DAS Theatre Master Presentations 2020

Introducing DAS Theatre Master presentations

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Brochure Chapter 1 | 19-20 June 2020

Jānis Balodis - Merel Smitt

Brochure Chapter 2 | 10-11 July 2020

Igor Dobričić - Jimmy Grima - Maria Magdalena Kozłowska

Brochure Chapter 3 | 4-5 September 2020

Akram Assam - Nahuel Cano

DAS Theatre Master presentations 2020

Artists and curators working in the field of performing arts will share their work with you at the conclusion of an intensive two-year period of master’s research at DAS Theatre, part of DAS Graduate School.

Due to the current circumstances, the DAS Theatre Master presentations will not be presented in their usual form, but in three different chapters, taking place at different times: 19-20 June, 10-11 July and 4-5 September.

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Programme

HOW TO START A MOVEMENT - Merel Smitt

HOW TO START A MOVEMENT is a series of interventions and missions in which different individuals get the opportunity to explore, question and disrupt the protocols, dynamics and rules of (semi) public spaces, institutions and venues. The missions consist of instructions you receive and execute together or individually. You can receive these instructions through printed cards, digital channels, verbally and so on. Some of the missions are role playing games with specific roles and instructions, others are workshops, multi-interpretable assignments or instructions you can do on your own whenever you feel the need to raise your voice or respond to the harsh reality. With some you need to be physically present, others you can do from your home using the internet, your telephone or non-electronic mail. By creating different types of missions with different threshold levels it is possible for everybody to join the movement at some point to take back their power, claim their voice, and empower themselves by setting something in motion.

Merel Smitt is an artist based in Rotterdam. She builds immersive installations and creates interventions in the public space that interfere with our daily lives. Her work is research based, site-specific and the audience, knowingly and unknowingly, participate in various ways. You may come across one of her projects in situations or settings where you don’t expect art to happen.

Her projects often result in multiple outcomes that can be seen together as a whole but can also be experienced separately. The output consists of installations, websites, fictional campaigns, score-books, audio-tours, walks, role playing games and so on. The impact of the work lies within the participants; they become aware of the way certain frameworks produced by political and social systems in our society influence our environment, behaviour and interactions. Her projects can be seen as methodologies to rethink protests and social movements, occupy spaces, raise voices, and set something in motion.

The conclusion of HOW TO START A MOVEMENT takes place on June 19th in a privateonlinegathering, where all 45 participants share their experience with the project.

More information

Brochure DAS Theatre HOW TO START A MOVEMENT
Website: www.merelsmitt.nl
Follow Merel Smitt on Instagram

The trip to the whole castle | Jãnis Balodis

The trip to the whole castle by Jānis Balodis, an online 2020 DAS Theatre Master Presentation, will be live-streamed from Riga, Latvia on Saturday June 20th at 22:00 CET. Click here and tune in.

Some time ago we were kids. Some time ago we had summer breaks. Some time ago we went in to the yard in the morning and thought: “What am I going to do today?” Some time ago we went to some castle ruins and thought: “It can’t be that this is it! This castle here doesn’t feel whole. Where is the missing part of it?” Some time ago a girl came to us and said: “I might know what are you looking for, and I might know where to find it. Do you mind me joining you?”

The trip to the whole castle is a work that shifts its form and content in relation to the space and context within which it takes place. This feels like an absolute necessity in order for ‘a journey to occur’. The one and only thing that stays the same is a desire to go and find a castle, and to let the mysterious girl from the past help.

Jānis Balodis was born in a country that doesn’t exist anymore, and, can still see and feel its aftermath in many ways, either back home in Riga or here in Amsterdam. Jānis is interested in seeing and perceiving reality as hundreds of layers of the past, present and possible future that exist here and now, all at the same time.

Programme

Saturday June 20th 2020
Live-stream The trip to the whole castle on Twitch.tv .
Walk-in: 21:50 CET
Performance starts at 22:00 CET

Kerogen Voices | Jimmy Grima

Last September, Jimmy Grima started his research on humanmade earthquakes. It was envisioned to be a live act with a cast of actors, singers, a choir, live music, visuals... a collective listening experience for an audience in a theatre venue. Then, the collective experience could no longer happen. Over months of quarantine, they, the Kerogen Voices, stayed hand-in-hand with the artwork. They tried to imagine the soundtrack of an unfinished performance. They worked on text and music, recorded their voices on different devices, from different cities and continents, stuck in their homes, or bound to singing under a bridge. Now, they would like to share the SOUND of Kerogen Voices (55 minutes) with you on July 10th. The radio play will be available between 20:00 - 22:00 CET at https://www.kerogenvoices.club/

Jimmy is an artist-curator. His trans-disciplinary practice is involved with the politics of memory and archiving. He is particularly interested in the disappearance of local knowledge and has an affinity for the relations between humans and nature. Between 2015-2017 he directed the Windrose Project, a multiple-site community-led research project harvesting local knowledge on winds. Song of a Bird (2018-ongoing) is a live archive documenting the collaboration with the microcosm of nature enthusiasts who can sing and call like migratory birds: the Maltese bird-trappers. Jimmy is the founder of the rubberbodies collective (2009). Jimmy is based in Amsterdam and is currently a resident at DAS Theatre.

Practical Information

Time: 20:00-22:00 CET
Radio Play Link: https://www.kerogenvoices.club/
Brochure & Credits: https://bit.ly/38pt1Op

The Time That Remains by Igor Dobričić

Inside an interval between the now of my realization about the end and the now of the end itself, everything that ever happened is finally brought into the presence, is made available, offered to be actualized and reconciled. My body, whose demise is suddenly made immanent and known, is for a short while, transformed into the vessel of time. The memory of the ages past is now made to be my own memory, and when I speak, I am giving a voice to it. I read myself as a book, and what is written in this book is not only what I remember of my own existence but also the full recollection of what has ever existed. And yet the instant I open my mouth to read from it, it is only that much that I'll be able to utter before the end arrives to mute me away.

Igor Dobričić, studied dramaturgy at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade, (former) Yugoslavia. He is working internationally as a dramaturg, collaborating regularly with a number of choreographers/makers (Nicole Beutler, Keren Levi, Guillaume Marie, Christina Ciupke, Alma Söderberg, Arkadi Zaides, Jenny Beyer, Meg Stuart, a/o). In a role of a teacher and a mentor he has a long-term engagement with the Amsterdam School for New Dance (SNDO). From 2010 onwards, he is also developing his own performative research project under the title TableTalks. During the last 10 years TableTalks is hosted and presented in Amsterdam, Berlin, Stockholm, Cairo, Sao Paulo and Vienna.

Practical Information

Time: 18:30-20:30 CET
Live-stream: Private gathering
Brochure & Credits: https://bit.ly/38pt1Op

After months marked by the ubiquitous feeling of uncertainty, Maria Magdalena Kozłowska's experimental noir opera and murder mystery titled She dies for you will premiere as a video work. Join the operatic video and discover what happens to the body on the edge of the cinematic and the theatrical: on screen, the ultimate space for projections.

A body has been found in the woods. There’s always a body; there’s always woods. In fact, it might even be several bodies. It’s hard to tell when it’s taken apart, a part here, a part there. A part of her apart from her. How many generations of women have lived, sung and died in these woods? How many baskets of treats and big bad wolves have seen little girls turned mothers, turned grandmothers, turned meat, and fodder for the heroic ends of passing woodcutters? A body has been found. What was done to her? What did she do to you? Welcome to the enduring forest of unspeakable tales.

Maria Magdalena Kozłowska was born in Zielona Góra, Poland. She's a director, performer, singer and writer. Her directorial debut at 15 years old was staging de Sade's Misfortunes of Virtue in the community theatre. She graduated from the College of In-ter-area Individual Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Warsaw, majoring in philosophy and linguistics. During her studies she developed a practice around video and performance. Her work was presented by Ujazdowski Centre for Contemporary Art, MoMA Warsaw, KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, Eu-ropean Cultural Foundation, Belluard Bollwerk Festival. As a performer and singer, she appeared in theatre and dance pieces by Alex Baczyński-Jenkins, Marta Ziółek and Oliver Zahn, among others. Despite the interdisciplinary character of her work, theatre was always at the core of her practice. She works with the entanglement of music and language. During her studies at DAS Theatre she has cultivated her interest in non-normative female voices. She investigates dramatic elements in the mundane, and mundanity in the sublime.

Practical Information

Time: 21:00 CET
Live-stream Twitch.tv: https://www.twitch.tv/dasgraduateschool
Brochure & Credits: https://bit.ly/38pt1Op

Cassettes by Akram Assam

At DAS Theatre, Akram has been developing Cassettes, a work about how memory functions in two regions in the world – those suffering from wars, and safe areas – and about how war and violence affect changing human senses. Cassettes has been developed through the collecting of reflections and diaries from people from outside war zones who have visited war zones. What is collected is translated into a live solo performance, incorporating movement, video, and special lighting design.

Akram Assam studied theatre directing and performing at the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad and at the Academy of Fine Arts Department of Theatre at the University of Baghdad. Since then, he has been working as a director and performer in the field of theatre.

Practical Information

Find out more in the brochure
Friday 4 September 2020 | 20:30 - 21:15 CET
Saturday 5 September 2020 | 20:30 - 21:15 CET
Due to current corona regulations and limited seating space, reservation is required. Please register here before the 31st of August 2020. You will receive a confirmation on September 1st. Please note that without a confirmation you cannot attend the Master presentation. Thanks for your understanding!

Nahuel Cano - Quiet Storms

Quiet Storms is a stubborn attempt to make the invisible present. It is a clumsy nostalgic dance. An impossible song. An irreverent, hypnotic trip. A process of erosion. An open wound.

The work began as an exploration of Nahuel’s native land, Patagonia – of a territory amid endless cycles of violence, memories of a distant landscape, and parts of a family history that have been hidden, denied. Oil, conquest, violence, desertion. Inspired by a practice of listening to both ancestral resonances and his constantly being out of place, Nahuel has built an opening to affect, vulnerability, and to the echoes of catastrophe.

Quiet Storms is a live performance, we will gather together in the same space. Holding space has been always a shared responsibility, a political attempt, and a risky business but under the present circumstances, the ethical scope of gathering has become more relevant and urgent. We cannot take it for granted, we should re-learn how to be together in a closed space. The performance and the institution will follow the protocols and measures according to the present circumstances, but never forget that we build this space together. I invite you to join with joy in taking care.

Nahuel Cano was born in Neuquén, Patagonia Argentina, in 1982. He is an actor, theatre-maker, and researcher. His field of artistic action is mobile, exploring the possibilities of performance, installation, cinema, and theatre. From 2010 until 2018, he developed his artistic projects together with his group El Cuarto. These works have been presented in important festivals and have received support and awards from national and international institutions. Nahuel is also a founding member of EscenaPolítica, an artistic and political collective that has organised actions, forums, performances, and protests. In 2019 he started developing a platform and subjective space to keep expanding his research and solo work: Kütral-Nahuel.

Practical Information

Find out more about Nahuel and Quiet Storms in the brochure
Friday 4 September 2020
Performance 1: 19:00 - 20:00 CET
Performance 2: 21:30 - 22:30 CET
Saturday 5 September 2020
Performance 1: 19:00 CET - 20:00 CET
Performance 2: 21:30 CET - 21:30 CET
Due to current corona regulations and limited seating space, reservation is required. Please register here before the 31st of August 2020. You will receive a confirmation on September 1st. Please note that without a confirmation you cannot attend the Master presentation. Thank you for your understanding!