Last year, SPRING opened its festival with a concert by Ukrainian band DakhaBrakha. Their performance prompted a discussion on theaterkrant.nl about the representation of war in theatres: how should artists deal with staging war on stage? And what is the programmer’s responsibility in this?
Professor Sruti Bala and (theatre) makers Ira Melkonyan and Alaa Minawi will meet each other in conversation. Bala and Melkonyan both wrote a letter to the Theaterkrant last year in response to DakhaBrakha. Melkonyan and Minawi are both returning makers at SPRING, also present on this year’s programme. The conversation will be moderated by Marijn Lems, writer for Theaterkrant and one of the initiators of ‘Theater voor Gaza.’
Topic Talks are in-depth conversations on SPRING themes: current topics that matter. What trends do we see in the contemporary performing arts field and what do they mean for the world around us? In addition to War on Stage, visit the Topic Talk ‘Ownership & (De)colonial Practices’. This year we are also experimenting with a new form of Topic Talks in which exchange between makers and audience is central: the Long Table Talks. Join the conversation in our Long Table Talk ‘Speculative Storytelling’ or ‘Staging Climate’.
The main language of the Topic Talks and Long Table Talks is English.
Following the Topic Talk, festival resident Nina Khyzhna presents a performative presentation about her new work “Body of Danger.”
