Symposium 2018: Between Audience and Stage – (New) Communication Formats for the Independent Performing Arts Community

The focus of this year's seminar will be the handbook that will be availabe at the end of 2018, "Neue Vermittlungsformate für die Darstellende Künste" or "New Communication Formats for the Independent Performing Arts Community".

Together with scholars, artists, art communicators and the staff of performance venues, we will discuss the experimental formats introduced in the handbook as well as the concepts of art communication. Over the course of practical workshops, members of the independent performing arts community will provide insight into their work and invite the participants to jointly reflect upon viewing habits in the theater, challenges encountered in addressing audiences as well as the alliances and structures for art communicators.

Schedule of Events:

10:00 am Registration and Café

10:30 am Welcome and Kick Off
Presentation of the Publication Between Audience and Stage: Communication Format for the Independent Performing Arts Community
with Nathalie Frank and Swetlana Gorich (Berlin Performing Arts Program)

11:00 am The Unglamorous Art: Theater Communication as an Artistic and Pedagogic Practice
With Dr. Ute Pinkert (professor for theater education at the Berlin University for the Arts) and Dr. Katja Rothe (junior professor for theater studies and dramaturgy at the Berlin University for the Arts)
This presentation will examine models from the handbook from the perspective of theater education and reflect upon theme in the context of critical art communication.

11:30 am Coffee Break

11:45 am Practical Examples of Communication
Members of the cultural community approach the practice of communication from different perspectives: "Women and Fiction" - represented by Eva Kessler and Patricia Carolin Mai - report on the audience format "retrospective improvisation", Carolin Kister and Kai Padberg look back on the development and testing of the format "Tell Me Where you Are?!", Anete Colacioppo (Acker Stadt Palast) speaks about the structures of independent performance venues and the experiences of Acker Stadt Palast with experiment audience formats.

12:15 pm Conversation 
Moderator: Felix Koch (Berlin Performing Arts Program)
Following the presentations and reports, there will be a shared conversation between all participants and Jutta Wangemann (jury member working for the Berlin Senate) on the creation, application for funding and effects of art communication practices and projects.

1:00 pm Lunch
We warmly invite you to enjoy soup, bread and drinks

2:00 pm From Help Line to Department
With Claudia Ehgartner (art and culture communicator)
A report on the current communication community in Austria with a focus on cooperations between theater and art communication as well as performative forms of communication.

2:30 pm Work Groups
With Melmun Bajarchuu (Initiative for Solidarity in Theater), Cora Guddat (actor, cultural educator and antidiscrimination trainer), Julia Wissert (director and curator)
In smaller groups, culture workers discuss, on the basis of their own practice, viewing habits in the theater, challenges and strategies for addressing audiences as well as alliances and structures for art communicators. Together, challenges and difficulties will be identified that emerge when one works with and for groups but do not actually represent them.

In exchange with the Berlin Project Office for Diversity Development.

4:30 pm Final Round of the Workgroups

5:00 pm Apéro (informal networking) in the STATE Studio
Over the course of a closing aperitif, we warmly invite you to continue the discussions and network with colleagues.

Back to Overview