Earth on/as Stage

Schauspielhaus and future Pina Bausch Centre, Bundesallee 260, Wuppertal

This will be followed by a discussion of the theatre maker and historian of science Frédérique Aït-Touati with Maximilian Haas and Melanie Sehgal.

As part of our last sustainability workshop SOMETHING BLUE – Art of the Future in June 2024, we would like to invite you to join us on two evenings at Schauspielhaus Wuppertal to reflect on the connections between scenography and ecology. After three successful workshops, the future Pina Bausch Centre and the Szenografie-Bund are organising the fourth and last in the series in cooperation with the Wuppertal Institute. The central theme is sustainability in stage and costume design & space – SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW, SOMETHING BORROWED, SOMETHING BLUE.

The five-day residency SOMETHING BLUE – Art of the Future offers space for reflection and exchange on the big questions that arise when working sustainably on a small scale, in everyday creation. In particular, the aim is to question institutional mechanisms and demands as well as one's own role and self-image as an artist and to look at the conceptual assumptions that have a practical effect. SOMETHING BLUE is curated by Melanie Sehgal and Maximilian Haas. In addition to the internal work of the workshop participants on the spectodramas of Bauhaus stage designer Xanti Schawinsky and the joint readings and discussions, we have two high-calibre guests for whose input we are once again opening the doors of the Schauspielhaus.

Frédérique Aït-Touati is a director and historian of science at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris (CNRS). Her work focuses on the relationship between fiction and knowledge in the present and the past. From 2011 to 2014, she directed the Gaïa Global Circus. In this context, she created a theatre play as well as conference performances and installations. In 2015, she curated the simulation of the Paris Climate Change Conference COP21 with Bruno Latour and Philippe Quesne at the Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers. From 2016 to 2020, she developed the "Terrestrial Trilogy" with Latour and her company Zone Critique, which used theatrical means to explore the relationship between humans and their planet. Her plays have also been performed at the Berliner Festspiele, the Crossing the Lines Festival in New York, the Kaaitheatre in Brussels, the Théâtre National de la Criée in Marseille, the Centre Pompidou and the Théâtre de l'Odéon in Paris. Her books include "Contes de la Lune" (2011), "Fictions of the Cosmos: Science and Literature in the Seventeenth Century" (2011), "Terra Forma" (2019), "Trilogie Terrestre" (2016-2022) and "Théâtres du monde" (2024).

To enable us to plan, please register by 13.06.2024 at residenz@szenografie-bund.de.

The workshop on scenography is part of the project “A holistic approach to the Pina Bausch Centre”, which is supported by the German Federal Cultural Foundation’s Fonds Zero. Co-funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. Further support comes from the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia and the Sparkasse Wuppertal.