Supporting PROGRAMME

Stanislaw Lem’s (1921-2006) science-fiction writing belongs to world literature. His books have been translated into 57 languages, sold 45 million copies and adapted into film many times. Lem’s impressive technological understanding is the foundation that runs through all his work, in which his human protagonists usually come to misfortune because of themselves and their incomprehension of an apparently enigmatic environment. GOLEM XIV, published in 1973 and rewritten in 1981, explores work on artificial intelligence and its unruly reaction to its creators: before the supercomputer GOLEM XIV bids farewell to go to the “zone of silence”, it tries to record a history of humanity’s most important mistakes in the form of three lectures for them. Not without humour, Lem takes a look at some of the main false assumptions in the relationship between humans and nature, evolution and progress, the past and the future. 

Eight theatre colleagues have agreed to each read an extract from Golem’s lectures to humanity in German and English and to provide the festival with an audio file. The readings will be streamed every morning between 10:00 and 11:00 am on the festival website, the English once will be available until midnight on the 15th of November in the audio library. 

Excerpts from “Golem XIV” from IMAGINARY MAGNITUDE by Stanislaw Lem, translated by Marc E. Heine. English Translation, Copyright © 1984 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Deutsche Rechte Suhrkamp Verlag Berlin

What is the situation of European theatre-makers like this year? What are they thinking about? What did they experience? Are they able to keep working in their professions? For festival curator Charlotte Orti von Havranek, video meetings are one of her research tools. For Fast Forward at Work, she recorded some of these conversations and cut them down to a 30-minute format. They will be streamed during the festival, some of them for the first time, and will be available after that in the video library. 

​

12.11. - 12:00-13:30

Irisz Kovacs - Marc Villanueva Mir - Helle Rossing

​

13.11. - 14:00-15:30

Nela Kornetová - Marilena Katranidou - Žiga Divjak

​

14.11. - 14:00-15:30

Radu Nica - Kamilė Gudmonaitė - Data Tavadze

​

15.11. - 14:00-15:30

Nadir Sönmez - Mariona Naudin & Ireneu Tranis (Mos Maiorum) - Simon Thomas

The lockdowns across Europe this spring also brought the theatre universities to standstill at the beginning. Questions of how theatre should be made and performed under the conditions of social and physical distancing and how this will change art, possibly indefinitely, naturally have few answers, instead we face new challenges. How can you finish your degree in times like these? And what situation awaits you afterwards? In three video talks with theatre-makers at the end of their training and beginning of their careers, insights will be offered into how young people in Europe are dealing with this situation.

​

13.11. - 12:00-13:00 - Germany

Carolina de A. Cesconetto, Lena Katzer, Theresa Thomasberger

& Eunsoon Jung, Josephine Witt, Sarah Claire Wray

​

14.11. - 12:00-13:00 - Poland

Karol Klugowski, Radoslaw Stepien​, Jan Hussakowski, Agata Koszulińska

​

15.11. - 16:00-17:00 - Italy

Est Coulon, Alessandro Rilletti, Emilia Verginelli, Michael Schermi

In four live discussions, we are going online with European theatre-makers to pursue questions that bring theatre work together with related social issues. We’ll explore the reasons and possibilities for thinking in local and international networks, talk about the urgency of working against climate change, about old and new power structures and criticism of them, and finally about the art of meeting the audience. In four talks, European theatre artists will give us an insight into what they think and do. The talks will be streamed live on www.fastforw.art. The talks will be in English with simultaneous interpreting into German.

​

12.11. - 16:00 - 18:00 Festival Talk 1

Theatre & Netzworking – the art, of thinking locally and globally

13.11. - 16:00 - 18:00 Festival Talk 2

Theatre & climate – on a necessary task

14.11. - 16:00 - 18:00 Festival Talk 3

Working on reality – how to act politcally in the art

15.11. - 11:30 - 13:30 Festival Talk 4

The touchables - about the art, to encounter the audience

Campus Radio Dresden is a student medium from and for students at all the universities in Dresden. Started in 2007, the campus radio programme is created voluntarily and based on the radio journalistic interests of the city’s students. In collaboration with the Faculty of Philosophy at Dresden, a training and further training programme is offered. Furthermore, the radio organises itself as a collective, supported by the independent radio channel, coloRadio. So we’re very happy that the campus radio will be streamed live from 6:00 to 8:00 pm on all four festival days via its channels and our festival website.

Website: https://campusradiodresden.de/

No clubs, no parties, no lounge, no after-show talk, no actually-going-dancing-in-the-end or standing together and putting our heads together – all gone. But we won’t let Fast Forward at Work pass by without any party at all. In cooperation with the HOLE OF FAME and the OBJEKT KLEIN A in Dresden, we’re looking for a little gap for our party spirit so that we get some music at the end of the festival at least digitally. 

​

Inside HOLE OF FAME

12.11. - 22:30 - 01:00 - Veni Vidi Tanzi - Disco / Funk

13.11. - 22:00 - 00:00 - Sourton,  House / Break beat

15.11. - 22:00 - 00:00 - J.M.S.McKlara - Old school/ Hip-hop/ Pop/ Funk

​

In the background of the recordings, the exhibition HOUSE OF STARS by the photographers Daro Sulakauri and Hitori Ni can be seen.

​

OBJEKT KLEIN A

14.11. - 22:30 - 01:00 -  Lucas Kegler & LEiSE - Tech house

​
 

​

Digital communication makes a lot of things possible, but not exactly a face-to-face discussion with everyone in a room. Just like in the analogue world, this needs rules and someone to chair the discussion. We’re going to try it out in Fast Forward at Work. With the chat program on this website we can stay in touch during the four festival days. Here, during the live talks and evening performances on the digital stage, questions can be asked which we will pass on to the discussants and artists for the Q&As. And furthermore, this is also your stage. Here’s to an exciting discussion!

For the first time, the Förderverein Staatsschauspiel Dresden e.V. is donating a residency prize for one of the young European artists of this year’s festival. This means that that person can come back to Dresden and work on a new project here. You can find out more at the festival closing: on the 15th November at 8:00 pm in the live stream on this website.   

This year Fast Forward will appear in university course content for the first time. In cooperation with the Dresden University of the Fine Arts, there will be seminar in the Applied Theatre Studies and Production Dramaturgy department, in which the students will visit the festival in real life and online and investigate how the pandemic changes a festival and which new situations the artists, organisers and audience find themselves in under certain circumstances. They will also explore questions about the contextualisation of the productions presented: Where is art located? What positions does it occupy?  

There will also be a special collaboration between the supplementary course theatre in the department of German Studies at the TU Dresden and the department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies at the University of Aberystwyth, Wales. Under the guidance of Matthias Spaniel (Dresden) and Louise Ritchie (Aberystwyth), in “long-distance relationships” the students will research how people share experiences when they are in different places. This experiment on the “transport” of experiences and presences in asynchronous spaces and times is also cultural and social survival training.

At the Institute for Media Culture and Theatre at the University of Cologne, they will also be taking a look at Fast Forward from afar – as a practical exercise in media on the practice of curatorial work in times of a lack of co-presence and physical distance, under the instruction of Dorothea Volz. A discussion between the Cologne students with the students from the University of Fine Arts is planned for after the festival.  

​

The “European Theatre Forum 2020: European Performing Arts in Focus” is an international platform for vision, discourse, exchange, networking and policymaking to strategically strengthen the structurally highly fragmented European theatre sector. It offers, for the first time, a European representation for the entire sector as one of Europe’s major art forms, within and outside Europe. In focus: Impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the performing arts and perspectives for the sector.

The forum will take place from 11 to 13 November 2020 during the festival "Fast Forward – European Festival for Young Stage Directors" in Dresden.

The European Theatre Forum is organised in the frame of the German EU Council Presidency and in cooperation with the German Minister of State for Culture and the Media Monika Grütters and the European Commission.

https://www.europeantheatreforum.eu/