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about the program
We are presenting you with the SPIELART program
for the tenth time. We are taking this
round number as an opportunity for a short
summary of the festival’s ambitions:
We have been and still are frequently called a
festival of new forms of theater. »The utopian
moment lies in the form,« said Heiner Müller.
But we were not only interested in purely
formal aspects, but rather in the search for
new, convincing congruencies between content
and form, the search for new aesthetics,
other ways of performing and seeing, spaces,
media. And we were also interested in the exploration
of theater as a social venue, the notion
of authenticity, documentary aspects,
and a new affiliation of the relationship between
the actors and the audience – these were
the essential initial issues for us.
From the beginning, what was essential for us
was the collaboration with theatermakers and
artists who are searching for new forms of
expression, who reinvent their projects virtually
from their point of origin, from ground
zero – or, as Jan Lauwers put it into words,
»Each project begins with a blank piece of
paper.« The consequences for our work mean
being open to novel artistic ideas and offering
them a forum within the festival.
For many artists, SPIELART was and is a stepping
stone in their international careers.
Frequently artists we presented for the very
first time in Munich, such as Forced Entertainment;
Romeo Castellucci; the Needcompany;
Rimini Protokoll; Gob Squad; She She Pop; Alvis
Hermanis; and Nature Theater of Oklahoma are
not only guests at the largest festivals worldwide
today, but they also are now part of the
core of German theater culture. For this reason,
we would like to open the festival‘s doors
even more for the next generations of artists.
A novelty at SPIELART 2013 is that over half of
the program consists of coproductions, which
will come to Munich as brand-new productions.
In this respect, the festival will be full of
surprises even for us. One reason for this is we
would like to also reflect the many years of
trust the multitude of artists have put in us.
Another factor is SPIELART is so established
internationally in the meantime that we would
like to also be in the producing sector, to have
more responsibility and have a part in co-
designing and co-creating the productions,
especially because in many countries the
available facilities and means for support and
production have been drastically reduced.
The structure of the 2013 festival program is
based on three time-related focal points and
two long-term installation projects:
The first weekend is completely devoted to
theater outside of Europe and is, in addition to
the premiere by Gintersdorfer | Klaßen on Pan-
Africanism – marked by the large presence of
theater artists from New York and Beijing, who
deal with their recent history, respectively –
with a total of 18 intensive hours of theater, a
barbecue, and opportunities to participate
and get into the act and then to step back out
again. The second weekend is then devoted to
Europe. In a performance and discussion platform
entitled WAKE UP! – ASSEMBLY FOR A
DIFFERENT EUROPE artists, scientists, journalists,
and filmmakers from Greece, Italy, Spain,
and Portugal will settle into all of the rooms at
Muffathalle for three days to explore the issue
of concrete political creative and development
possibilities in our societies and the role artists
will have in this. However, it also has to
do with becoming familiar here in our country
of Germany with the reality in the countries
governed by the troika through original reports
and testimonials, and to examine in a
critical way Germany‘s role in this.
The last week of the festival will then be
devoted for the most part to the next generation
of artists. We are presenting seven new
works by artists of the coming generation –
coproduced by SPIELART and produced by
independent production companies in Stockholm,
Ghent, Düsseldorf, Zurich, Basel, and
Vienna.
Two large installation projects will be shown
during the entire festival: SITUATION ROOMS
by Rimini Protokoll, a coproduction with
Münchner Kammerspiele (and others), and
CITYWORKS a special program as part of the
tenth edition of SPIELART. We have invited 10
artists and groups from the performing arts,
visual arts, architecture, and urbanistics to
present their perspectives and reflections on
the subject of life in a metropolis in the form
of installations and | or happenings. The works
will be presented in a container tour in Munich
stretching from the bridge Ludwigsbrücke to
the Gasteig Cultural Center.
Muffatwerk will function as the festival center
and a cordial meeting point for the artists, for
our guests from Germany and abroad, and
– naturally – for the Munich audiences. Welcome
to a 16-day festival of the arts.
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