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Theatre
Berlin International Performing Arts Center

Staged Reading and Panel Discussion

European Drama from Poland and Ukraine

Reading and panel discussion with Olha Mazjupa and Małgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk

Theater scholar Iwona Uberman and translator Andreas Volk introduce the Polish playwright Małgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk and the Ukrainian playwright Olha Mazjupa. We will read from their texts Der Schriftsteller (Sikorska-Miszczuk) and Richtung Osten fliegt der Ball (Mazjupa). We will discuss with the authors how a Polish playwright came to write a play about Salman Rushdie in the year 2020 and whether the socially critical comedy by a Ukrainian author might still provoke laughter in 2022. We will also ask the authors why drama from Poland and Ukraine has such a hard time finding its way onto German-language stages.

“For me, Małgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk is a theatrical free spirit. The protagonists of her plays are often well-known personalities from (contemporary) history, through whom she deals with the great existential questions in an ironic and entertaining way. In doing so, she always succeeds masterfully in maintaining the balance between the seriousness of the content and our grotesque reality,” explains Andreas Volk (translator of Małgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk).

The statement from the Heidelberger Stückemarkt jury describes Olha Mazjupa as finding “many different scenic styles to make her story shine and to escalate the scenario – small, sharp, gruff dialogues, silent scenes of everyday tasks, surreal images. Olha Mazjupa’s text is what, absurdly, a play must be, an unfinished work of art that cries out for the stage where it is to be finished.”

Olha Mazjupa, born in 1988 in Pidbirzi near Lviv, is a playwright and theater studies scholar. She studied Serbian language and literature at the Ivan Franko University Lviv and graduated with a PhD from the Marie Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin in theater and literary studies. Her plays have been performed in Lviv, Chust, Sievierodonetsk and Chernivtsi, and she has worked with theatres in Rzeszów and Sosnowiec. In 2017, her play Öko-Ballade won the internation author prize at the Heidelberger Stückemarkts.

Małgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk is a multi-award winning playwright, librettist and scriptwriter in Poland and abroad. She studied journalism and political science at the University of Warsaw. She is also a graduate of the scriptwriting program at the State School for Film, Theater and TV in Łódź. Recipient of scholarships from CEC ArtsLink in the USA, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and the Stiftung Genshagen. Author of plays that are performed both in the original and in translation, as well as radio plays, opera libretti, film scripts and plays for children. In 2011, she was invited to the Berliner Stückemarkt.

We are very pleased to partner with Drama Panorama to host this event. Please click HERE to read the complete event information on their website.

Staged Reading and Panel Discussion

Israeli dramatist Hanoch Levin and his translations into German – staged reading, panel discussion and book launch: Die im Dunkeln gehen

Hanoch Levin (1943–1999) was the most important Israeli dramatist of the 20th century, whose work left important artistic and socio-political marks on the Israeli theater. Today, his plays are part of the canon in Israel and are frequently produced. Levin is also well known and performed in other countries, especially France and Poland, while many of his plays remain yet to be discovered in Germany.

Translations and productions must help to make this happen. Matthias Naumann published the first German monograph on Levin (Dramaturgie der Drohung. Das Theater des israelischen Dramatikers und Regisseurs Hanoch Levin. Marburg: Tectum 2006) and initiated the first German-language productions with his translations of Levin’s plays. Now six of Levin’s plays will appear for the first time in German translation in the anthology Die im Dunkeln gehen (Berlin: Neofelis Verlag 2022).

Israeli theater studies scholar Freddie Rokem and translator Matthias Naumann will present the new book Die im Dunkeln gehen and together with Barbora Schnelle (who will moderate the discussion) and director Antje Thoms, who directed the first German-language production of Levin’s Das Kind träumt in Augsburg in 2018, will discuss which of Levin’s plays are interesting for German-language stages and audiences, along with which challenges they pose to translations and         productions.

In a staged reading, we will present excerpts from Das Kind träumt and other plays from the book Hanoch Levin: Die im Dunkeln. Levin’s best-known play, Das Kind träumt, draws on historical experiences of persecution and tells the story of a mother and her child’s flight from soldiers to the land of dead children, where the Messiah is supposed to appear. Die Kofferpacker, in contrast, is a comedy that draws the lives of several families in a flurry of short scenes between departures, returns and unfulfilled dreams, and between weddings and funerals.

Freddie Rokem is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Theater at Tel Aviv University, where he was Dean of the Faculty of the Arts (2002–2006) and held the Emanuel Herzikowitz Chair for the Arts of the 19th and 20th Centuries (2006–2016). He has been a guest professor at various universities, such as the Freie Universität Berlin, the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main and the University of Chicago. The following of his books have been published in German translation: Geschichte aufführen. Darstellungen der Vergangenheit im Gegenwartstheater (2012) and TheaterDenken. Begegnungen und Konstellationen zwischen Philosophen und Theatermachern (2017). Rokem also works as a dramaturg and translator.

Antje Thoms studied applied theater studies in in Gießen and was then an assistant director at the Niedersächsisches Staatstheater Hannover. There she worked with directors including Sebastian Nübling, Luk Perceval and Jossi Wieler. Since 2003, she has worked as a freelance director and writer, and in 2007 founded the independent Zürcher Theaterformation Trainingslager with the writer Jens Nielsen and actor Dominique Müller. From 2014/15 to 2021/22, Antje Thoms was house director at the Theater Göttingen and starting in the 2022/23 season is director of drama at the Theater Regensburg.

Matthias Naumann is a writer, translator and publisher. Since 2011, he has been the director of Neofelis Verlag, Berlin, which published the series Drama Panorama – Neue internationale Theatertexte. His plays have been invited to the Autorentheatertagen and to the Heidelberger Stückemarkt, since 2014 he has mainly worked as part of the collaborative theater group Futur II Konjunktiv. He also translates plays from Hebrew.

We are very pleased to partner with Drama Panorama to host this event. Please click HERE to read the complete event information on their website.

Staged Reading and Panel Discussion

Roman Sikora is an explicitly political writer who analyses the power structures of a society dominated by market economics in his work in grotesque form. Translator Barbora Schnelle has been working with Roman Sikora for many years. This has now culminated in the publication of the anthology Frühstück mit Leviathan (Berlin: Neofelis 2021).

The playwright Roman Sikora and his translator Barbora Schnelle will present the new book Frühstück mit Leviathan and discuss with publisher Matthias Naumann (who will moderate the discussion) the path Sikora’s plays took onto German stages and the importance of translating and publishing contemporary international drama. Extracts from the plays Frühstück mit Leviathan, Drei Tage oder Abstieg und Aufstieg des Herrn B. and Auf dem Weg zum Sieg from the book Roman Sikora: Frühstück mit Leviathan will also be read in a staged reading.

In the play Frühstück mit Leviathan, the guests invited to breakfast with the richest businessman in the world don’t have any scruples when it comes to getting richer themselves. The hero of his comedy Drei Tage oder Abstieg und Aufstieg des Herrn B. makes a career as a cunning banker. After an accident, he ends up on the street and, when he is robbed of every last cent, experiences the dark side of capitalism. The play Auf dem Weg zum Sieg leads us into the ranks of the k. u. k. army in the First World War and investigates the mentality of the war machine.

After completing his training, Roman Sikora worked as an electrician and mechanic at the steelworks in his hometown of Třinec, before he studied directing and dramaturgy at the Janáček Academy for Music and the Performaing Arts in Brno. Today he works as a freelance playwright and theater critic, translates from Polish (e.g. Małgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk) and teaches playwriting at the faculty of theater at the the Academy of Musical Arts in Prague. Sikora’s plays have been translated into many languages and performed internationally.

Barbora Schnelle works as a freelance translator, theater critic and culture manager. In 2009, with Antje Oegel, she founded the project Drama Panorama: Forum für Übersetzung und Theater. In 2014 she founded the festival of contemporary Czech theater Ein Stück: Tschechien in Berlin, which she has run and curated since then.

We are very pleased to partner with Drama Panorama to host this event. Please click HERE to read the complete event information on their website.

Panel Discussion and Staged Readings

Confini by Ian De Toffoli. Premiere: July 3, 2021, Campania Teatro Festival, Naples, Directed by Davide Sacco. © Donato Aquaro

There are currently a noticeably large number of authors who write multilingual plays and receive recognition for it. For example, Sivan Ben Yishai’s multilingual play Wounds Are Forever (Selbstportrait als Nationaldichterin) won the most important prize for contemporary drama in German, the Mülheim Drama Prize, in 2022. But what path do multilingual texts take in a theater culture traditionally focused on German as the dominant written and literary language? Can multilingual writing change the theatrical and literary canon? What does the increasing collaboration of translators on original multilingual texts mean for the notion of a “German-language theater”? How does the concept of multilingualism relate to the concept of diversity?

In our panel discussion, we will talk with the playwrights, translators and theater makers Elise Wilk, Ian De Toffoli and Thomas Perle about the significance of multilingual theater texts in contemporary theater. Together, we will take a look to the future, asking what new forms of writing for theater might emerge from a multilingual production and performance practice and, conversely, how multilingual plays, not written for a particular production in a particular venue, anticipate a transformation of theater yet to come. We consider what role translators will play in multilingual theater practice and writing and discuss the possibility of a translatory turn in theater studies. We will ask about the significance of multilingual drama in countries such as Luxembourg and Romania. Together, we will draw a differentiated picture of multilingual writing for the stage as a political strategy and aesthetic process.

The discussion will alternate with short staged readings of new multilingual plays. In this way, we will demonstrate the potential multilingual writing is already unlocking now and how it can develop in future.

We are very pleased to partner with Drama Panorama to host this event. Please click HERE to read the complete event information on their website.

Panel Discussion

“International, cultural dialogue, looking beyond your own backyard” – many theaters use catchphrases like this to market their seasons. But in order to present foreign-language plays on German stages, these first need to be translated.

Audiences in the theaters of large cities are becoming increasingly international. Many theaters now plan foreign-language surtitling (often English) from the beginning to make theater accessible for as many people as possible. For these surtitles too, texts need to be translated competently from the German.

Unfortunately, neither the theaters nor the publishers have enough money in their budgets to pay for this adequately. Theaters are being forced to resort to tougher and tougher savings strategies, and things will no doubt get harder due to Covid-19. Theater publishers are struggling to survive and international plays are often not even taken into the publisher’s catalogue, since the higher costs associated with them due to uncertain royalty returns most likely cannot be covered.

We will provide an overview of different funding models and programs, discuss how these programs can be designed with the guests, and analyze how theater translation can be communicated to and represented in the funding bodies. Can the current funding models meet the actual needs of theater translators? Are there different approaches in other countries? How can we think about new models? What about cooperative projects? How can requirements be communicated? We want to inspire new ideas and create synergies, and put the main focus on the needs of the theater translators.

We are very pleased to partner with Drama Panorama to host this event. Please click HERE to read the complete event information on their website.

Before the event gets underway, we would like to ask you to participate anonymously in our survey (in German) on the topic of support of theater translation – please do so by October 24 via this link.

A Panel Discussion and Reading

Our society is a postmigrant society. It has changed again and again due to countless waves of migration, has become richer and more diverse as a result and is shaped by the coexistence of lots of languages and language regions that mutually influence each other.

How is this situation reflected in today’s theater? The German theater is the child of nationalism. But for a while now, the narrative of the national theater is being rewritten. Are multilingual productions a possible answer to our postnational social reality? For what purpose are multiple languages used and what effect do they have? How are multilingual plays written? And how are they translated?

At our evening event, we will talk to theater-makers who are creating new and groundbreaking models of multilingualism for the stage, and read from multilingual plays. In the workshop we will talk to writers and translators working in multiple languages, analyze linguistic aspects of the topic and discuss the texts with the selected participants.

We are very pleased to partner with Drama Panorama to host this event. Please click HERE to read the complete event information on their website.