Eastap

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Organised by the Institute of Ethnomusicology – Center for Studies in Music and Dance (www.inetmd.pt) Dance Research Group. CALL FOR PAPERS Scenographers use drawing as an expressive and communication tool…

Organised by the Institute of Ethnomusicology – Center for Studies in Music and Dance (www.inetmd.pt) Dance Research Group.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Scenographers use drawing as an expressive and communication tool in rehearsal and in performance. They use it as a record of a thought process and an instrument for reflection. Drawing allows discussion and error and serves as a register of the creative process for all involved.

This conference aims at reflecting upon the artistic and pragmatic relationship scenographers, directors and choreographers have with drawing as a device for the creation of space and time of performance and as mediator between the bodies of performers on stage and the drawer’s page.

In addition, it will look at the creative process of the scenographic through the study of the relationship between the gestuality of the drawer and that of the performer generating space. Considering this dialogue can further advance definitions of scenographic practice.

We welcome submissions on any of the following subjects:

– creative processes of scenography in theatre, dance, music and musical theatre;

– drawing for scenography;

– drawing as scenography;

– drawing as performance;

– drawing and body in motion;

– performer’s gesture versus drawer’s gesture;

– definitions of sceno-graphy and of the sceno-graphic;

– drawing as a collective collaborative method of scenographic creation;

– drawing as a communication instrument of scenographic creation;

– drawing in response to performance;

– incidents and absences in drawing;

– shared drawings;

– questions of drawing in pedagogy of scenography;

– digital and mediated drawing in theatre, dance, music and musical thetare.

Presentations will be developed and edited into a publication which will also include drawings shown at the conference’s side exhibition.

Parallel to the conference panels there will be an exhibition of drawings by Portuguese scenographers as well as a performance by the theatre company O Teatrão.

DATES

26th, 27th and 28th March 2020 (one evening and two days)

VENUE

Penedo da Saudade Cultural Center, Coimbra, Portugal

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Lucy Algar, artist – performance designer – educator

André Guedes, visual artist and scenographer

Rui Horta, choreographer (to be confirmed)

PROPOSALS

Language: Portuguese and English

300 word proposals should be submitted by 30th September 2019 to the organising chair at drawingandperformance@gmail.com .

Proposals can discuss any of the above mentioned subjects or be directed at one of the following specific round tables:

Teaching drawing for performance;
Drawing as performance;
Drawing and body in performance.

Other forms of participation should be discussed in advance with the Organising Chair.

All submissions will be double peer-reviewed, under anonymous (blind) conditions, by a panel drawn from members of the Project Development Team and the Advisory Board.

REGISTRATION

The conference registration fee is 90€ for independent scholars/artists and 120€ for supported scholars/artists. Students have a 50% discount on full price. It includes all conference materials, coffee breaks, entrance to the exhibition and the performance.

Please note that we do not provide any funding to the delegates. It is also the responsibility of the delegates to arrange their own travel and accommodation.

PROJECT DEVELOPMENT TEAM

Daniel Tércio, INET-md, Faculdade de Motricidade Humana, University of Lisbon

Filipa Malva, INET-md, Faculdade de Motricidade Humana, University of Lisbon

Cristina Faria, Instituto Politécnico de Coimbra

Kate Burnett, Society British Theatre Designers (academic supervisor and editor)

Sofia Pantouvaki, Aalto University, Helsínki (academic supervisor and editor)

EDITORIAL TEAM

Filipa Malva, University of Lisbon

Kate Burnett, Society British Theatre Designers

Sofia Pantouvaki, Aalto University, Helsinki

ADVISORY BOARD (provisional)

Álvaro Barbosa de Sousa, Research Institute for Design, Media and Culture, University of Aveiro.

Celia Morgan, artist (New Zealand).

Christopher Baugh, Professor Emeritus, University of Leeds.

Cristina Fernandes, integrated researcher at INET-md, Universidade Nova de Lisboa (NOVA FCSH).

Deborah Harty, Lecturer in Fine Art, Loughborough University.

Paulo Luís Almeida, Senior Lecturer in Drawing, I2ADS – Research Institute of Art, Design and Society, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto.

Jessica Bugg, Dean School of Media and Communication, London College of Fashion.

Maria Hayes, artist (Wales).

Maria João Brilhante, Centro de Estudos de Teatro, Faculty of Humanities, University of Lisbon.

Rachel Hann, Senior Lecturer in Scenography, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Surrey.

ORGANISING CHAIR

Filipa Malva, PhD | drawingandperformance@gmail.com

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EASTAP conference SEPTEMBER 23- 25 2019

PROGRAM

Benoit Solbes

20 August 2019 20 h 09 min 20 August 2019

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SHARED MEMORY(IES): CREATION, RESEARCH AND POLITICS IN THE EUROPEAN CONTEMPORARY STAGE

SHARED MEMORY(IES):

CREATION, RESEARCH AND POLITICS IN THE EUROPEAN CONTEMPORARY STAGE

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EASTAP conference SEPTEMBER 23- 25 2019

EASTAP II Conference in LISBON

Benoit Solbes

18 June 2019 22 h 22 min 18 June 2019

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https://eastapconferencelisbon2019.wordpress.com/ https://www.tndm.pt/pt/calendario/ii-congresso-da-eastap/ Click here for Portuguese and French versions CALL FOR PAPERS SHARED MEMORY(IES): CREATION, RESEARCH AND POLITICS IN THE EUROPEAN CONTEMPORARY STAGE. The II EASTAP Conference (European…

https://eastapconferencelisbon2019.wordpress.com/

https://www.tndm.pt/pt/calendario/ii-congresso-da-eastap/

Click here for Portuguese and French versions

CALL FOR PAPERS

SHARED MEMORY(IES): CREATION, RESEARCH AND POLITICS IN THE EUROPEAN CONTEMPORARY STAGE.

The II EASTAP Conference (European Association for the Study of Theatre and Performance) will take place at the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon and the National Theatre D. Maria II on the 23rd, 24th and 25th of September 2019. The theme proposed for debate is Shared Memory(ies): creation, research and politics in the European contemporary stage.

The working of memory has been an object of inquiry by history, cognitive science, psychoanalysis, linguistics, literature, cultural and performance studies, sociology. In other words, by the sciences that aim at understanding how we process our experience in the world. Memory, associated with conservation and access to knowledge, is materialized through mnemonic devices that Frances Yates (1966) showed always connect space and the sum of knowledge. This was done, for example, in the 16th century, by the memory theatres of Giulio Camillo and Giordano Bruno. Today, the mass of information (big data) and the connection of objects online (internet of things) have us facing the same need to understand how and what we register from that mass of information within our reach, but especially the role played by memory in the configuration of individual and collective identities.

Throughout the last century, we talked about collective memory (Halbwachs, 1925), memory theatres (Banu, 1987), memory-habit (Connerton, 1989), memory locations (Nora, 1984-1994). More recently, following the debates about the Holocaust, we talked about incorporated memory (Taylor, 2003), post-memory (Hirsch, 2008) and memory as a continuous performative act (Schneider, 2011). These terms were used to describe processes which move us between past and present, community and individual, in a word, between specific types of performativity; between the apparent fixity of ritual and of celebration and the wandering so characteristic of memory, sometimes leaving traces and producing stratifications, other times selectively erasing. In this connection, memory industry and memory tourism have also been discussed (Traverso, 2005; Schneider, 2011). The obsession with the production and the use of archives, seen as repositories of experiences and knowledge to be reactivated, has also invaded the artistic field and governs the artistic practice as research.

The quest to understand how memory works and what it represents for the individual and the collective of which the individual is a part, what it means to remember and to forget, has had consequences in the appreciation of certain human practices and representations: the production of life stories, photographic records of public and private acts, documentary cinema, the creation of archives and databases, the use of narrative in medicine, the construction of memorials and the celebration of certain monuments, in sum, the deletion, the uses and misuses of memories that excluded, revised or reinforced narratives accepted as dominant.

On the one hand, we recognize the different amnesias of our times, the fear of robotization, of artificial intelligence, of expanded reality and the hologram. On the other hand, we are faced with the compulsive recording of our actions “for future memory”. Where can theatre and performance be situated in this problematic? As the art of memory? As a mnemonic device which makes a community temporarily remember together and, especially, produce memories and project memory in a space-time of sharing? The theatre memorabilia created for the pleasure of collectors is not the only expression (albeit the most evident one) of the modalities of the mnemonic recording and recovering of personal, cognitive and collective experiences of the theatre and the show.

The topic of memory relates to theatre and the performing arts precisely through their performative dimension. We see how it acts on the power of testimony, on the material dimensions of the real, on the non-segregation of the private sphere from the public sphere, on the prevalence of the process that connects artists and spectators in the meeting/confrontation of memories. We can speak of a theatre perceived as a palimpsest that lets you see how and what is written, erased and re-written in the body-memory of the actors, but also on the body of those present, who rework and reforge their memories in permanence.

In this II EASTAP Conference, we aim to promote discussion regarding the role of memory in contemporary theatre creation through three fundamental axes that are intertwined:

I. Memory in Theatre – The process of creation in its relation with the work of memory

Shared memory of experiences and knowledge
Theatre practice as testimony of (the) memory: text, body and annotation memory
Memory and anthropology: observation, recording, storage and archive in the creative process
Memory and political identity(ies)

II. Memory of Theatre – Research and the limits of memory

Artistic practice as research: performativity of the memory and cognition
Theatre between history and memory
Makers, audience(s) and memory(ies) of the theatre: the discourses of the observer community, the spectators, the actors, the directors, the critics
On memory as a territory under construction (texts, images, narratives)

III. The Theatre of Memory – The politics of memory in current societies and new theatre forms

Identity, narrative(s) and memory sharing
Memory and forgetfulness: the power(s) of theatre in the politics of memory
Artificial and digital memory: artistic experimentation
From “stock memory” to “flux memory”
Memory and the irruption of the Real: from documentary theatre to the theatre of the Real

The conference theme aims, therefore, to bring together diverse (inter)disciplinary perspectives (arts and performance studies, visual studies, cognitive sciences, social sciences, literary studies, cultural history), as well as to invite artists, that will be announced very soon, whose creative practice does not separate the three axes mentioned above. Thus, artists and researchers will be on an equal footing while discussing the theme and can present their points of view through communications, performance-speeches, interviews or commented audiovisual records of their work.

Maria João Brilhante

Centro de Estudos de Teatro, Universidade de Lisboa (mbrilhante@campus.ul.pt)

Tiago Rodrigues

Teatro Nacional D. Maria II (trodrigues@tndm.pt)

HOW TO SUBMIT A PAPER

If you wish to submit a paper, please see the Guidelines for Papers and send your proposal by 15th May 2019 (new date) to the II EASTAP Conference organizers at the email address eastapconference.lisbon2019@gmail.com

Papers will be allocated 25 minutes on the programme (15 minutes for the paper and 10 minutes for discussion).

The selection of panels/papers will be made by the Conference organizers in consultation with the Scientific Committee. The decisions will be made public by the 7rd June 2019.

Languages of the Conference: English, French, Portuguese.

Conference registration can be made until the 10st of July according to the guidelines explained at https://www.eastap.com/registration/ .

REGISTRATION INSTRUCTIONS

How to proceed to register to a Conference.

a) Make sur you are registered to the Association.

If not, this is step 1.

Go to EASTAP registration page

Choose your status (regular member, student, institutional)

And pay

You should receive by mail a notice of confirmation

b) once you have registered a new page opens up with the rates for the conference you want to register to:

II EASTAP Lisbon (22-25 Septembre 2019)

III EASTAP Bologna (27-29 February 2020)

c) click the Conference you want to attend and pay

You will receive a notice of confirmation

Thank you for having REGISTERED to the conference.

Regular members: 60€

Students: 30€

Please, note that EASTAP registration is mandatory.

All enquiries concerning registration should be addressed to the email address registration@eastap.com

GUIDELINES FOR PAPERS

Please, send:

Name, institution
Abstract with 300 words in English and in the language of the presentation (FR or PT), in a Word document, Times New Roman, 12 pt
The chosen axis
CV with 100 words
Technical needs

You may find more information at https://eastap.com

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CALL FOR PAPERS EASTAP conference

EASTAP III CONFERENCE IN BOLOGNA – FEBRUARY 27- 29, 2020

Benoit Solbes

17 June 2019 1 h 10 min 17 June 2019

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Click here for English, Italian and French versions CALL FOR PAPERS Creating for the Stage and other Spaces: Questioning Practices and Theories Organized by Claudio Longhi and Daniele Vianello The twentieth…

Click here for English, Italian and French versions

CALL FOR PAPERS

Creating for the Stage and other Spaces: Questioning Practices and Theories

Organized by Claudio Longhi and Daniele Vianello

The twentieth century witnessed crucial changes in creation for the stage, which in extreme cases resulted in a negation of theatre itself. While trying to negotiate this legacy, two decades into the twenty-first century, further transformations and developments are taking place, requiring new theoretical languages that adopt the past as an essential matrix for examining the present and future.

The III EASTAP Conference (European Association for the Study of Theatre and Performance) intends to study this specific subject as well as helping to establish and support a dialogue between different cultures and customs in a moment, our present time, when the idea of Europe is thrown into question.
As a logical follow-up to the Paris and Lisbon editions which focused on decentralisation and shared memory(ies) of the European contemporary stage, this third EASTAP Conference will examine creating for the stage from past to present and across practice and theory. With the express intention to embed the EASTAP Conference in the Festival VIE 2020 (international theatre festival), we will foreground dialogue on the creative process with artists.

Researchers have investigated creative practices and related issues from many different perspectives. Over the course of the twentieth century, these practices and perspectives were considered to be useful knowledge for understanding artistic works; later, they turned into a set of cultural objects in their own right, requiring specific approaches and publishing. In the third millennium, as the focus has moved from the culture of the product to the culture of the process, creative practices have been included in the resulting stage works as organic and inseparable parts of the same process.

The conference structure includes two main areas of investigation which, in turn, include four major interlocking topics: theories of textual composition and practices of textual composition; theories of performance creation, or ‘writing for the stage’, and practices of ‘writing for the stage’.

By ‘textual composition’ we understand not only play-texts, but also multiple literary as well as other verbal types of languages. Examples include texts derived from improvisation; performance-‘scripts’; materials used in documentary theatre; the dramaturg’s contributions, which enable the text to shift between author, director, actors and audience.

By ‘stage writing’ we understand that stage processes can become a writing system of their own, involving all theatrical elements. The notion applies to theatre direction as well as to avant-garde and contemporary performance art, where non-linguistic features can be afforded semiotic value, adding to the theatrical language.
Both of these main areas of enquiry – ‘textual composition’ and ‘stage writing’ – include two sub-topics, namely theoretical perspectives aspects and artistic practices. Each, in turn, can be set either in a historical or contemporary context.

Artists from the Festival VIE 2020 are invited to take part in the conference by entering into dialogue with experts, journalists, researchers and theatre professionals sharing their ideas about the topics of enquiry via presentations, performances, masterclasses, round tables and audio-visual materials.
The following list of topics is not intended to be prescriptive, but as a proposition to identify different perspectives from which to consider approaching theatre creation. Below are some examples of subjects and guideline questions:

I. Text composition – theories

a) historical dimension: What are the methods and results of the interaction historically occurring between theatrical theories, artistic aesthetics and stage practices? How have theatrical theories reflected cultural, social, political or other phenomena?
b) contemporary dimension: How do theories influence or anticipate theatrical innovation? What are the implications of the concepts of dramatic, post-dramatic and post-modern?

II. Text composition – practices

a) historical dimension: How is the relationship between textual composition and stage production changing? How is textual composition influenced by production practices, from festivals to opera, from ballet to genres including acting and music?
b) contemporary dimension: What new practices are emerging as a result of the development of new dramatic models? What is the role of the contemporary so-called dramatist? How do new technologies affect writing practices and their application on stage?

III. Stage writing – theories

a) historical dimension: What influences do early forms of stage writing have
on successive generations? How do such writing methods contribute to the development of new forms of theatre direction?
b) contemporary dimension: What has ‘writing for the stage’ meant from the late twentieth century to now? How does this concept apply to the different languages and social contexts in Europe as well as around our globalised world?

IV. Stage writing – practices

a) historical dimension: From techniques used in the Commedia dell’Arte, through to the twentieth century, from livrets de mise en scène to contemporary directors’ notebooks, what are the different historical practices of stage writing and their distinctive features? How did the early forms of stage writing influence directing techniques?
b) contemporary dimension: How have stage writing practices resulted impacted on the conception of space, time, sound, lighting, image, actor performance and the audience? What is the role of the author, director, actor and spectator, in a theatre world where workshops and community theatre promote collaborative stage writing?

HOW TO SUBMIT A PAPER

Please send your proposal by 04 October 2019 to the III EASTAP Conference organisers:

eastapconference.bologna2020@gmail.com

Presentations: max. 20 minutes, followed by a 10-minute discussion.

Applications must include:
– Name, surname, institution (if any)
– Abstract of 300 words (max.) in English and in the language of the presentation (FR or IT), in a Word document, Times New Roman, 12pt
– Selected subject(s) (among the four main topics listed above)
– 150-word (max.) biography
– Any technical requirements for your presentation

The selection of panels/papers will be made by the Organizing Committee and Scientific Committee. The decisions will be made public by the 25 October 2019.

Languages of the Conference: English, French, Italian.

Conference registration can be made until 15 November 2019 according to the guidelines https://www.eastap.com/registration/

Registration includes free access to all shows and cultural events included in the Festival VIE 2020 (booking required). The full programme of Festival VIE 2020 events and artists will be available at https://www.viefestival.com/vie2020/, autumn 2019.

Conference registration fees
EASTAP regular members: 70 Euros
EASTAP student members: 35 Euros

Please note that EASTAP membership is a necessary precondition for Conference registration.
Please register here: https://www.eastap.com/registration/

REGISTRATION INSTRUCTIONS

How to proceed to register to a Conference.

a) Make sur you are registered to the Association.

If not, this is step 1.

Go to EASTAP registration page

Choose your status (regular member, student, institutional)

And pay

You should receive by mail a notice of confirmation

b) once you have registered a new page opens up with the rates for the conference you want to register to:

II EASTAP Lisbon (22-25 Septembre 2019)

III EASTAP Bologna (27-29 February 2020)

c) click the Conference you want to attend and pay

You will receive a notice of confirmation

Thank you for having REGISTERED to the conference.

All enquiries concerning registration should be made to registration@eastap.com

All enquiries concerning Call or organization of the Conference should be made exclusively to segreteriaconference.bo2020@gmail.com

For any other information, please refer to:
https://eastap.com
http://eastapconference2020.wordpress.com/
http://emiliaromagnateatro.com/eastap-conference/ https://www.viefestival.com/vie2020/eastap-conference/

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CALL FOR PROPOSALS

European Journal of Theatre and Performance, Issue number 2 – Deadline : 20 July 2019

Benoit Solbes

16 June 2019 1 h 20 min 16 June 2019

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European Journal of Theatre and Performance Call for Proposals Past, Present and Future of Creative Processes in European Performing Arts Issue Editors: Lorenzo Mango, Sophie Lucet, Luk…

European Journal of Theatre and Performance

Call for Proposals

Past, Present and Future of Creative Processes in European Performing Arts

Issue Editors: Lorenzo Mango, Sophie Lucet, Luk Van den Dries

Multi-diversity is undoubtedly one of Europe’s main characteristics. As the differences between cultural, political, economic and social identities in Europe are often stronger than the forces that unite, Europe remains a fragile construction that is constantly in need of critical revision. However complex and challenging the diversity at the core of European commonality may be, it is also an expression of tremendously rich and multi-layered cultural traditions that, even when they are anchored in the past, continue to dialogue with the present.

Diversity is also a common characteristic of European theatre, but for this issue of the European Journal of Theatre and Performance we attempt to examine diversity from a methodological rather than an aesthetic point of view. Europe has been, and continues to be, the laboratory of many innovative forces in theatre history, which time and again challenge aspects of dominant theatre systems, be it actor-training, playwriting, technological innovation, rehearsal methods, the rise of the director, collaborative working methods, the distribution of performances via festivals, etc. ‘Every production forms its own method of work’, the dramaturg Marianne Van Kerkhoven once wrote. As such, the diversity of the European theatre stage is intimately linked to its variety of working methodologies, and it is precisely these varieties that guarantee the flexibility and mobility of European theatre for the future.

This second issue of the European Journal of Theatre and Performance focuses on the ‘genetics’ or creative processes of theatre, or on what Marco De Marinis calls ‘seeing-making theatre’. Genetic research in the performing arts began to grow roughly from the mid-eighties under the impulse of Almuth Grésillon and many others and slowly emancipated from its older sister critique génétique or genetic criticism. Now the interest in creative processes and their documentation has widely expanded. For this issue the editors are primarily interested in essays that critically discuss working methodologies on all levels of the creative process: the dynamics and collaborative nature of rehearsals; the role and function of observers during a creative process; the documentation of the rehearsal process through notebooks, drawings, video, social media, shared file-servers, blogs etc.; strategies of artistic research as instruments of inspiration; the role and function of dramaturgy; the relation between theatre and labour, among others. More general issues regarding research into creative processes in the performing arts could also be addressed, such as the challenges of the processual nature of theatre performances for genetic scholars, or how local and international contexts (political, economic, societal) influence creative processes. As Milo Rau states in the Ghent Manifesto ‘Theatre is not a product but a production process’, and we want to chart in what sense this production process has been formulated in the past, how it is changing in our times and how much it reflects current debates about democracy, interculturalism, hierarchy, authorship and so on.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

Past and present methodologies of creation;
Connections between the micro-world of creative processes and the macro-world of the larger institutional, social, intercultural, political and ecological environment;
The documentation of creative processes: drawings, notebooks, notation, aural and visual forms;
The links between methodologies of creation and political utopias;
The production and transmission of embodied knowledge;
Authorship and non-hierarchical ways of collaboration;
Digital humanities and the development of technological tools for genetic research;
Intermediality and its influence on the creative process;
Co-creation process of theatre and (live) film;
Historiographies of the creative process;
Digital memories and archives of creative processes.

Proposals should be written in UK English, in MS-Word format and be between 600 and 700 words. Proposals must be based on original, unpublished work not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Please state in the proposal in which language(s) you intend to write the paper. If your proposal is accepted, you will be invited to submit a first draft of your article by 1 October 2019. Articles can be written in the language of author’s preference. However, at this stage of the development of the journal and EASTAP, we ask contributors to secure professional proof-reading for all articles written in languages other than English. Authors may also choose to publish their article in more than one language. Submitted articles will undergo a double blind peer-review process. The maximum length of the final article should not exceed 9000 words (including abstract in English and at least one additional language, references, a short note on the author, etc.).

Deadline for proposals: 20 July 2019

First drafts of accepted proposals: 1 October 2019

Final drafts: 20 December 2019

Publication: January 2020

Issue-related enquiries and abstract proposals should be sent to the issue editors:

Luc.vandendries@uantwerpen.be

lormango57@gmail.com

sophie.lucet93@gmail.com

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WE HAVE THE GREAT PLEASURE TO ANNOUNCE

2019 EASTAP ASSOCIATE ARTIST is SHERMIN LANGHOFF, artistic director of MAXIM GORKI THEATRE BERLIN

ArchibaldFergusson

21 April 2019 22 h 07 min 21 April 2019

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Shermin Langhoff began her professional life in publishing and television. After many years in film, collaborating on projects including Gegen die Wand (Head-On) with Fatih Akin, she worked as…

Shermin Langhoff began her professional life in publishing and television. After many years in film, collaborating on projects including Gegen die Wand (Head-On) with Fatih Akin, she worked as a curator at Berlin’s Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) theatres from 2004 to 2008. There she founded the “Akademie der Autodidakten” (Academy of Autodidacts), which provided many talented artists with a platform for their work. Her “Beyond Belonging” project series began in 2006, for which she invited artists from other disciplines such as visual arts, literature and film – including Nurkan Erpulat, Nevin Aladağ, Hakan Savaş Mican, Ayşe Polat and Neço Çelik – to tell new stories for the theatre.

In 2008 Langhoff founded the Ballhaus Naunynstraße in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district and made significant contributions to establishing the concept of post-migrant theatre. Since then this concept has become a constant in the societal debates about the country of immigration that Germany has become, and has been widely discussed in academia as well. Several Ballhaus productions, especially Verrücktes Blut (Crazy Blood) by Nurkan Erpulat and Jens Hillje, garnered attention on an international level. Erpulat’s production was invited to Berlin’s Theatertreffen and numerous other international festivals.

Langhoff has been the artistic director of the Maxim Gorki Theatre Berlin since the 2013/14 season. In 2014 and 2016, the Gorki was voted “Theatre of the Year” by the German-speaking critics in Theater heute magazine’s survey (together with the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz in 2016). Many Gorki productions have received both national and international honours. They’ve also been recognized with invitations to the Theatertreffen festival: in 2015 for the play Common Ground by Yael Ronen and ensemble, followed by The Situation, another work by Yael Ronen and the ensemble, in 2016.

Under Langhoff’s direction, the Maxim Gorki Theatre understands itself as a place in which constructions of nation, identity, and belonging are questioned by dealing with history and presenting trans-local references. For the beginning of her tenure in 2013, Langhoff organised the first Berlin Herbstsalon (Berlin Autumn Salon), an interdisciplinary exhibition-parcour, in which around 30 artists shed light on the historic area around the Maxim Gorki Theatre from a variety of perspectives over a period of two weeks. Two years later in 2015, the second salon devoted itself to flight and seeking refuge, and how visible and invisible borders separate people from one another: in this context, a special kind of encounter between political art and activism was enabled. For the third salon in 2017, the exhibition expanded to encompass the entire city. From the Brandenburg Gate, through the Maxim Gorki Theatre to the historic Kronprinzenpalais (Crown Prince’s Palace), the exhibition gathered works by about 100 artists from around the world. Under the slogan “De-integrate Yourselves!”, they presented a manifold rebellion against attributions, generalisations and simplifications and invited a broad public to engage with these social issues. More than 20,000 visitors came to the exhibition rooms alone, admission to which was free of charge.

Shermin Langhoff has received several awards for her work at the Maxim Gorki Theatre. In 2015 the B.Z. newspaper awarded her with their culture prize. In 2016 she received the East End Theatre Prize and, in the same year, the prestigious Theatre Prize Berlin from the Preussische Seehandlung foundation, together with Jens Hillje, co-artistic director. Under their leadership, the Gorki has deliberately become a radical venue “reflecting the diversity of the city’s population in its performance and discussion programme, as well as in its ensemble: German actors from around the world who perform their way out of pigeon-holes, attributions and (gender) certainties”, the jury explained. “For them identity is not a fixed category, rather an opportunity to reconsider and re-examine oneself time and again, in social, artistic and political spaces”.

In addition, the Alfred Toepfer Foundation awarded Shermin Langhoff its KAIROS European culture prize in 2011 for her work as a cultural mentor. The Helga and Edzard Reuter Foundation has honoured her for notable achievements in the field of international understanding and integration. In 2012 she received the Moses Mendelssohn Prize from the Berlin government. She was presented with the Theodor Heuss Medal in 2014. In 2017 she was awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz (Federal Cross of Merit) by German President Joachim Gauck for her achievements in culture.

Shermin Langhoff is a member of the jury at the Tarabya Academy for Culture in Istanbul and for both the Alfred Topfer Stiftung’s KAIROS award and the city of Augsburg’s Bertolt Brecht award. From 2012 to 2017, she was on the board of trustees of the Eberhard-Schultz-Stiftung für soziale Menschenrechte und Partizipation (Eberhard-Schultz-Foundation for Social Human Rights and Participation) and served as an expert and a founding member of the Germany-wide Rat für kulturelle Bildung (Council for Cultural Education).

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European Association for the study of theatre and performance

EASTAP II Conference in LISBON

EASTAP III CONFERENCE IN BOLOGNA – FEBRUARY 27- 29, 2020

European Journal of Theatre and Performance, Issue number 2 - Deadline : 20 July 2019

Call for papers – Drawing and performance : Creating scenography // Deadline : 30th September

PROGRAM

EASTAP II Conference in LISBON

CALL FOR PAPERS

SHARED MEMORY(IES): CREATION, RESEARCH AND POLITICS IN THE EUROPEAN CONTEMPORARY STAGE.

EASTAP III CONFERENCE IN BOLOGNA – FEBRUARY 27- 29, 2020

CALL FOR PAPERS

European Journal of Theatre and Performance, Issue number 2 – Deadline : 20 July 2019

2019 EASTAP ASSOCIATE ARTIST is SHERMIN LANGHOFF, artistic director of MAXIM GORKI THEATRE BERLIN