Dear friends and colleaques!
It is with great pleasure to invite you to a unique occasion within the German-speaking festival landscape:The triennial festival THEATER DER WELT is the major international theatre festival in Germany and will take place May 14-31, 2020 in Düsseldorf. For the first time in more than fourty years of it’s history, the festival will open up to TYA as well – one third of the programme addresses children and young people. During 18 days we will celebrate a festival of diversity with a controversial and political programme at Schauspielhaus and Junges Schauspiel as well as Tanzhaus NRW, FFT, Kunstsammlung NRW and other local institutions.
(Unfortunately, parts of the Festival are parallel to the World Congress 2020 in Tokyo. So please: Go to Tokyo, where ever you are! And afterwards: Come to Germany! :))
Especially, we would like to invite you to participate in our “Equity – Panel on International Cooperation” on May 29-31, 2020. Mike van Graan (president of the African Culture Network, counselor to EU and Unesco) from South Africa will host an inspiring weekend and exciting festival finale. Using design thinking methods or getting together in a “Citizen’s Brunch” we will work on how to cooperate fairly and share our resources in the future. Experiences, demands and new artistic positions from Cameroun, Nigeria and South Africa, keynotes from South Africa (Mike van Graan) and Germany (Anne Fleckstein, Kulturstiftung des Bundes/Turn) as well as additional inputs from Brasil, Chile, India, Japan and Belgium will support our search for new ways of collaboration all over the world. The panel will be held in cooperation with Assitej Germany.
Several extraordinary major productions for young audiences will be presented: From South Africa comes “Hani: The Legacy”, an explosive “history lesson” of the first generation born after Apartheid, by Market Theatre Laboratory. Seven Australian children will blame their government for its refugee policy in “We all know what’s happening” (by Samara Hersch and Lara Thoms). And Swedish Unga Klara theatre will present Farnaz Arbabi’s investigation of (post-)colonialism “X”.
With the festival’s focus on Canada we are looking forward to two Canadian-German coproductions: Jordan Tanahill’s (e. g. “Concord Floral”) new text “Is my mic on?”/”Ist mein Mikro an?”, specifically written for THEATER DER WELT, will be a theatrical protest song with 21 young actors as well as choirs from Düsseldorf. And David Paquet’s (e. g. “2h14”) new play “Le poids des fourmis”/”Das Gewicht der Ameisen” will have its European premiere during the festival.
Fundus Theater (Hamburg) of Research will present it’s internationally produced interactive performance “Playing Up”; Israeli Itim Ensemble will show the puppet-cinema play “Planet Egg”, and Mexican queer theatre-maker Hector Flores Komatsu will tell fantastic an humorous story of indigenous youth’s everyday life in “Andares” (“Pathways”).
For the first time the award of the International Theatre Institute goes to an artist explicitly devoted to TYA: Jetse Batelaan – who will also be present with Theater Artemis‘ production “The Story of the Story”/”Die Geschichte von der Geschichte” shown during the opening weekend at Schauspielhaus’s main stage.
Young people from all over the world will unite for the Young Theater der Welt Congress “Future t(h)ere: Our house is on fire!” at Junges Schauspiel (public presentation on May 28, 2020, 19h).
Let’s open our eyes, ears and hearts and celebrate a great world festival together!
Sincerely yours
Stefan Fischer-Fels
(Artistic director Junges Schauspiel / Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus)
For further information, tickets and registration:
tickets for professionals: david.eberhard@dhaus.de
registration for Equity Panel: equity@theaterderwelt.de
– cost contribution: 50€ (incl. 6 meals & performance “X”)