spielzeit’europa 2010

spielzeit’europa 2010 features dialogue as experience in encounters with innovative theatrical languages. New theatrical dimensions challenge us to go beyond our traditional European way of looking where understanding is purely the decoding of language to an experience of the other. The other is also ourselves: this is an experience which theatre can make possible as cultural dialogue.
This dialogue starts in the summer in the baroque surroundings of Schloss Charlottenburg with a MAUForum, directed by the Samoan choreographer Lemi Ponifasio as a ceremony and festival of artists. In November Sasha Waltz’s new creation Continu – a development of Dialoge 09. Neues Museum – will have its German premiere at spielzeit’europa. Isabelle Huppert is a nervy diva assoluta as Blanche DuBois in the highly technological theatre world of Krzysztof Warlikowski – her third guest appearance at spielzeit’europa. Angelin Preljocaj enables his company together with dancers from the Bolshoi Ballet to uncover everyday rituals in dialogue with the Indian artist Subodh Gupta. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and his dancers and musicians from 13 countries rely on dialogue in a Babylonian confusion of languages creating a world of experience mixing live concert, theatre, dance, text and sculpture. The monologue Mission, based on interviews with missionaries in Congo, tells of a destroyed country of remarkable natural beauty and nameless violence. The works of the New York-based Chinese choreographer Shen Wei can be seen for the first time in Berlin, including his “fresh encounter” with Asia arising out of a journey to the Angkor Wat temple complex. The season concludes outside the Haus der Berliner Festspiele with Tristi Tropici by Virgilio Sieni after Claude Lévi-Strauss. spielzeit’europa will have full access to perform in the building once again next season following the ongoing renovations in 2011.
“Artists are the prophets of a certain reality” (Krzysztof Warlikowski) – and art is our sole credible experience and possibility of change. Theatre is a space for experience and a moment of realization, not a representation of a crisis.
Our thanks to Bernd Neumann, Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, and to you, our valued audience, whom we invite most warmly to another season of spielzeit’europa.

Brigitte Fürle Artistic Director spielzeit’europa | Berliner Festspiele
Joachim Sartorius Director Berliner Festspiele