Hello everyone!
I hope you have a lovely week planned .
This is the biggest etude yet with 7 shows! There’s just so much on and it’s all very exciting.
Do have a watch and drop us a line with what you end up seeing!
Damned Be the Traitor of His Homeland! by Oliver Frljić
Tuesday 23rd Febuary
6€
CONTENT WARNING - Depictions of war, violence, sexual assult
In this performance, Oliver Frljić deals with love and hate towards theatre; the framework for his questioning of the limits of artistic and civic freedom are the fragments of a story about the disintegration of Yugoslavia, a symbolic space inhabited by actors full of dilemmas we all encounter, but to which we often willingly turn a blind eye. The universality of the play was confirmed during very successful performances at prominent festivals. Likewise, as the critic of the French Le Figaro wrote, everybody agrees that “the performance hits hard, and intentionally. […] These actors […] believe in the power of theatre that connects, enlightens, acts. In our spoilt society where stages are saturated with ‘cultural products’ with no flavour, this is very good news.”
Quick note - This has been my favourite show I’ve seen this year. It’s incredible. Plz watch it and then lets have a chat about it.
Thurday 25th - Saturday 27th
£5
CONTENT WARNING - There are some excellent advisory warnings for each piece on their website. Expect a lot of audience participation throughout this festival.
We demand a better future
DARE Festival is a three-day extravaganza of inventive, unexpected, challenging and ground-breaking new interactive theatre for audiences who want to play! Usually hosted in Shoreditch Town Hall’s Ditch, this year’s DARE will take place in an entirely virtual theatre space, ensuring you can experience all the fun from the safety of your own home.
Curated by critically-acclaimed playable theatre company Upstart Theatre, DARE brings together performance, installations and workshops. It is an opportunity to see new work in its earliest stages and offers audiences the chance to meet and chat to artists in our virtual theatre bar after the show.
This year we have commissioned six new pieces of interactive theatre that respond to the theme ‘we demand a better future’. The wide-ranging interpretations of that theme promise to be bold and delicious covering everything from the inequality of land ownership in England to Hong Kong street food.
Gymnastik by Ballet of Difference
Saturday 27th Febuary
Pay what you want ( €1 to €100 )
Political attitudes in the Weimar Republic spanned broadly between communism, socialism, monarchism, capitalism and fascism; the dance styles, rhythmic sports and "physical training" that emerged at that time were just as diverse and connected in multiple ways to these varied social realities. Consequently, Germany was considered a nation of dance, with movements influencing various social strata across the population and many dance performances reflecting the crippling damage of the First World War, the embodiment of death and the urge to live. These previous works by both amateur and professional dancers send us signals from the past into our torn present, in which social antagonisms are increasing and controversial, but inevitable upheavals are on the horizon.
In their first collaboration with the Gintersdorfer/Klaßen team, the dancers of Ballet of Difference recover splinters of dance history to discover subtle connections and comparisons that have led to their own movement practice: the use of materials, fashion, eroticism, coming to terms with “exoticism”, beauty, competitive gymnastics versus collective and topic-focused dance performance are all key points of departure at the beginning of this work. Hans Unstern is creating a new harp especially for this production.
NOTE - Ballet of Difference made my favourite show last year. I think they’re great and I’m so excited for this show. Plz watch so we can have a chat about it
From Wednesday 24th Febuary
Free
CONTENT WARNINGS : Discussions of war and state violence
In search of strategies of resistance, Milo Rau, the IIPM (International Institute of Political Murder) and the NTGent founded a globally networked "School of Resistance" as a livestream debate series in May 2020. As a symbolic institution of the future, it has now come to the Akademie der Künste, Berlin and, drawing on previous projects, examines aesthetic practices of resistance. Activists and artists discuss art as a transformative, reality-creating practice.
Milo Rau and the IIPM have been working on the contradictions of global capitalism for almost 15 years through installations, plays, films, books and political interventions. The interweaving of activism and art leads to an expansion of artistic strategies and at the same time contributes to dissolving the boundaries of the concept of art. How can art react to states of crisis? How can it contribute to strategies of resistance? Six cinematic works by Milo Rau form the starting point for this investigation: The Last Days of the Ceausescus (2009/10), The Moscow Trials (2014), The General Assembly (2017), The Congo Tribunal (2017), Orestes in Mosul (2020) and The New Gospel (2020). In doing so, the "School of Resistance" at the Akademie der Künste examines the conditions of global art production and the artistic strategies of the IIPM itself.
Home Away From Home by Polymer DMT/ Fang Yun Lo
Friday 26th Febuary to Sunday 28th Febuary
Free
»In the course of the preparation, I learned a lot about the history and inevitability of migration, about flight, beginnings and the return of different people. The stage installation I designed for the play follows up on these questions: how can the senses and thinking be opened up in the theatre, what spatial arrangements and objects enable us to better understand others and ourselves?« Cheng Ting Chen
The Taiwanese choreographer Fang Yun Lo, who works in Essen and Dresden, and her team met over 100 people of Vietnamese descent in Dresden, Germany and Taiwan during two years of journalistic research. In spontaneous encounters at work, in shops, snack bars and shops, they talked about experiences as immigrants or in a family between cultures.
›Home away from home‹ weaves a touching, polyphonic journey out of all these memories. Divided into small groups, the audience meets six performers at different stations in the theatre who tell their own stories and those of their families – as artists, workers, Youtubers or students. A complex mosaic of human relationships emerges from stories, images, films and audio pieces.
›Home away from home‹ tells of the global dimension of labour migration and intercultural reality, reports on disruption and structural violence, but at the same time also explores overarching human categories of home, identity and happiness.
Concerto for Having Fun with Elvis on Stage: a ghost opera by Alexander Gedeon
Friday Febuary 26th
From £5.99
Having Fun with Elvis on Stage is a 1973 album collaged entirely from Elvis speaking on stage between songs at live concerts — no music. One reviewer wrote: “hearing it is like witnessing a car wreck, leaving onlookers too horrified and too baffled to turn away.” Concerto for Having Fun with Elvis on Stage reimagines this vilified recording as the libretto for a sort of ‘ghost opera’ — creating a memetic hologram of the endless purgatory of celebrity afterlife
Plant Readers Club by Coral-Lab
Saturday 27th Febuary
From €5
Welcome to the Plant Readers group! This is no ordinary reading group. During these sessions, we will dive into queer relationships between Plants and their human allies and recite spells together to develop new visions of the future. A series of texts will awaken your senses to create new forms of plant-human intimacies. All this in an attempt to move – as Natasha Myers calls it – from the Anthropocene to the Plantropocene.
I’ve been getting a lot of love for etude over the past week and it means the world to me. A lot of people have asked how they can support etude, I don’t know right now but I’d really appriciate it if you supported the wonderful 0161 Community who are providing meals for families throughout Greater Manchester. My partner Akaibi and her friends Kate and Katie have organised a raffle to raise funds. There are loads of extra brilliant prizes to be won! You can pick up a raffle ticket for £5 or two for £9 to win a prize bundle worth up to £100!
To get your raffle ticket please visit Local Hotel Parking
If you buy a raffle ticket then please post about it on twitter and share it to everyone.
Thanks again for reading etude. I love doing this.
Have a good week
Josh xx