The study of performing arts at the UdK Berlin places a deliberate focus on contemporary theatre practices: The work of the actor has expanded into a practice that can no longer be defined within the traditional professional profile. Consequently, the degree program understands itself as a laboratory in which teaching and research develop methods that regard acting technique as a tool applicable independently of directing styles and aesthetic forms.
The aim of the training is to develop individuals who are artistically productive in diverse forms of performative practice, working with technical awareness and intellectual independence.
The discussion surrounding the concept of postdramatic theatre has made clear how performance and representational forms that were until recently considered marginal have moved to the center of German theatre practice. Aesthetics that traditionally belonged exclusively to the realm of independent theatre, international avant-garde movements, or the border.
Co-radical togetherness
What could our ways of being together look like differently?
Four beings explore. With an understanding implanted within us of the phenomenon of love and friendships, of mechanical social manners and ritual processes, it seems as if we already know how we are supposed to encounter one another. Examining forms of togetherness and relationships shaped by patterns and power structures that assign certain roles and keep us trapped in them is profoundly political and opens up spaces for action. Because wherever norms are silently accepted, left unnamed, and not brought up for (re)negotiation, violent logics remain intact and appear unchangeable.
How do we practice encounters free from hierarchical and violent structures, and find a social reality in which it is possible simply to be—one where different forms of self can be lived and expressed, in all their contradictions and incompleteness, beyond any logic or demand for linearity? Instead of either/or, a both/and. This is a research project deeply inspired by Şeyda Kurt’s book Radical Tenderness, in which we search, attempt, fail, and observe what is present and what could be.
Length of production: 59 minutes
Venue: The Goose on a String Theatre, basement stage
Performance dates: 16.4. 15:30; 16.4. 18:00, 17.4. 13:15
Production language: German, English subtitles
