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THEATER OF THE VOICELESS FESTIVAL AND SYMPOSIUM

“Theater of the Voiceless”, a symposium and festival produced by Zeitgeist DC (Austrian Cultural Forum Washington, Goethe-Institut Washington and the Embassy of Switzerland) and the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics, takes place from June 16 – 19, 2013 at various venues around Washington. Its goal is to bring together leading playwrights, artists, governmental, political and cultural experts from the United States and German-speaking countries to discuss, perform, and celebrate the international power and vitality of this art form.

Schedule Overview

Sunday, June 16, 7 pm Reading in its entirety of a small, small world

Playwrights: Konradin Kunze and Sophia Stepf (Germany, in attendance), with contributions from Abhishek Majumdar (India) Directed by Serge Seiden, and presented in partnership with The Studio Theatre

Venue: Goethe-Institut (812 7th St. NW) Monday, June 17, 11 am An International Symposium of Documentary Theater in Performance: “Theater of the Voiceless”

Venue: Davis Performing Arts Center, Georgetown University (37th and O Sts. NW)

11 am – 12:30 pm Ping Chong and Ping Chong + Company 1 pm – 2:30 pm Workshop production of a small, small world Presented in partnership with The Studio Theatre 2:45 pm – 3:15 pm Artistic Response by Forum Theatre 3:30 pm – 4 pm Reading of excerpts from Worst Case Playwright: Kathrin Röggla (Austria)

Directed by Jenny Lord, and presented in partnership with the Shakespeare Theatre Company

4:15 pm – 4:45 pm Artistic Response by Taffety Punk Theatre Company 5 pm – 6 pm Panel discussion About the artistic perspective and creation of documentary theater 7:30 pm – 8:45 pm Semistaged workshop of Hate Radio

Playwrights: Milo Rau and Eva Maria Bertschy (Switzerland) and Jens Dietrich (Germany)

Directed by Derek Goldman, and presented in partnership with the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown University

9 pm – 10 pm Panel discussion Tuesday, June 18, 7:30 pm Reading of Worst Case Venue: Austrian Embassy (3524 International Ct. NW) Presented in partnership with the Shakespeare Theatre Company Wednesday, June 19, 6:30 pm Screening of Soil Sample Kazakhstan, a film of a documentary theater

performace of Rimini Protokoll’s devised play Venue: Goethe-Institut (812 7th Street, NW)

Introduced by film’s director Stefan Kaegi (Switzerland) via Skype, in conversation with festival organizers.

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PLAYWRIGHTS

Konradin Kunze (Playwright, a small, small world) was born in Freiburg, Germany in 1977. He works as a freelance director, writer and actor. His screenplay for the animated film The Last World won the German Animation Screenplay Award in 2011, and his play foreign angst premiered in 2012 at the Staatstheater Wiesbaden. He directs and devises plays at the Theater Bremen and Schauspielhaus Hamburg. Sophia Stepf (Playwright, a small, small world) was born in Kassel, Germany in 1976. She has been artistic co-director of the Flinntheater since 1999. She devises and writes plays, and has conceived and produced theatre projects for the Goethe-Institut in India and other partners. She writes for magazines including Theater heute. Milo Rau (Playwright, Hate Radio) was born in Bern, Switzerland in 1977. He works in theater and film, and as a journalist, author, lecturer and demonstration organizer. He has authored nine theater plays that have been performed in theaters such as the Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) in Berlin, the Sophiensaelen in Berliln, the Staatsschauspiel in Dresden and the maxim Gorki Theater. Kathrin Röggla (Playwright, Worst Case) was born in Salzburg, Austria in 1971. She began writing radio plays in 1998 and theater plays in 2001. Her awards include the Bruno Kreisky Award for the Political Book (2004) and the International Art Award of Salzburg (2005). She has published two books of experimental short prose and two novels. She lives in Berlin.

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DIRECTORS AND THEATERS

Derek Goldman (Co-Founder, Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown University) is Professor of Theater and Performance Studies and Artistic Director of the Davis Performing Arts Center at Georgetown University and an award-winning director and playwright/adapter, developer of new work and published scholar. His work has been seen around the country and internationally, Off-Broadway, and at major regional theaters. He is the author of more than 25 professionally produced plays and adaptations, and has directed more than 75 productions. More

Serge Seiden (Director, a small, small world) most recently directed The Motherfucker with the Hat for The Studio Theatre. At MetroStage he directed Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, for which he received the 2013 Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Director, Resident Musical. Serge directed Cold Country (Kaltes Land) by Reto Finger for last year’s Zeitgeist Festival. For The Studio Theatre he has also directed The Golden Dragon, Superior Donuts, and In the Red and Brown Water. Serge has worked at The Studio Theatre since 1990; he currently holds the title of Associate Producing Artistic Director. More

Jenny Lord (Director, Worst Case) directed Thomas Arzt's Chirping Hill for the reading series last year. Jenny is the Resident Assistant Director at the Shakespeare Theatre Company, where she has assisted many illustrious directors including Michael Kahn, Mary Zimmerman, and Christopher Bayes. She directed last summer's Free-For-All revival of All's Well That Ends Well, and later this summer will helm the Free-For-All Much Ado About Nothing. Additional directing credits include Going Down Swingin’, Don Imbroglio (NYMF) and The Filthy Habit (Manhattan Opera Theatre). More

Ping Chong is an internationally acclaimed director, playwright, video installation artist and pioneer in the use of media in the theater. His work has been presented at major festivals and theaters. His puppet theater production, Cathay: Three Tales of China, created with the Shaanxi Folk Art Theater of Xian, China, was chosen as one of the top 10 productions of the 2005 season by NY Theatre Wire. Among his many honors and awards, Chong has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a USA Artist Fellowship, two BESSIE awards and two OBIE awards, including one for sustained achievement in 2000. More

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Michael Dove (Artistic Director, Forum Theatre) has been with Forum Theatre since its founding. He has directed Forum’s world premiere of Kara Lee Corthron's Holly Down In Heaven, Church, Mad Forest, Scorched, Angels in America: Perestroika, Amazons and Their Men (co-directed), dark play or stories for boys, Seven Jewish Children (a co-presentation with Theater J), Marat/Sade, Antigone, Valparaiso, Rockaby and Rough for Radio (DC Beckett Centenary Festival), and the upcoming Agnes Under the Big Top and the Rolling World Premiere of Pluto by Steve Yockey, among others. More

Marcus Kyd (Artistic Director, Taffety Punk Theatre Company) trained at the Shakespeare Theatre Company's Academy for Classical Acting in Washington DC & Emerson College in Boston. He is an actor, musician, and director. He has performed at the Folger Theatre, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Arena Stage, Round House Theatre, Theater J, The Nebraska Shakespeare Festival, Center Sage, Metro Stage, the Kennedy Center, and in the film portion of the acclaimed multi-media opera The Nitrate Hymnal (produced by WPAS & Anti-social Music). More

Katy Derbyshire (Translator, Worst Case) was born in London and lives in Berlin. She has translated plays by Marianna Salzmann and Helene Hegemann, and prose by Clemens Meyer, Sibylle Lewitscharoff, Inka Parei, Dorothee Elmiger, Tilman Rammstedt, Helene Hegemann, Selim Özdogan, and Simon Urban. Her translation of Christa Wolf's last story will be published in spring 2014.

Eva-Maria Bertschy (Dramaturg, Hate Radio) is a writer and researcher at the Bern University of the Arts (HKB). She was the assisting director and lead researcher for Hate Radio and The Last Days of the Ceausescus. She currently works with director Milo Rau on various projects. Bertschy (b. 1982) is a specialist in European documentary theater and managing social reality in contemporary theater. More

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PANELISTS AND FESTIVAL ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

Cynthia Schneider (Co-Founder, Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown University) teaches, publishes, and organizes initiatives in the field of cultural diplomacy, focusing on relations with the Muslim world. She leads the Arts and Culture Initiative within the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, and co-directs Muslims on Screen and Television I, a non-profit organization which developed out of the Arts and Culture Initiative which provides valuable resources and accurate information on Islam and Muslims for the U.S. entertainment community. She is a Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University. More.

Additional Panelists are being confirmed. Check here for updates.

Gillian Drake (Festival Artistic Director) is a freelance director, dramaturg/curator, and producer in DC, specializing in contemporary American and European plays. She is one of the original founders of the ‘New Plays from German-Speaking Playwrights’ series with Zeitgeist DC, the impetus for this current collaboration with The Lab. This past January, Gillian curated an “American Night of New Plays” at the Vienna Schauspielhaus in Austria, which included readings of commissioned translations of Amy Herzog’s 4,000 Miles, Annie Baker’s Aliens, Ayad Ahktar’s Disgraced, and Jordan Harrison’s Maple and Vine for German audiences.

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PARTNERS

Goethe-Institut Washington: On behalf of the Federal Republic of Germany, cultural institutes around the world provide cultural programs, language courses, support to educators, and up-to-date information on Germany in the context of Europe. Founded in 1990, Goethe-Institut Washington, DC is a center for German culture and language in the midst of the revitalized Downtown. www.goethe.de/washington Embassy of Switzerland: The Embassy of Switzerland in Washington, D.C. is the diplomatic mission of the Swiss Confederation to the United States. Through the Embassy, the Consulates General, the Swiss Business Hub USA and the offices of swissnex, Switzerland promotes exchange between Switzerland and the US in the fields of business, politics, science, technology and culture. www.swissemb.org Austrian Cultural Forum Washington: Founded in 2001 as an autonomous branch of the Austrian Embassy, the Austrian Cultural Forum Washington presents Austrian and European-related cultural events, with a particular emphasis on contemporary, innovative artistic and scientific achievements in Washington DC, and on themes that represent common ground between the United States and Austria within the context of Europe. www.acfdc.org The Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown University is a joint initiative of the Theater and Performance Studies Program and the School of Foreign Service. Led by Professors Derek Goldman and Cynthia Schneider, the Laboratory leverages Georgetown University’s distinctive strengths in international relations and theatrical performance to develop new interdisciplinary approaches to studying the power of the performing arts to advance peace, social justice, and increased understanding and collaboration across peoples and cultures. In addition, the Lab is a generative creative space to foster, nurture and realize collaborative artistic projects that epitomize these goals. Finally, the Lab is a hub and a resource center that, in actual and virtual spaces, brings together an expansive global network of artists, policymakers, scholars, cultural organizations, embassies, faculty, and students. www.performingarts.georgetown.edu/about Arena Stage: Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater is a national center dedicated to the production, presentation, development and study of American theater. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Molly Smith and Executive Producer Edgar Dobie, Arena Stage is the largest company in the country dedicated to American plays and playwrights. Now in its sixth decade, Arena Stage serves a diverse annual audience of more than 300,000. www.arenastage.org The Studio Theatre: The Studio Theatre is dedicated to producing the best in contemporary theatre. The Studio Theatre’s restless, innovative spirit generates an uncommonly rich and diverse body of work, encompassing provocative new writing from around the world, unique events, and inventive stagings of contemporary classics. The Studio Theatre strives to present audiences with extraordinary writing, sophisticated design, and stunning performance, and is also committed to nurturing future generations of theatre professionals. www.studiotheatre.org The Shakespeare Theatre Company: The mission of the Shakespeare Theatre Company, recipient of the 2012 Regional Theatre Tony Award®, is to present classic theatre of scope and size in an imaginative, skillful and accessible American style that honors the playwrights’ language and intentions while viewing their work through a 21st-century lens. The Shakespeare Theatre Company endeavors to be an important resource to an expanded national and international community—as the nation’s premier destination for classic theatre, as a training ground for the next generation of theatre artists and as a model provider of high-quality educational content for students and scholars. www.shakespearetheatre.org

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Ping Chong + Company: Ping Chong + Company produces theatrical works addressing the important cultural and civic issues of our times, striving to reach the widest audiences with the greatest level of artistic innovation and social integrity. The company was founded in 1975 by leading theatrical innovator Ping Chong with a mission to create works of theater and art that explore the intersections of race, culture, history, art, media and technology in the modern world. Today, Ping Chong + Company produces original works by a close-knit ensemble of affiliated artists, under the artistic leadership by Ping Chong. Productions range from intimate oral history projects to grand scale cinematic multidisciplinary productions featuring puppets, performers, and full music and projection scores. The art reveals beauty, precision, and a commitment to social justice. www.pingchong.org Taffety Punk Theatre Company: The Taffety Punk Theatre Company seeks to establish a dynamic ensemble of actors, dancers and musicians who ignite a public passion for theatre by making the classical and the contemporary exciting, meaningful, and affordable. Forum Theatre: Forum Theatre produces adventurous, relevant, and challenging plays that inspire discussion and build community -- and that are accessible, affordable, and entertaining. Now in their 9th season, Forum focuses on new plays that spark discussions around community through a diversity of voices.

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KONRADIN KUNZE AND SOPHIA STEPF’S A SMALL, SMALL WORLD

German theatres have recognized migration, which lies close to their doors, as a theme. And they react as only theatres can – quickly, provocatively and imaginatively, often in marked contrast to the way in which authorities and experts deal with immigrant issues. “Fifty thousand people seek asylum every year in Germany but only a minority of them receive it. As for the others, they are either sent back or live illegally. We have attempted to focus on one such story.” - Sophia Stepf

a small, small world is a theatre piece based on the life of Hamidur Rahman, a desperate global refugee who collapsed as he attempted to cross Greenland on foot to seek asylum in Canada. Originally from Bangladesh, Rahman had first sought refuge in Malaysia, and afterwards in Germany, where his appeal for political asylum was repeatedly rejected and he was scheduled for deportation. Rescued by a helicopter pilot who returned him to Germany, the 30-year-old Rahman subsequently committed suicide.

The play will be presented as a staged reading directed by Serge Seiden of The Studio Theatre on Sunday, June 16, at 7 pm at the Goethe-Institut Washington (812 7th Street NW). The performance is part of the 2013 Zeitgeist DC festival “Theater of the Voiceless”, in cooperation with the Laboratory for Global Theater and Politics at Georgetown University. The creators of a small, small world, Konradin Kunze and Sophia Stepf, will be present. Konradin Kunze and Sophia Stepf (both of Hamburg) and Abhishek Majumdar (Bangalore) have cooperated on the documentary play a small, small world since December 2010, performing it in Bangalore and elsewhere in India, in Bangladesh and in Germany. Abhishek Majumdar writes: “The response of the audience was different in each place. Indians, by and large, appreciated the form of the production. The Germans and Bangladeshis responded to it emotionally. They saw it as their story, their struggle and guilt, portrayed….We gave the audience a play worth watching, I believe, and by the end of this fabulous play, we had succeeded in achieving something very precious to me: to understand, at a profound level, that this is indeed a small, small world.” (http://culture360.org) Review: “What Sophia, Kunze and Majumdar have managed to create is a moving and emotional theatre experience that brings alive the human side of Rahman. Wonderful performances and the innovative use of properties for live projections rather than on stage helped recreate Rahman’s world.” India Today Born in 1977, Konradin Kunze began his career as a child actor at the Freiburg Theater. He studied at the University of Music, Drama and Media Hanover. Since 2002, he has performed in the children's and youth theater ensemble in Moks/Theater Bremen, and the Schauspielhaus Hamburg. He works as a freelance director, writer and actor. He directed NippleJesus by Nick Hornby and Paradise Now by Hany Abu-Assad. He wrote foreign angst and The Last Word, both of which won awards in 2011. His production of Wajdi Mouawad´s Verbrennungen (Cremations) and his play Hacking Luleå are part of the current repertoire of the Schauspielhaus Hamburg.

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Sophia Stepf was born in Kassel, Germany in 1976. She has been artistic co-director of the Flinntheater since 1999. She devises and writes plays, and has conceived and produced theatre projects for the Goethe-Institut in India and other partners. She writes for magazines including Theater heute. Links:

Video: a small, small world: http://vimeo.com/20999481 a small, small world on Konradin Kunze’s Website (German):

http://konradinkunze.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/hamidur-at/ Goethe-Institut Dossier on Documentary Theatre and Migration (English):

http://www.goethe.de/kue/the/tst/en4545353.htm Abhishek Majumdar: "Living with Difference in Intercultural Theatre" on Culture 360 Website

(English): http://culture360.org/magazine/a-small-small-world-living-with-difference-in-intercultural-theatre

a small, small world review on Demotix Website (English): http://www.demotix.com/news/585064/documentary-theatre-dhaka-goethe-institute#media-584713

a small, small world Review in the Daily Sun Newspaper (English): http://www.daily-sun.com/details_yes_09-02-2011_A-Small,-Small-World-%E2%80%93-story-of-a-Bangladeshi-immigrant_123_1_7_1_5.html

Status of Film by Philipp Haucke based on a small, small world: http://www.philiphaucke.com/Fiction.html

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MILO RAU’S HATE RADIO

Milo Rau is the founder of the International Institute of Political Murder theatre group and the creator of re-enactment projects such as The Last Days of Ceausescu, about the execution of the Romanian dictator; The Dark Continent, a look at ethnic cleansing under Stalin; The Moscow Trials, a theatrical revisiting of the show trial against the "Caution! Religion" exhibition, which Putin's government used to try to silence artistic opposition in 2005; Breivik’s Explanation, a reading of the defense statement delivered by the Norwegian far-right terrorist and mass murderer Anders Breivik; and Hate Radio, about the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Hate Radio has been on tour to leading theatres and festivals in Europe, including the Berliner Theatertreffen (2012) and the Festival d´Avignon (2013). In Washington, Hate Radio will be performed as a staged reading directed by Derek Goldman of the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown University, in the context of the 2013 Zeitgeist DC festival “Theater of the Voiceless”, at Georgetown University (Davis Performing Arts Center, 37th and O Sts. NW) on Monday, June 17, at 7:30 pm.

The script for Hate Radio is primarily based upon excerpts of real transmissions made by the popular Rwandan radio station RTLM, which has gone down in history as one of the most cynical propaganda instruments deployed during the Rwandan genocide. RTLM interspersed international pop songs of the 90s with systematic dehumanization of the Tutsi minority and incitements to murder, an unsettling combination of serene authority, murderous rage and relaxing entertainment. Original material from RTLM radio broadcasts, texts from extremist publications and witness statements are assembled into a complex mosaic that deliberately presents contradictions and disconcerts the audience. The play’s original cast was comprised of Rwandan actors whose performances were framed by reports from victims of the genocide. In this aesthetic form of re-enactment, Hate Radio amalgamates real world and theatrical realities to depict how racism functions and how human beings are “talked out of” their humanity. The performance of Hate Radio in Kiwali, Rwanda didn’t take place in a theater. Instead, the “studio” was visible from the street, and passersby were handed headsets tuned into the “broadcast.” The resulting feeling of insecurity is an effect which Hate Radio created on purpose, says Rwandan actor Dorcy Rugamba. He was 24 years old when the genocide started in his country and he fled as a theatre student to Belgium. In Hate Radio, he plays RTLM’s dreaded ideologue. He says about the effect: "We are provoking, in order to provoke and spark a catharsis“. Hate Radio succeeds in revealing the role of the broadcaster in the Rwandan society’s psychological preparation for the genocide, thereby creating a space for reflection and grief. For Milo Rau, re-enactment of history has shown: ”At the moment when something is put onto the stage and therefore becomes an artistic event that can be watched repeatedly, we become aware, strangely enough, that it has not been mentally processed at all.” And it is precisely the desire to “approach this traumatic core” that is one of the essential driving forces behind Milo Rau’s work. The central component of his art is not actuality, but truth, a point about which Milo Rau likes to cite the Russian director Sergei Eisenstein. He explains, “It is not a question of truth in the technical sense, but truth, repetition, in the Kierkegaardian sense; the re-creation of a situation, an emotional response, not a factually accurate reproduction of every nuance.”

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Born in 1977 in Bern, Milo Rau studied Sociology, German and Romance Studies in Paris, Zurich and Berlin. He was particularly inspired by his university lecturer, Pierre Bourdieu, and his theory of "sociology as a martial art". This resulted in Rau undertaking reporting trips to South America while still a student, during which he interviewed Subcomandante Marcos and other leaders of the Zapatista revolution in the Lacandon Jungle. The results of these interviews were published in the 1997 Langues et langages de la Révolution. Rau also lectured on poetological analysis, worked as a critic for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) and organized large demonstrations for the Young Socialists Switzerland. In 2007, the director founded - instead of an independent theatre group - the International Institute of Political Murder (IIPM), a body intended to undertake academically founded work that deepens, and reflects theoretically on, the interchange of ideas about reenactment between theatre, visual art, film and research. Whereas other forms of political theater analyze trials and attempt to fit them into orderly categories, Rau consciously rejects any attempt to explain. Reenactment only ever shows what happened – even when this is done in accordance with an intelligently thought-through concept. “The effect of an analytical approach is always one with which we are already familiar,” Rau says, distancing himself from methods that focus on interpretation. By contrast, the power of reenactment lies in “making it possible for people to experience something very remote from their own lives in a fashion that is highly complex, although it appears quite naïve, and reveals directly how we are totally involved in events, making it clear history is not a thing of the past.” For Milo Rau, this is a ‘cathartic experience’. His work is always preceded by extensive research. Together with Jens Dietrich, he spent two years preparing Hate Radio, conducting about 50 interviews with contemporary witnesses in Rwanda alone – most of them lasting five or six hours. “You could say I have to detect the trace of authenticity in everything I use,” Rau explains. “Otherwise, I don’t get anywhere near the temperature of a story.” Links:

Information about Milo Rau and the International Institute of Political Murder on the Goethe-Institut’s website (English): http://www.goethe.de/kue/the/pur/iipm/enindex.htm

Hate Radio press kit (English): http://international-institute.de/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Press-Kit_Hate-Radio_11_08_02.pdf

Kunsthaus Bregenz review of Hate Radio (English): http://www.kunsthaus-bregenz.at/ehtml/ewelcome00.htm?k_kubarena_hate_radio.htm

Glühbirne review of Hate Radio (English): http://gluehbirnestage.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/review-hate-radio/

Hate Radio on Theatertreffen (English): http://www.berlinerfestspiele.de/en/aktuell/festivals/theatertreffen/archiv_tt/archiv_tt12/tt12_programm/tt12_veranstaltungsdetail_37337.php

International Institute of Political Murder (IIPM) (German): http://international-institute.de/?p=345

Der Bund review of Hate Radio (German): http://www.derbund.ch/kultur/pop-und-jazz/Genozid-mit-Gitarrensolo/story/26393251

Stage Screen review of Hate Radio (German): http://stagescreen.wordpress.com/2012/05/18/wenn-worte-toten/

Nachtkritik.de Review of Hate Radio (German): http://www.nachtkritik.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6338:hate-radio-milo-rau-und-sein-internationales-institut-fuer-politischen-mord-fuehren-eine-radio-hass-sendung-aus-ruanda-wieder-auf-&catid=55

Hate Radio on Prospect TV (German): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXMYDAoUQ0Q Link to screening of The Last Days of the Ceauşescus at the Goethe-Institut Washington in

May 2013 on the occasion of German Nobel Laureate Herta Müller’s reading at the Library of Congress: http://www.goethe.de/ins/us/was/ver/acv/flm/2012/en8683081v.htm

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Huffington Post on Milo Rau’s difficulties in March 2013 with reenacting the Pussy Riot trials in Russia (English): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/04/pussy-riot-play-director-hassled-russian-officials-milo-rau_n_2805083.html

Ahram Online on Milo Rau’s Pussy Riot reenactment (English): http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/5/35/66061/Arts--Culture/Stage--Street/Russian-police-hassle-Pussy-Riot-play-director.aspx

Nachtrichten.ch on Milo Rau’s Pussy Riot reenactment (German): http://nachrichten.ch.msn.com/kultur/razzia-bei-theaterspektakel-des-berners-milo-rau-in-moskau#scptid

Der Bund coverage of Moscow Pussy Riot Trials reenactment difficulties (German): http://www.derbund.ch/kultur/theater/Ohne-Boesewichte-gibt-es-keine-Dramen/story/24914976

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KATRIN RÖGGLA’S WORST CASE

Catastrophes represent a chance for change, for a new beginning. But what if disaster is omnipresent – in the news, in talk shows, in films? What effect does that have on the individual and society as a whole? What kind of catastrophe will be required for people to take counter-measures? As Austrian playwright Katrin Röggla comments, “That which gets too close to us makes us uncomfortable.“ Röggla’s play Worst Case is not about collapsing houses, derailing trains, killer viruses, earthquakes, tsunamis etc., but about the discovery that the spectacular has entered our everyday narratives and dominates our media and our perception of reality.

It will be presented in two readings in the context of the 2013 Zeitgeist DC festival “Theater of the Voiceless”. Directed by Jenny Lord of the Shakespeare Theatre Company, a staged reading will take place at the Austrian Cultural Forum (3524 International Court NW) on Tuesday, June 18, at 7:30 pm. Excerpts from the piece will also be read and responded to by Taffety Punk Theatere Company during a day-long symposium on Monday, June 17, at 3:30 pm at Georgetown University (Davis Performing Arts Center, 37th and O Sts. NW). In four scenes, playwright Kathrin Röggla shows how the daily flow of devastating scenarios creates a desire for an ultimate disaster which will create a feeling of authenticity. Grotesque “fake experts” of their own ruin take the audience on a trip through the “culture of fear”. The audience is forced to learn “catastrophe vocabulary”, as it is, as Röggla states, “being spoken above our heads”. The performers become very unsettled as they

contemplate whether they’ve just witnessed a disaster. As theater heute writes: “Their thinking and speaking adopt strange indirect forms – as not only their speech becomes subjunctive, but also their entire existence.” They all seem to be living secondhand, even experiencing their own reality through how it is fed back to them. A central figure in the play, “I”, is virtually silent throughout, portrayed only through the projections and reactions of the other characters, perhaps representing the powerlessness of the individual in the face of calamity. It’s not the disasters themselves and their effects, but rather the media coverage and the constant prattle on talk shows which aim to conjure up real catastrophes. Hollywood’s stories create the matrix for our world view, shaping how we portray and retell events. In an interview, Röggla stated that people who witnessed the 2004 tsunami videoed it instead of seeking shelter. The effects of media have conditioned humans to ignore their natural impulses. On the other hand, many social and ecological catastrophes which don’t match the criteria for press coverage are ignored, despite their urgency and impact. Born in Salzburg, Austria in 1971, Kathrin Röggla is an Austrian writer who has lived in Berlin since 1992. Röggla is one of the most important German-speaking dramatists of a new generation. In 2008

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she received the prestigious Anton-Wildgans Literary Award. She writes prose, radio plays and theater texts and produces reviews for newspaper arts pages, literary magazines and Austrian and German radio. She has also published several books of prose texts including irres wetter (2000/2002) and really ground zero (2011). Links:

Worst Case on Schauspielhaus Website (German): http://www.schauspielhaus.at/jart/prj3/schauspielhaus/main.jart?rel=de&reserve-mode=active&content-id=1188466708002&produktionen_id=1249996778658

Association of German Theater and Media Publishing Houses (German): http://www.theatertexte.de/data/s._fischer_verlag/1331390675/show

Der Standard Newspaper (German): http://derstandard.at/1254311055365/Schauspielhaus-Wien-Kathrin-Roeggla-Wir-leben-in-einem-grossen-Katastrophen--Bild

Worst Case on YouTube (German): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_CD6jbGGls Kulturwoche Website (German):

http://www.kulturwoche.at/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2023&Itemid=42

Reviews at Nachtkritik.de (German): http://www.nachtkritik.de/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1873

http://www.nachtkritik.de/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2492