A group of people sit at beer tables on a lawn next to a building in the evening, others queue up at a food truck.

© Berliner Festspiele, photo: Piero Chiussi

Theatertreffen-Blog

Selected young authors and theatre enthusiasts will provide artistic and journalistic coverage of Theatertreffen on theatertreffen-blog.de, focussing especially on the use of social media tools on Instagram and Twitter.

The Theatertreffen-Blog

Five authors and theatre enthusiasts provide critical on-site coverage of Theatertreffen. Qualifications will be honed, journalistic writing skills will be developed and new formats will be invented. Applications for participation in the Theatertreffen-Blog can be submitted in the context of an open call which is usually published towards the end of the previous year.

History

Relocating the festival newspaper – which was produced from 2005 to 2008 in cooperation with the Berliner Zeitung – to the internet expanded the reach and transparency of the festival’s coverage: discussions on the productions invited to the festival could be followed independently of time or place, and audiences were able to contribute their views via the comments section. The expansion of the call for submissions to include not only German but also English-speakers participants led to a more international tenor in the debates. And not least of all, requiring participants to have their own blog produced a selection of contributors who were already active online.

The Theatertreffen-Blog has developed into its own independent digital brand, and was linked by Guardian Online, nachtkritik.de and the feminist blog maedchenmannschaft.net, among others, as an original source. The Theatertreffen-Blog’s media partners include the Berliner Zeitung, EXBERLINER, 3sat/Kulturzeit, kultiversum.de, Theater der Zeit, ZEIT ONLINE and blogger Mary Sherpe from stilinberlin.de as well as Johanna von Stülpnagel from redenswinger.de/blog. These partners have given staff support to the blog editorial team and its work by releasing journalists from work to act as mentors, media support in terms of linking, and content support through their own reviews and postings.

From 2011 to 2015 the Theatertreffen-Blog was funded by the Rudolf Augstein Foundation. Since 2016 the Theatertreffen-Blog has been funded by Stiftung Presse-Haus NRZ.

The Theatertreffen-Blog was founded in 2009 by Nikola Richter, who was its head until 2013. In 2014 and 2015, Bianca Praetorius took over this position. From 2016 to 2021, Janis El-Bira was head of the Theatertreffen-Blog. In 2022, Antigone Akgün and Ozi Ozar took over the conception and editing of the project. The 2023 Theatertreffen-Blog was headed by Antigone Akgün in close cooperation with Zofia nierodzińska.

Funded by
Stiftung Pressehaus NRZ