischaffende Performerin und Schauspielerin in Berlin.

Lulu Obermayer was trained as an actor at The Lee Strasberg Institute and Stella Adler Studio in New York. In February 2017, she graduated from the MA Solo Dance and Authorship program at HZT. From 2010-2014 she studied BA Hons Contemporary Performance Practice at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and Dramaturgy at HMT in Leipzig. Her performances have been presented at Münchner Kammerspiele, Beursschouwburg in Brussels, Highways Performance Space in Los Angeles and the Trente Trente Festival in Bordeaux. In her performances, she employs the dramatic canon and isolates female characters from their plots with the aim of allowing them a new ontological inquiry.

We are nine women of different ages, backgrounds, cultures, socialization and education. We met regularly to think about motherhood. In dealing with the discourse of motherhood and our own biographies, we asked ourselves the following questions: What is motherhood today? How did our grandmothers and mothers live their motherhood? What happens if we do not think motherhood biologically? What role do we take and what are attributed to us? What do we want to change and what do we want exactly how it is? The goal was not only to enter into a mutual exchange, but also to create an artistic-aesthetic framework and thus turn to an audience.

Manufaktor is an emerging figure theater group from Berlin who have set themselves the goal of creating more focus on puppet and figure theater. Manufaktor has already performed on multiple stages in Germany and abroad. Camp Europe is their first piece at Berliner Ringtheater.

The Company for Preemptive and Non-Evanescent Altercation (PNAC) was founded at the end of 2002 in the light of the general political situation and the impression of the public’s voluntary renunciation of balanced information. The ability to think responsibly, freely and independently is one of the most important qualities of human beings, and serves to make a democracy alive and responsible. At best, the theater can only have an additional voice in this matter. We try to shake up cherished traditions, unquestioned values, allegedly proven facts and alternativeless solutions in our society and politics.

Marcela Giesche is a freelance artist currently based in Berlin, Germany. She holds a BFA degree and certificate in dance and choreography from the Rotterdamse Dansacademie and Ohio State University and has received numerous scholarships including participation in the danceweb 2010 at Impulstanz.
Marcela has danced for Bianca Van Dillen and Beppie Blankert in the Netherlands, with Neuer Tanz / VA Wölfl, Veronika Riz, Romeo Castellucci and Thomas Ostermeier/Mikel Aristegui in Germany as well as for the Italian company Deja Donne (Simone Sandroni/Lenka Flory).
She began teaching and creaeting her own productions in 2006 and is the Artistic Director of Lake Studios Berlin.

Marcela Giesche and Monica Gentile are Resident Artists at Lake Studios Berlin. Marcela Giesche (1983 – Mainz, Germany): Graduated in 2006 with a BFA in dance from Ohio State University and a certificate from Codarts, Rotterdam. Since then, she has worked as a freelance dancer and choreographer with diverse dance companies and directors across Europe. Danceweb 2010 recipient. Monica Gentile studied theater at the University of Bologna, graduated from the Discipline delle arti, della musica e dello spettacolo (DAMS), in the faculty of literature and philosophy. She has been creating own choreographic works in Italy, Berlin and abroad since 2012.

Deeper is the first joint production of the choreographers Canabarro, Molnár, Vadas and Vass. Canabarro lives in Berlin, studied at SEAD and has worked with artists including Keith Hennessy, Peter Pleyer, Meg Stuart and Benoît Lachambre. Vass is a performance artist and choreographer. Vadas is a dancer and choreographer; the conceptualization of a collective creative process is formative for her work. Molnár is a dancer and choreographer.

Marcozzi Contemporary theater, based in Berlin, works in the domain of the performing arts with physical theater, body-voice work (based on Grotowski's training ), spoken text and embodiment, overcoming the performative categories to reach an authentic and urgent expressive language. In collaboration with visual artists, musicians and performers, Daniela Marcozzi, artistic director, performer and researcher, has produced many solo and group pieces that have been performed in Berlin and Europe. Daniela leads regular courses of physical theater and workshops for performing artists. Over the course of her Master’s program in artistic research at Accademia Teatro Dimitri in Lugano, Switzerland, she is developing a training method that fuses the life sciences and the performing arts. Daniela has a Master’s degree in biotechnology.

María Ferrara studied acting and furthered her education with contemporary dance and singing. She worked with theater companies in Spain and England. She moved to Berlin in 2014. María is interested in applying dance parameters to everyday movements and in exploring large questions by observing the small. Her solo piece Zeitgenössischer Glanz (2016, funded by Bezirksamt Pankow-Berlin) was a dance made out of cleaning movements about finding beauty in everyday things. The 2017 pieces GANG and 1gang and the Zebra Project workshop and zuGANG workshop (funded by mapping dance berlin-Tanzbüro Berlin) go further in the same direction. In 2018, the ensemble GANG presents a new piece with a concept by María Ferrara: fluGANGst.

Verena Unbehaun, Sophie Nikolitsch and Cornelius Schwalm founded MariaKron in 2011. Since then, they worked continuously on own their theater projects: Sophie Nikolitsch as a dramaturg and writer, Verena Unbehaun as a performer and weriter, Cornelius Schwalm as an initiator and playwright. MariaKron works at the border between classical theater and performance – permanently looking for a language on stage that is immediate. MariaKron deals with political issues as well as with societal incidents – in that way mirroring/reflecting their own world and that of the audience.

Marie Golüke studied theater studies at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and performance studies at the University of Hamburg. Since 2010, she worked as a freelance performer with RP Kahl, Stockholm Syndrome, Isabelle Schad and Felix Ruckert. She developed her first artistic work Transgression as part of her Master's degree course, which was presented at Kampnagel, the 100 ° Berlin Festival and the BeSTival in Bern. In May 2016, her first full-length piece, Erotism, was premiered at Ballhaus Ost Berlin and traveled to Munich and Hamburg in 2017. In March 2017, her second play, Shame, premiered at the Rationaltheater München and was then presented at Ballhaus Ost Berlin and at Monsun Theater in Hamburr. She has organized the Festival für Freunde in the state of Brandenburg since 2013.

Four directors, brought together by former collaboration, gater around Markus Riexinger, writer for the famous German satire magazine Titanic. Before he continues his open-air work with a new play in September, the directors will stage a selection of his short plays.

Marlies Pahlenberg is a video artist from Berlin. After studying Spanish and Latin American literature at the Universidad Complutense Madrid, she is now studying fine arts / sculpture at the Weißensee Art Academy in Berlin. Her videos focus on the interaction with other people, who speak the texts provided against the backdrop of their own lives and thereby always play themselves. The artist examines the tension between the staged and the documentary by placing the original texts in foreign mouths and by shifting their spatial and temporal context.

Martina Janssen graduated in Fine Art at the Academy of Münster in Germany. There she begun to work in the field of sketching, painting and performance. In Italy at the Academy of Fine Art in Bologna she deepend her approach to performance and installation with Donato Ovarini and to sound with John Duncan. In the travel residency in Istanbul at Mimar Sinan University she worked on the theme of combining body experience in different fields of art, like working with clay, fiber, painting and performing. Since 1995 she showed her work in several places of the world.

Max Grau (*1988) is a visual artist and writer based in Berlin. He studied Fine Arts in Saarbrücken, Berlin and Los Angeles and uses a variety of media such as video, text, email, performance, photography, sound and printed matter. Besides doing things individually he’s interested in friendship-based models of collaboration and forms a part-time duo with Jan Erbelding. Since 2016 he has been involved in *foundationClass – an educational project located at Kunsthochschule Weißensee that tries to support artists who had to flee their home countries in the process of gaining access to the German art school system. His work has been shown internationally, for example at Galerie La Croix Los Angeles, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Galerie Lily Robert Paris, Pet Projects Perth and Digital Art Centre Taipei. His first book ›You See I’ve Always Wanted Things To Be Beautiful‹ was published in 2018 by Ruine München/Hamman van Mier Verlag.

Melody Pasanideh studied philosophy and scenography in Vienna, where she also worked at a number of cultural institutions including Burgtheater and Volkstheater Wien. Melody relocated to Berlin in 2017 and has since established herself as a freelance theater maker and performer here. Jos Porath is an interdisciplinary artist who has been directing immersive installations as a recognized member of Berlin's independent performing arts community for several years. She is currently based in Brighton, UK. Melody and Jos met when they were both collaborating with renowned performance collective SIGNA at the Vienna Festiavl in 2016. Like There’s No Tomorrow is the second production that they are realizing together.

Katharina Bévand and Azzie McCutcheon are currently based in Berlin. Both share a deep interest in eastern philosophies. Both gained an insight into butoh and it’s foundations. This knowledge and a common interest in the body and it’s interaction with the surroundings form their starting point for a sound-dance collaboration.

Performer/director Mareile Metzner and performer Christoph Schüchner have been working with each other in various different constellations since being employed together in 1995. Their first own joint production as metzner&schüchner Nicht von Schlechten Eltern was developed in 2015 for a project series at Theater an der Glocksee Hannover, adapted for Theater unterm Dach Berlin in 2016 and presented during the 2017 Performing Arts Festival, operates at the interface between drama, documentary research and musical performance. Their new production Der Theaterkritiker is a premiere of the monologue by Berlin writer and journalist Tobias Schwartz.

The artists Iliana Kalapotharakou, Jenny Ocampo, Kerem Shemi, Carmen Volpe, Daniela Lucato, Andrea Krohn and additional artists present various contemporary solo, dance and performance works over the course of the SUNDAY SOLOS.
The works presented include: Souvenirs (work-in-progress) by Iliana Kalapotharakou, Mirage. A Self-Protrait Solo by Jenny Ocampo, Drunken Style by Kerem Shemi, Reality & Fantasy by Karina Suarez Bosche, Der Rebellische Körper by Daniela Lucato, Augury by Andrea Krohn, Breaking Out (From Solitary Confinment) by Luara Giuntoli, Unkn_own Body by Karina Suárez Bosche and Root by María Sánchez Alonso.

In 2017, Monster Control District (MCD) was founded by the theater collective VOLL: MILCH, cameraman Moritz Friese, programmer Nils Bultjer and scenographer / media artist Ariane Trümper at the LAB Frankfurt. The mission and goal of the MCD is to stage our monstrous present. MCD is located in Berlin, Lower Saxony and Rotterdamm. It develops works of film, theater and a computer program called nota, which is used a working tool for their collective, intermedial montage-practice. In 2016, VOLL: MILCH started a monster cycle that began in April 2016 with terreur and continued in October of the same year with Monster Erlöser. This cycle has been continued with the MCD since 2017.

Moisés Van Oordt is a filmmaker with a focus on communication and studied at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Per.

MS Schrittmacher (founded in Berlin in 1998) questions the classical situation of audience in its work and looks for new perspectives for audiences. In addition to their stage plays, they are increasingly using research and performance formats in public space. In their search for the grotesque in today’s reality, the group stands for a socio-political confrontation, which always intervenes in the direct experience of the audience.

Expedition Metropolis encourages participants to uncover their own personal complexity. Through introspection, breaking points in participants’ lives are uncovered that have shaped their biographies. As a result, a collective narrative is developed and translated to the theater’s stage. The theme of “being in transit” is fundamental in the expression of the participants’ stories of personal movement.

Nele Stuhler studied applied theater studies in Gießen, directing in Zurich and dramatic writing in Graz. In 2016, she received the Munich Prize for German Drama (Jury Award and Audience Award), the Ponto Performance Prize (with FUX) and was a participant in the International Forum at Theatertreffen. She realized her latest productions at Stadttheater Gießen (O Wand) and Sophiensaele Berlin (Mauerschau).

After working at various theaters as an assistant director and director, most recently Maria Magdalena at the Berliner Ensemble, Nicole Felden has been following her vision of her own, body-based stage language for over two years. It combines elements of dance and theater or movement and voice in a lively dialogue.
At Coaching Company Berlin, she received the opportunity to bring this vision to the stage. For more than four months, she pushed the performers to the boundaries so as to step into the unknown using intensive movement studies and body training and explored the interplay of voice and body.
With the play Playground Medicus, Nicole Felden breaks up familiar performative forms of expression and above all lets the whole body speak on stage.

As an independent actor and puppeteer, Nicole Weißbrodt loves working with creative people and following and further developing ideas. Everyday life with children has inspired and trained her to fill her pieces with content that is it times grotesque, but very close to life.

Niels Bormann studied performing arts from 1996 to 1999 at the Berlin University of the Arts. After completing his studies, he worked as an actor in Buenos Aires, Shanghai, Accra, Lagos, Richmond (Virginia) as well as in Germany, including at HAU Hebbel am Ufer and for many years with the group Lubricat at Sophiensaelel in Berlin.
Maryam Zaree, who was born in Tehran and who grew up in Frankfurt am Main, studied acting at the Konrad Wolf Film University Babelsberg. She became well-known through the main role in the feature film Shahada by Burhan Qurbani, for which she won various prizes.

TOTAL BRUTAL was grounded in 2007. Their work has been presented at Dock11, Sophiensaele, Schaubühne am Lehniner platz and the Maxim Gorki Theater.De volff creates international cultural exchange projects mixing social-political subjects with entertainment values. TOTAL BRUTAL is located on the edges of the dance world but refuses to be categorized unambiguously.It is dedicated to a major discourse and reveals its preliminary answers as expressive physical performances.

Nir Vidan is a choreographer and performer, based in Berlin and Israel and is a graduate of the B.Ed. program in dance theater at the Kibbutzim College, Tel-Aviv, Israel (2005-2011), the annual workshop at Yasmeen Godder Studio, Jaffa, Israel (2009-2010), and the BA program in dance, context and choreography at the inter-university center HZT, Berlin, Germany (2012-2015).
Nir has collaborated with various artists, such as Isabelle Schad, in the works Collective Jumps, Pieces and Elements and Double Portrait, with Clement Layes, Miriam Jacob, amongst others.
Nir has a long-term artistic partnership with Adi Shildan, a choreographer and performer based as well in Israel and Berlin. Together they have created three works: Measuring Arms (2012), Heritage of Harmonica (2014) and The Restlessness of Winged Creatures (2016)

Nuray Demir ist Künstlerin und Kuratorin im Bereich der visuellen, darstellenden/ performativen Künste. Ihre Praxis ist von einem forschenden und radikal transdisziplinären Ansatz gekennzeichnet. Für ihre Projekte arbeitet sie kollaborativ mit Personen aus unterschiedlichen Bereichen, mit denen sie temporäre Ensembles bildet. Sie beschäftigt sich in ihren Arbeiten insbesondere mit Debatten und Begriffen der feministischen und postkolonialen Theorie. Nuray Demirs Arbeit ist dabei von einem kritischen Blick auf soziale Ausschlüsse und komplexe hierarchische Verhältnisse gekennzeichnet; mit ihrem Werk entwirft sie künstlerische Irritationen und Gegenpositionen und formuliert damit einen Vorstellungs- und Ermächtigungsraum für soziale Gleichstellung. Sie realisierte Projekte an diversen Institutionen, wie etwa auf Kampnagel in Hamburg, in den Sophiensaelen in Berlin, dem HAU Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin und die Wiener Festwochen. Zudem trägt sie ihre Ansätze in die Lehre, etwa an der Universität der Künste Berlin.

OBJECTIVE SPECTACLE, the Berlin-based performance label was founded in 2015 by Clementine Pohl and Christoph Wirth. In temporary artisitc constellations and collaborations, the team realizes theater concepts between sound art, performative installation and happenings. Inspired by ideas of the historical avantgarde, experimental music and architecture, OBJECTIVE SPECTACLE examines functional dispositives of the spectacular and the performative dispositives of sociopolitical spectacles.

OfW, Ohne feste Wohnsitz, the German legal term for “without permanent residence”, is a union of theater makers in Berlin. The reality of our everyday lives is shaped by cultural and linguistic diversity. We want to use both to tell stories set in a complex world where we can communicate everywhere but feel at home nowhere.

The artist group Okapi consists of four members (actor/musicians/director) who collaborated for the first time for the production Storia di J. The group has been working on this theater piece since 2017, lead by a desire to discover more about the world of improvisation, which has forged the basis of this partnership and development of the idea itself.

Opéra Ivre serves opera with wine, bringing to life the poetry and intoxicated spirit of Bohemian subculture, past and present.
Per Aspera is a theater and performance company interested in international collaboration, audience-performer relations, site-specific/immersive creations, and the exploration of new forms. With a blatant disregard for the ordinary.

p.u.r.e is a Berlin-based collective of walking artists, who have been exploring the multifold relationships between human beings and the city since 2015. Our special focus is urban ecology of sound and movement.
We perceive the city as a performative process in which we are all take part and urban space as being produced by these performative acts. Led by the question “How does the city shape us?” and “How do we shape the city?”, we continue to develop minimalistic aesthetics of urban performance. External participants are invited to join these performative city walks to gain a first-hand experience of our explorations.

Anja Panse and Friederike Pöschel seek to current contemporary political theater that actively participates in society and its discourses. This is the second work the two artists have created together that artistically examines contemporary social distortions.

The group Panse/Kastner Productions was founded in 2017 in order to be able to actively work artistically with political content. Artists from a variety of disciplines have been brought together very consciously in order to be able to develop a special effectiveness by working interdisciplinarily. Panse/ Kastner Productions seek to current contemporary political theater that actively participates in society and its discourses.

Passaggio Oper (formerly The Berlin Opera Group) is an emerging opera company dedicated to bridging the gap and breaking the distance between the audience and the performers by making opera relatable, current and real. Our artists consist of extremely talented emerging young professionals who are on the path to a professional career and who have come together with a shared love for beautiful music in order to bring that music to life on stage to modern and diverse audiences. Our idea was forged in Schöneberg in Berlin at the start of 2016 with the goal of combining quality, passion and sincerity to create an authentic opera experience while making opera accessible to everyone.

PAUL is a collective for performing artists by performing artists. PAUL is a place for artistic exchange, a place for collaboration and a place for community. PAUL is the conglomeration of Vera, Rhea, Zahra and Jojo, four performing artists who support one another in their work and have created this platform together. PAUL is collectively run, without hierarchies. Together, we strive for the same concepts and goals.

The Performing Arts Festival team consists of young and experienced artists, festival designers, organizers, editors, publicists and more… – many members of the team are also active as members of Berlin’s independent performing arts community. Together, we shape this festival from work created within Berlin’s independent performing arts community and offer the festival for Berlin’s independent performing arts community.

You can meet us personally during the festival – we look forward to it!
https://performingarts-festival.de/2017/about/team/

Pink Valley is a three-member, Chilean-German performance collective that takes on the encounters, boundaries and coincidences of life and thus illuminates questions about humanity and cultural identity. The group largely works with the means of postdramatic theater and builds on scenically staged and biographical elements, works site-specifically and interactively with the audience and draws its aesthetics from the interdisciplinary.

We are an independent Berlin-based theater group that develops and produces English-language or bilingual plays for children and teenagers. We explore themes which interest us and which resonate with the experiences of our audience.

Performer and choreographer. He creates and presents his works in the context of both the performing and visual arts, amongst other institutions at the CCA Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, Museum of Art in Łódź, Nowy Teatr in Warsaw, Art Stations Foundation in Poznań, Kunsthalle Zurich, Polish Institute in Berlin, during Tanztage Festival at Sophiensaele in Berlin and Malta Festival in Poznań. He completed his choreographic studies at the HZT Inter-University Center for Dance in Berlin. He was an artist in residence at I.C.I./CCN in Montpellier and the Visegrad Artist Residency Program in Budapest and participated in many research programs, including Reseach Academy (ZHdK, Zurich) and Artists Research Laboratory (Fondazione Ratti, Como). He collaborates on a regular basis with the dramaturg Mateusz Szymanówka.

P_A_R_A_R / Immersive Performance Art is based in Berlin and was founded in June 2015 by the choreographers and performers Karina Suarez Bosche (Mexico-Germany) and Andrea Krohn (Brazil-Germany) as well as the set designer Cheng-Ting Chen (Taiwan).
It is a dance and performance platform that aims to approach people in different ways, building new strategies of self-consciousness through movement.

Performance is it! The open collective RALLE BALLE creates traveling performative happenings and unites all kind of high-performance artists. They make use of classical theatrical genres as well as cutting cheerfully through the mists of the artistic jungle in search of new formats, performative experiences and freedom of display modes. Spontaneous Satyr plays, luscious poetry, contradictory pictures and dislocated worlds. At the center of RALLE BALLE’s work is utopia and the creation of open spaces with professional theater artists to deal with ambivalent issues. Instead of distractions from reality, RALLE BALLE aims to use uncommon perspectives to reach authentic debates about today’s realities by the means of theater.

ReAktionsraum is an independent theater collective with artists from Berlin and Thuringia. ReAktionsraum is not dedicated to a specific genre of art or culture; instead, it seeks to form a network composed of different directions. The focus of the theatrical work with an ensemble that is constantly changing is the annual production of a new theater piece.

Ren Saibara is a Japanese director and performer. She studied German studies in Tokyo and historical urban studies in Berlin. She founded the artist collective actnetwork. She has presented her works at several international theater festivals in Japan. In her works, she compares the Japanese perspective with the European, often calling the comprehensive global mechanism in current social problems into question. At the same time, she confronts the insurmountable strangeness between German and Japanese culture.

Renae Shadler is an Australian performer, dancer and choreographer based in Berlin. Her work traverses dance, experimental performance and embedded community projects. Since 2011, Shadler has continued to explore physicality as a key source of expression, combined with spoken word and the larger dramatic gesture. She sees performance as an intimate act and often connects directly with the audience. Recently Shadler has further developed her work at Tanzfabrik in the context of Open Spaces Festival, ada studios, Dancehouse Australia and in residence at HELLERAU - European Center for the Arts Dresden. As a performer and acting coach, she has worked with Alexandra Pirici, Kaori Ito, Mirjam Sögner, Triage Live Art Collective and Dewy Dell, amongst others.

Richard Pettifer is a director, critic and scholar based in Berlin. He works solo and with groups in Australia, India, Indonesia, and Romania – including Bengkal Mime Theatre (INO), Dig Collective (AU), Atelier 35 (ROM) and Hoax (UK). He is part of the collective Atelierhaus Australiasche Botschaft Ost, which is housed in the former Australian Embassy in East Berlin. Apart from his critical writing platform Theaterstück, he writes for publications such as Samizdat (ROM) and A Younger Theatre (UK) and occasionally in academia. His work often concerns climate change and art activism, placing attention on our complicity with the global system through distancing norms and mechanisms in culture.

Richter/Meyer/Marx (Berlin) is an interdisciplinary artistic duo. The artists have been joining their names and arts under this label since 2013. With a predilection for the odd and absurd, their choreographies contain elements of performance, dance and installation. Their aim is to explore through the performative practice strategies and mechanisms of understanding gender, identity, new body representations, politics and collectivism.

Rike Schuberty has produced her own theater productions since 2009 with artists from the fields of the performing arts, music and video art. Im Vordergrund liegt die Erarbeitung von Bühnenstücken mit unterschiedlichen künstlerischen Mitteln; Schauspiel und Musik stehen dabei gleichberechtigt neben Puppenspiel oder Videokunst.

Romuald Krężel is an independent theatre and performance maker, coming from Poland, based in Berlin. He creates different contemporary theatre forms including classic theatre works, participatory performances and choreographies. Monica Duncan is video artist and choreographer based in New York. Her time-based work investigates the nature of visual perception and audience-performer dynamics through camouflage, stillness and collective image-making. 
Romuald and Monica began their collaborative work while studying together in the international MA in Choreography and Performance program at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Giessen.

Rosiris Garrido received her education as a circus artist at the National Circus School in Rio de Janeiro, specializing in aerial acrobatics. She has been living in Europe for 20 years, where she has been developing her work as a performance artist as well as choreographing and conceiving spectacles.
The research on how different disciplines are shared and how they interact are the basis of her multidisciplinarity, transiting between the world of circus, dance and theater.

Ruben Reniers was born in Jakarta and grew up in Rotterdam, where he completed a Bachelor’s degree in contemporary dance at the prestigious Hogeschool voor de Kunsten / CODARTs. His career as a dancer led him as a member of the ensemble to several theaters in Germany. His long-term collaboration with Amanda Miller/Pretty ugly Tanz Köln, as well as numerous collaborations with freelance choreographers was one of the main impulses for his artistic development. In 2009, Reniers pursued his fascination with movement and composition through the creation of his own choreographic works with rubarb dance & art with the illustrator Barbara Steinitz and Freiraum Ensemble in Cologne.

Sam Auinger is a sonic thinker, composer and sound artist. Hannes Strobl is a bassist, composer and sound artist. Georg Spehr is a sound director and audio designer. Wolfgang Galler is an artist manager and music producer. Prof. Dr. Holger Schulze is a professor of music studies at the University of Copenhagen. Dr. Sven Sappelt is a cultural scholoar and curator, as well as the founder of CLB Berlin.

Sara Lou Kramer, b. 1985 in Denmark
Kramer is a Visual Artist who investigates spaces with an inherent ambiguity historically and politically. The works are often produced in transitional spaces, such as squares, airports, between destinations and in transit-zones.
Kramer has shown her work at the Bauhaus Museum (DE), Floating Projects (Hong Kong) and later this year at Kópavogur Art Museum (IS).

Mirce Velarde-Liljehult, b. 1986 in Mexico
Due to Liljehult’s past experiences as a model her work is permeated with a performative character, in which she uses self-portraits as a reflective mental process. She questions the paradox of identity by giving a turn to the model as subject.
Her work has been exhibited at the Transmediale Festival, HKW (DE), UNAM (MX), Galerie der Stadt Sindelfingen (DE) and at the Freies Museum (DE).

Simon Köslich was born 1982 in Constance. After conducting his civil service in Naples, he studied Italian and film studies at FU Berlin and went to acting school at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Rostock. From 2010 to 2014, he was a member of the ensemble at Staatstheater Darmstadt. Since 2016, Simon Köslich works as a freelance actor and director. In 2017, he received funding from the Einstiegsfördurng program of Berlin’s Senate.

In the era of high-speed broadbands, advanced technology, online dating, fast weddings and even quicker divorces and a life generally on fast forward, we very often seek answers from the Internet. Click, search, type in your question and here you are: multiple websites, forums, blogs and more. that offer multiple suggestions, all we need to do just pick the one that feels the most suitable answer to us even if it’s the wrong one. Simona Klaniute presents Viki, How?, a one-woman show that explores the phenomenon of a so-called "strong Independent woman" and how to become one based on suggestions from Wikipedia.

Sisyphos, der Flugelefant (SdF) is a project-based independent group, founded in 2008 in Berlin by the theater director Chang Nai Wen. Despite the diversity of the SdF projects, from theatrical and site-specific performances to live art to documentary films and sound- space-video installations, it is always about the founding philosophy: direct, participatory, and collaborative. In different venues in Berlin, Leipzig, Feldkirch, New York, Rome or Taipei, SdF leaves traces with their various formats, generating communications not only between performers and spectators but also among the audience members. In an immersive environment, socially and politically relevant topics are thus not only made visible but experienceable.

spreeagenten are a group of Berlin-based artists, who realize national and international theater projects and performances (in Romania, the Czech Republic and Serbia, for example). The works pursue international, intercultural and interdisciplinary dialogue mainly through theater productions, but also cross the borders to different artistic disciplines. Continual work on documentary material, the development of pieces, the creation of site-specific productions in private and public spaces that correspond with the contents of the projects mark the group’s work. International ensemble-building and collaboration with international artists and partners are a common part of the work, as well as combining professionals and non-professional actors on stage.

Klein’s work deals primarily with complex systems that are transferred in (performative) conceptual ways - in a subtle yet interactive form. Deduction as a method ranges from installations to interventions. He is interested in small gestures and printed publications as a conceptual work, reflecting on performances as an action of a documented performative act.

Anuya Rane, Gosia Gajdemska and Hilla Steinert, as well as the artists working at K77, have formed a group to create two performance evenings for PAF. Their interdisciplinary approaches and personal backgrounds give hope for an exciting program.

suite42, led by theater director and dramaturg Lydia Ziemke, is a collective of international theater practitioners and artists committed to work that engages with remarkable historical moments and in particular with the effects of violence, war and migration on society and individuals. The focus of suite42 does not rest on performance alone, but also on forming a context for each work from academic and other artistic sources.

A native of the Californian desert, Summer Banks has been based in Berlin since 2008. She worked for EXBERLINER as their stage editor before returning to her studies at the Universität Potsdam, receiving her M.A. in Vergleichende Literatur- und Kunstwissenschaft (comparative literature and art) in 2016. She now works as an independent theater-maker and translator, in addition to running the Berlin English Improv Network and occasionally teaching German history through Disney songs with A Spoonful of Deutschland.

TEATUR – founded by Nadine Giese and Zettelmann 2013 in Berlin – works between performance, physical theater and object theater. They have performed in Germany, Switzerland & France. For the performance/ installation cracked creation #1,they invite other artists to share this experiment with them.

The company the kickpäck, founded in the summer of 2016, stands for contemporary circus and highly physical theater, for theater that tells a lot using simple means - with minimal stage design and maximum bodywork. Christian Peter, clown, tightrope walker and the co-founder of Triko Cirkus Teatar Zagreb and Franziska Pack, acrobat, performer and theater teacher (Berlin), combine acrobatic and dance elements with guitar, trumpet, loop machine and well-dosed text to stories and situations in which the invisible moments become visible. Based in Berlin and Zagreb, they have presented their work not only in Germany and Croatia but also in Switzerland, Brazil and Israel. As a teaching team, they complement each other with their broad experience and offer a wide range of workshops.

The Limelight Collective is a community of performing artists of various disciplines coming together for mutual support, artistic cross-pollination and collaboration. Spirituality is a central theme of much of its work and philosophy, and often a starting point in its artistic process. The Limelight Collective is a project of The Salvation Army.

The artistic team THE NAVIDSONS is a collective compromising Ole Hübner (composition), Tassilo Tesche (stage design and video) and Till Wyler von Ballmoos (director). They develop productions at the interface of performance, opera and art installations. Their work focuses on concepts of manipulations of realities and experiments with open dramaturgical forms. In their productions, they create live choreographies with the musicians and performers within a topography of media as a timeless co-authorship with the audience. The performances follow the idea of creating a “topography of states”. Their artistic motivation is the search for aesthetic, performative translations of unstable situations and fragile moments.

Theater o.N. is an almost 40-year old association of actors and puppeteers, directors, musicians and writers. Founded in 1979/1980 under the name Zinnober, it was the first independent theater in the former GDR. Since 2010, the theater located on the famous Kollwitzplatz has focused on the exploration and advancement of theater for audiences two years of age and up. Since 2013, it has presented the biannual FRATZ International - Festival for the Very Young. Since 2016, the regional festival Berliner Schaufenster for theater for audiecnes between the ages of zero and six has completed the programming for young audiences. In addition, the theater is developing productions with children and teenagers in socially disadvantaged areas. The program for adults is dedicated to new play development using the methods of biographical theater and puppet theater.

Theater ohne Probe was founded by Sonja Dif and Thomas Jäkel. The group is always on the search for new and challenging formats that reach beyond impro theater as a pure entertainment format.

A privately run theater, we have been able to establish ourselves within
Berlin’s extremely dynamic theater community as one of the region’s leading theaters for young audiences. Since starting out in 1987, we have entertained some 50,000 people with over 2,500 performances, including 40 premieres.
Our audiences span all nationalities und cultures, religions, genders, sexualities, ages and whatever other grouping or identities there are.

Thomias Radin is a young artist from Guadeloupe. His work is nourished by his reflection on the relationship between painting, music and dance. He articulates his approach around a main medium: oil painting and dance performances that enrich the reading of his paintings. With The Myth of a Trinity, he invites us to discover an introspection where he stages supernatural beings and fantasies, then designates the genesis of a human society and its relationship to the divine.

I’m an artist, searching for art as an attitude of intervention on the reality. I'm a person willing for more awareness and respect for life and coexistence among differences and diversity. I'm a researcher of movements and Its implication in the selves, soul, sensibility and capability of loving.

During their time at Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin (Leon as an actor and Johann as an assistant director) several collaborative works evolved: RHEINSBERG – Ein Bilderbuch für Verliebte (Kurt Tucholsky) at Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin, several episodes of VISIOTHEK at Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin and Theater Neumarkt Zürich. In 2016, Das Gute Leben premiered at Ballhaus Ost Berlin.

The newly formed collective Unconscious Collections is researching on how documentary can be experienced through performance. Artists from the different disciplines of music, dance and documentary film work together in interactive and multimedia-based productions.

Ursula Maria Berzborn wurde 1967 in Köln geboren und ist Regisseurin, Performerin, Bühnen- und Kostümbildnerin. Sie lebt und arbeitet seit 1987 in Berlin. Nach Studienaufenthalten in London und Amsterdam graduierte sie 1994 als Meisterschülerin an der HdK, Berlin im Fach Bühnenkostüm. Sie ist Mitgründerin des Kunsthauses KuLe in Berlin Mitte, wo sie bis heute tätig ist. 1996 gründete sie die Performancegruppe Grotest Maru, die sie in Künstlerischer Leitung bis heute führt, tourte weltweit, oft mit Unterstützung des Goethe-Instituts, und entwickelte zahlreiche ortsspezifische und partizipative Inszenierungen in Kooperation mit Festivals, Gast-Performer*innen und anderen Künstler*innengruppen. Sie arbeitet als Kuratorin und Veranstalterin und übt seit 2004 diverse Lehrtätigkeiten aus, u.a. an der HBK Braunschweig als Gastprofessorin und an der Universität Witten-Herdecke. Seit 2006 ist sie Vorstandsmitglied des Bundesverbandes Theater im Öffentlichen Raum.

virtuellestheater was founded in 2015 by seven artists living and working in Hamburg and Berlin. virtuellestheater is not a group name, but the designation of a certain approach to (performative) art. virtuellestheater creates space for subversive criticism of the present time and cultural agility, opposing the neoliberal imperative of world building. For our artistic research, we always use non-linear narrative forms, digital media and new technology. The results are performance installations, striving for a good life and a better future.

The artists Péter Bátory, János Brückner, Mátyás Falvai, Máté Filler, Ottó Szabó and Márton Emil Tóth have worked in the artist collective We Didn't Do It! Crew since 2009. They experiment with a variety of performance formats and participative situations.

Welcome Project - The Foreigner's Theater was founded 2015 by Chiara Elisa Rossini. Theater is another world, governed by others rules, a space where unordinary things can happen. Within its borders, we are all strangers looking for intimacy and dignity. The movie Welcome by Philip Loiret in which a clandestine migrant tries to overpass the English Channel by swimming to join his lover. The group’s first production, Intime Fremde, has been performed in many cities since it premiered in November 2015, including Milan, Genoa and Turin. In 2017, the production won the Jury Prize at the Crash Test Festival and was selected as one of the best productions of 2017 by the theater magazine Krapp's last post.

The international formation weristjack, founded in 2012, brings an interdisciplinary perspective to the development of theater projects. A strong research base and a process-oriented view represent the core aspect of the long-term development of their plays. weristjack often works in a site-specific way, taking local features into account. Since 2015, the group has increasingly devoted itself to the transplantation of Internet content into real spaces. Their current series Urban Nomad Online Symphonie situates its stories in the field of tension between a restless and partially uprooted life in urban space and the parallel existence in the online world. UNOS_1: das große halbe is the first part of this trilogy on HOME / NET / ART.

•____gemelos2000, Leo de Munk, Theodor di Ricco, Turbo Jambon, Zam Johnson, Amy J. Klement, Elya May, Séamus O´Donnell, Andre Putzmann, Christian Schmidt-Chemnitzer, Coop Anti-War Café, _>__>___>____falkenfeld GbR
network of international berlinbased artist____gemelos2000 & guests: • ____gemelos2000/artists/enviroment, performative interventions,... • Leo de Munk/artist/painting + sculpture • Theodor di Ricco/ artist /performance • Turbo Jambon / artist /performance • Zam Johnson/ artist /sound • Amy J. Klement/ artist/performance • Elya May/ artist /performance • Seamus O´Donnell/artist /sound • Andre Putzmann/artist/ woodprinting • Christian Schmidt-Chemnitzer/artist /performance