Invitation: Documentary theatre workshop at Mladi Levi International Festival

Corinne Maier: PAST IS PRESENT, photo: Brigitte Fässler

At the forthcoming Mladi Levi International Festival you will have the possibility to experience documentary theatre in a theoretical and practical manner under the guidance of a group of Swiss artists.

Documentary theatre existed for a long time but it experienced a true renaissance in the last decade. Groups and artists as Rimini Protokoll, Hans-Werner Kroesinger, Rabih Mroué, Milo Rau, She She Pop and many many others worked in different manners and styles with documents, with experts in a particular area or with their own biographies.

The workshop of documentary theatre will be led by director Corinne Maier, actress Anne Haug and dramaturge Kris Merken, who will also present their performance PAST IS PRESENT at the Mladi levi festival.

In the first part of the workshop participants examine the great lines from the beginning of documentary theatre from the sixties (with a short look on its precedessor, the political theatre of Brecht and Piscator) until now. After a lecture of the dramaturge Kris Merken, they will discuss the knowledge and experiences concerning the subject. In the second part the actress Anne Haug and the director Corinne Maier will perform practical exercises with the workshop participants. Main questions of the second part are: how do we generate documentary material through improvisation? How can we structure it? How personal is too personal or is there ever such a limit? The worshop will finish with a presentation, a mini-documentation of our work.

The workshop will take place on Monday, 25th August from 10.00 a.m. to 3.00 p.m. at Stara mestna elektrarna – Elektro Ljubljana. 
Target audience: theatre directors, dramaturges, performers as well as people who are not professionally involved in theatre but are interested in the field.

Applications open until 20th August 2014. The admission to the workshop is free. For further information and registration please write to maja.vizin@bunker.si or call 00386 51 269 906.

We are looking forward to welcoming you at an interesting day of a practical documentational theatre experience.