press conference

WELCOME TO

Fast Forward 2021

European festival for young directors

Festival planner to download

Fast Forward 2021 is once again taking place in a “hybrid” format in Dresden and online: With four productions coming from Poland, Turkey, Great Britain and Belgium to Dresden, which will be shown in the Kleines Haus of the Staatsschauspiel Dresden and in Hellerau, and at the same time streamed via this website in a live stream. With a landscape piece for Dresden only, developed by Studio Beisel, the artist duo that also built this website. With four productions from France, Germany, Greece and Austria, which we will also present to you as a
live stream. And with a diverse events programme of short films, discussions, introductions, artists talks and parties, also online.

We have invited students from all over Europe to a festival academy, researched a digital festival centre together with the IXLAB at the TU Dresden and the Dresden University of Fine Arts and entered spaces that have partly only been in existence since the pandemic with the participating artists. Of course digital space is unsatisfying for an art form like theatre that depends on the presence of the bodies of the performers and audience in one place. And yet the internet also creates new forms of accessibility, yet ‘digital mobility’ is an alternative for participation and networking that should not be overlooked in times of climate catastrophe.

So you know how to prepare yourself well and find your way through the festival this year easily, we’ve put all the information you need in one place under How does Fast Forward online work?. To find out about all the people who have supported this unique festival for the next generation of theatre-makers, here’s where to find our Welcome & partners of this year’s festival.

A big thank you to all our colleagues, partners and supporters!

We wish you, the artists and ourselves four exciting festival days!

GREETINGS

A WARM WELCOME

Where’s the journey taking us? After the pandemic, into the future, for the next generation? This year’s edition of the European festival for young directors will present productions from Poland, Turkey, Great Britain, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece and Austria. You can look forward to an exciting new group of young directors, because artists are researchers and many young theatre-makers further pursue their topics in diverse languages and images and are inventive in finding ways to communicate with the audience.

There are good reasons why we’re producing Fast Forward in a hybrid format again this year: 1. We’re still living with a pandemic, where it’s unclear who will be able to travel where when and who will be able to participate. 2. Many pieces were created digitally in the last year. If we didn’t offer them a platform, they would remain unseen.

Beyond the shows, a packed events programme will bring an audience, artists and students from all over Europe together – both in analogue and digital spaces. Fast Forward 2021 has a clear mission: to give the next generation of European theatre-makers visibility and to offer them an international stage, a place for making discoveries, supporting their work, for cultural dialogue and communication across boundaries.

We thank our partners and sponsor for working with us and supporting us, and together with you are looking forward to an eventful festival.

Joachim Klement            

Artistic director Staatsschauspiel Dresden              

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Charlotte Orti von Havranek

Curator Fast Forward

GREETING

The future needs flexibility, ideas, cooperation. Our experience of a global pandemic has certainly shown how valuable that is. Especially for a young generation on their way into training, into professional life and therefore their own plans for life, the lockdowns and contact restrictions were like slamming on the breaks and called into question things we had previously taken for granted – in Europe and all over the world. It seemed like the pandemic had cut off the lifeline of theatre, the very essence of which is bringing people together, encounters, discussions and experiencing something together. But suddenly this once again placed how we communicate in the centre of focus as an artistic interest. With its European festival of young directors FAST FORWARD, the Staatsschauspiel Dresden will show how a young generation is staying on the ball in 2021 too, how they get involved, invent themselves, examine things up close and tell us about what moves them. In this way, theatre especially remains a central place for ideas, movement and collaboration.

I wish all the participants in this year’s festival and the audience, both live and online, four very exciting days full of interesting encounters. 

Yours,

Barbara Klepsch
State Minister of Saxony for Culture and Tourism

FAST FORWARD

When Fast Forward takes place once again in the Saxon state capital Dresden and in hybrid format in November 2021, the world will be a different place than it was the last time young European directors came together in analogue in 2019. The corona pandemic didn’t just mean a caesura for art and culture across Europe, but was also a transitional space from an artistic perspective. Developments and problems that existed before the pandemic were accelerated or made especially visible, such as the issues of climate change, digitalisation, right-wing populism, the shifting of global power arithmetic and the unequal distribution of wealth and privileges. Theatres negotiates the conflicts of human existence and can be a temporary corrective to power and politics using artistic means.

I would like to warmly welcome all the directors and guests to FAST FORWARD 2021 and hope for many inspiring moments at the festival. May the festival send a signal out to Europe that Europe needs vision and empathy instead of walls and borders.

Annekatrin Klepsch

Second mayor

Mayor for culture and tourism

sponsors & partners