I can hardly believe: despite all the problems accompanying it from the very beginning and all the changes of people (it would be interesting to see how many Ministers of Culture took their office during this period), despite transformations in the society, the state, the community, the team itself… – the Exodos Festival have lived to its 18th birthday! Every single person and all of us ever connected with Exodos can be proud of it.
I really like the inscription to be exhibited at this year's festival: somehow it belongs to us. WE WANTED TO BE THE SKY. This is impossible, of course. Nevertheless it is good to test it, to check if it is really not possible. Probably this is precisely the reason why
our festival had so many ups and downs. Art is limitless, and it is hard to limit the programme if there are so many things to be shown to the audience.
Anyway, everything ends with finances. At this occasion I would like to thank all who helped this festival in whatever way during the past 18 years. In the first place Mitja Rotovnik, who always stood by our side, regardless of all the stories around: he will probably never admit it, but I suspect that he likes the festival. Then Breda Brezovar Papež and Tobačna Ljubljana, our long-standing donator: they actually trust in the importance of contemporary culture. Next, the City of Ljubljana, which has always rescued the Festival: I wish that they would really believe in the importance of festivals in Ljubljana, and that they would strengthen the existing ones instead of producing yet another new one – since numerous festivals in Ljubljana are simply good. And the Ministry of Culture: well, after eighteen years they could acknowledge Exodos as an important festival. And the Museum and Galleries of the City of Ljubljana, and the Lighting Guerrilla festival, since we really complement each other. Finally, thanks certainly go to Jan Fabre, Tim Etchells and Fu Kuen Tang, who have recognised Exodos as a good festival and saw us as a worthy team for collaboration.
True, there are numbers of those who have helped… I hope to meet them all this year at the Festival. After all the years that passed. Well, changes are obvious.
And further changes are needed. The artists also think that way. And it also shows in this year's programmes curated by Tim Etchells and Fu Kuen Tang. It is an exchange of ideas, thoughts and communication. An exchange of views and cultures. There will be space for the exchange of opinions on the Empty Stage at the Jakopič Gallery. Welcome. And it is about co-operation. Therefore, thanks go to all our partners, artists, collaborators, and especially the team. Thank you all.
Nataša Zavolovšek, Director of the Festival

Following my heart I tried to make selection of performances which use minimal means, live processes, vulnerable bodies, intimate relations to audience. Structures of games, evocations, rules and ritual. 
Fights/ battles/contests/conversations/dialogues.
Perhaps theatre that is more like dance, dance that is more like performance art, performance art that is more like music, which is in any case more like theatre. Or the spaces in between. Not that the exposure or genre crossing of performance and its mechanisms is at this point a big deal. More that in this basic or essential set of co-ordinates might lie the possibilities for real encounters, challenges, questions and deep conversations about where we are, what we want, and where we are going to. Not so much complex imaginary worlds as spaces and ideas unfolding, made in the here and now of actions, texts, exchanges. Performances that are simple, very simple, deceptively simple, totally complex. Things with a ghost of theatre/theatricality but (often) a sense of reduced means, a strict economy.
And always a question - as if to say “What can we do here?” or “What might speak here?” or “What might resonate or cause trouble here?” The how of politics. The what of social relations. The breaking of language. The ecology of ideas. The war of realities. The vital, strange and troubling otherness of art.
Some artists in the program (Kate McIntosh, Eva Meyer-Keller, Miet Warlop) I watched, talked to, even worked with over more than a few years. Others (Sofia Dias & Vítor Roriz, Mare Bulc, Clément Layes, Urnamo, Kassys) I’ve seen only once, never met or met only briefly – encounters sparking a hunger to see and know more. So for me the curation is a way to consolidate conversations and to start new ones… to get to know something, to make new encounters in performances as well as in talks, workshops and discussions. I hope for the audience in Ljubljana it can be the same.
Tim Etchells. 2013.

ALL TOGETHER NOW!
WHO: Mare Bulc + prerformers
WHEN: 14. 04. / 19:00 / 90 min / SME-EL / premiere
15. 04./ 21:00 / 90 min / SME-EL
A theatre-music project with musicians as performers.
At the beginning of the process, director has faced his collaborators with the following formula: the state is a music band, an inhabitant of the state is a musician, and migration from one state to another is like migration of a musician from one band to another. Through a process of improvisation and rehearsals, the creators have been examining the premise that the political,
economic, emotional and other kinds of migrations could be “talked about” through the migration of musicians.
The project “theatrises” the musical material in order to dissect migration, the impossibility of migration, leaving and staying, reasons for persisting and departing. The selection of “non-theatrical”, musical performers enabled conditions for exceptional creative process and presented the director with a unique challenge of “theatrising” the “de-theatricalised” musical situation.
Theatre director and performer Mare Bulc was awarded the Golden Bird award by the Slovene Liberal Academy for his four-year project entitled No History / Know History, which included eight related performances. He was a member of the Maska performing arts magazine editorial board, as well as of the SilentCell Network artistic group and the Dejmo Stisnt theatre company; and he was a cofounder of the Peacekeepers' Entertainment Art and Cultural Exchange organisation. He established the No History production house. Currently he is artistic director of the Glej Theatre in Ljubljana.
director: Mare Bulc; performers: Jaka Berger, Miha Blažič - N'toko, Matija Dolenc, Polona Janežič, Tina Perić, Irena Preda; sound design: Jure Vlahović; music: performers; choreography: Branko Potočan; costumography: Mateja Benedetti; lighting design: Igor Remeta; executive producer: Tina Dobnik; production: Maska; co-production: Bunker, Zavod Exodos; special thanks: Branko Potočan; photo: Urška Boljkovac From rehearsal
The project has been co-funded by the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport of the Republic of Slovenia and the City of Ljubljana. “The project is part of the manifestation One Step Forward, Twenty Steps Back, marking the 20th anniversary of activities of the independent culture in Ljubljana.”

THE QUIET VOLUME
WHO: Tim Etchells + Ant Hampton
WHEN: 15.–19. 04./ 12:00–17:00 / 60 min / NUK /
20. 04./ 9:30–13:00 / 60 min / NUK /
A whispered, self-generated and “automatic” performance (Autoteatro) for two at a time, exploiting the particular tension common to any library worldwide; a combination of silence and concentration within which different peoples' experiences of reading unfold.
Two audience members/participants sit side-by-side.
Taking cues from words both written and whispered they find themselves burrowing an unlikely path through a pile of books. The piece exposes the strange magic at the heart of the reading experience, allowing aspects of it we think of as deeply internal to lean out into the surrounding space, and to leak from one reader's sphere into another's.
Application & info: exodos@exodos.si.
Tim Etchells, artist and writer, has worked in a wide variety of contexts and in collaboration with a range of visual artists, choreographers, and photographers. His work ranges from performance to video, photography, text projects, installation and fiction. 
Ant Hampton, theatre maker, writer and director, founded Rotozaza in 1998, a project which explored the use of instructions given to unrehearsed “guest” performers, both on stage and, subsequently, within more intimate structures sustained and played out by the audience themselves (Autoteatro). Other projects include ongoing experimentation around
“live portraiture” with Greg McLaren as The Other People (La Otra Gente): structured encounters with people from non-theatrical milieu.
directed & performed by: Ant Hampton, Tim Etchells; voices (eng version): Ant Hampton, Seth Etchells, Jenny Naden; artistic production: Katja Timmerberg; binaural recordings: TiTo Toblerone; slo directed by: Jure Novak; voices (slo version): Filip Vignjević Cetinski, Rok Kunaver, Olga Kacjan; slo coproduction: Exodos Ljubljana, Radio Študent; photo: Ant Hampton
www.timetchells.com/projects/performances/the-quiet-volume
www.anthampton.com

A GESTURE THAT IS NOTHING BUT A THREAT
WHO: Sofia Dias + Vítor Roriz
WHEN: 15. 04./19:00 / 40 min / ŠB /
In this piece we subject words to the rules of movement composition and explore the potential of the word as a body, taking into account not only meaning, but also sound plasticity and the relationship to voice, breathing, rhythm and musicality. We place ourselves in that moment where the word repeated loses its meaning and within the possibility of degeneration and transformation.
As other words emerge, we are able to observe how our minds work – in the chaos of sound textures there is always a logical connection to something recognisable.
In this way, we free ourselves from semantic and syntax determinism, rearrange the hierarchy of word, voice, movement and gesture, and aspire to new constellations of meaning to reflect the complexity of the human experience.
“Playing with words is merely to examine the way the mind functions, to mirror a particle of the world as the mind perceives it. In the same way, the world is just not the sum of the things that are in it. It is the infinitely complex network of connections among them.” – Paul Auster: The Invention of Solitude
Sofia Dias and Vítor Roriz have researched and created various dance pieces since they began collaborating in 2006. Their work has been presented in Portugal, Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Romania, Belgium, England and The Netherlands. They are associate artists at Materiais Diversos (Lisbon) and O Espaço do Tempo (Montemor-o-Novo). 
directed, written, performed by: Sofia Dias, Vítor Roriz; sound: Sofia Dias; artistic collaborator: Catarina Dias; technical director, lighting design: Nuno Borda de Água; costume design: Lara Torres; co-produçed by: Box Nova/CCB, O Espaço doTempo, CDCE; partners: alkantara, ACCCA, O Rumo do Fumo, O Negócio/ZDB, Bains Connective; tour management: ateriais Diversos SUMO Associaçao de Difusao Cultural funded by: Governo de Portugal/Secretário de Estado da Cultura – DG Artes
www.materiaisdiversos.com

DAMNED BE THE TRAITOR OF HIS HOMELAND!
WHO: Oliver Frljić
WHEN: 16. 04./ 19:00 / 75 min / SMG
Oliver Frljić radically deals with love and hate for theatre in this performance, and the framework for his questioning of the limits of artistic and civic freedom are the fragments of the story about the disintegration of Yugoslavia, a symbolic space inhabited by the
actors filled with dilemmas we all encounter, but often willingly turn a blind eye to them. That the topic is universal was confirmed during very successful performances at the prominent festivals in Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina (MES), in the USA, Slovakia, Serbia (Bitef), Finland (Stage), Poland (Dialog), Belgium (Kunstenfestivaldesarts), Lithuania, France (Autumn in Normandy) Germany (Theaterformen, Neue Stücke aus Europa, Lessing Days), Canada (TransAmériques) and new invitations to France (Passages), Russia, Portugal…
The text of the performance is based on the improvisations of the actors.
English subtitles.
Born in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1976, the war caused Oliver Frljić to relocate to Croatia. He studied philosophy, religion and theatre direction in Zagreb and was soon considered to be one of the most innovative Croatian theatre makers. Frequently featured as author, director and performer, he works in the independent scene as well as in repertory theatres, and his plays have been presented at numerous festivals. He is seen by many as an “enfant terrible” and his controversial plays, with subjects such as post-Yugoslav society and pedophile priests, have initiated an intense public debate.
directed by: Oliver Frljić; cast: Primož Bezjak, Olga Grad, Blaž Štef, Boris Kos, Uroš Maček, Draga Potočnjak, Matej Recer, Romana Šalehar, Dario Varga, Gregor Zorc; dramaturgy: Borut Šeparović, Tomaž Toporišič; stage and costume design, music selection: Oliver Frljić; assistant to the director and movement consultant: Matjaž Farič; sound design: Silvo Zupančič; lighting design: Oliver Frljić, Tomaž Štrucl; producer: Tina Malič; stage manager: Urša Červ; production: SMG; photo: Žiga Koritnik
www.mladinsko.com

BORDER 
EXPECTATION
WHO: Urnamo
WHEN: 16. 04. ob AT 21:00 / 35 min / GLEJ / Border
17. 04. ob AT 19:00 / 35 min / GLEJ / Expectation
The performances we presented the last 9 years have all the same basic idea. We want to find a material that we combine to another or with the location to produce different images. Through the various rooms and contents the performance differs from other art works. The large volume of material, the changing of place and time and the infinite possibilities of topics make the performances always renewable and expressive. The same work can be monotonous too, if you cannot feel any variations in the created images. In another kind of art, these views for a work are not possible.
We think that the whole performance should be designed to present images, instant images without word translation. We try to perform in this way: images, moments, change, disappearing from the place and staying in the memory. We hope that it’s coming across like this to the spectators. All the images of a performance have together the target to present our theme. The spectators translate them by feelings and not by the mind. It’s so possible to have a pure mediation.
Urnamo group are Wamidh Al-Ameri, Wathiq Al-Ameri and Ali Al-Fatlawi. The three artists have known each other since childhood and decided several years ago to escape the Saddam regime. They embarked on an odyssey that could not be more adventurous and they eventually led many detours to Switzerland.
www.urnamo.ch

THINGS THAT SURROUND US
WHO: Clément Layes + Public in Private
WHEN: 17. 04./ 20:30 / 70 min / SME-EL /
We are surrounded by omnipresent objects, both in the grammatical sense and in everyday life. Like sleepwalkers, we move through an obstacle course of gadgets that faithfully carry out their usual functions. They are silent witnesses of our daily actions, and passively accept our need to use them to make coffee, do the laundry or clean the floor. But are they truly so passive?
Three performers enter the world of things, in which first impressions are always deceptive. Not one of the objects lives up to its trusted role. With acrobatic skill and dancers’ expressiveness alongside philosophical wit, the performers explore the new rules of a reliable world. The usual chain of associations starts to break up. Sometimes haltingly, sometimes smoothly, connections are made that are occasionally disturbing, which on second glance offer a new start.
With Things that surround Us Public in Private's insights into the puzzling world of the magic of objects allows us to perceive familiar things in a new light.
Clément Layes attended the professional circus school of Lyon, studied art and philosophy. He studied dance at the Conservatoire National de Région and the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique et de Danse de Lyon. He worked among others with Boris Charmatz, Odile Duboc and Yval Pick. In 2003 he started his choreographic research in the collective ALS (As). Since 2008 he works in Berlin and, together with Jasna L. Vinovrški he funded the company Public in Private.
concept, choreography: Clément Layes; performance, choreography: Felix Marchand, Ante Pavić, Vincent Weber; objects, set design:
Marinus van Eldik; lighting design: Ruth Waldeyer; music: Tian Rotteveel; dramaturgy: Florian Feigl; artistic collaboration: Jasna L.
Vinovrški; press & production: björn & björn
www.publicinprivate.com

VOUS ĘTES ICI … ET AILLEURS
WHO: Matthieu Tercieux + Chloé Bonnard
WHEN: 19.–24. 04./ 21:00–23:00/ CD-P
A playful and poetic installation, a monumental work of art based on interactive maps. In the play of lights, video projections, pictograms and geographical coordinates, the playground turns into a diverting interactive human mapping. A journey that takes only a few steps to bring you from your current position into the city, the world ... the sky.
The project was produced by AADN from France and it was premiered at La Fęte des Lumičres 2011, an event yearly attracting over 2 million visitors to Lyon, France.
Matthieu Tercieux is engaged in performing arts, dealing with interactive set designs and VJ applications. He also creates different interactive installations for various events and festivals. In her works sculptress Chloé Bonnard deals with problems of geographic representation, mapping, urban environment and character, symbols and graphic expressiveness.
devised and created by: Matthieu Tercieux, Chloé Bonnard; production: Lighting Guerrilla Festival/Forum Ljubljana, 18th Exodos Festival, Cankarjev Dom Cultural Centre, AADN; photo: Matthieu Tercieux
www.aadn.org/projets/vous-etes-ici-et-ailleurs-fete-des-lumieres.html
facebook: matthieu.tercieux
http://bonnardchloe.blogspot.com

BESTIAIRES
WHO: Dudapaiva Company
WHEN: 21. 04./ 19:00 / 60 min / LGL /
Gods on Tour or Bestiaires is a show. This theatrical ensemble is no ordinary but composed by Greek Gods, once very popular in their prime. While hosting “daily acts” about the history of their own kind, the clumsy God of Love Cupid is interrupted, along with other Gods, by Zeus’ philosophical advices. 
As humans, beasts or monsters they metamorphose themselves into unexpected shapes, they fail, they try again but the show must go on. They celebrate and re-invent their immortal fate in front of a witnessing (and yet again, mortal) audience.
By revisiting Greek Myths, Paiva embodies, so to speak, a picture of our time by breathing new air into ancient bodies.

CHARACTERS:
ZEUS 			Ruler of Universe
CUPID 		God of Love
HADES 		Ruler of the Underworld
PERSEPHONE 		Goddess of Spring
CERBIE 		for the close ones
MEDUSA 		Gorgon Moon Goddess
ATHENA 		Goddess of Wisdom and War
DudaPaiva Company develops a cutting-edge fusion of contemporary dance and object-theatre by showcasing dark, hilarious, philosophical and compelling physical spectacles for grown-ups. A new theatre idiom that provokes as much as it entertains.
concept, direction: Duda Paiva; dance, performing: Iztok Lužar (si), Ester Natzijl (nl), Ilja Šurla (sr); dramaturgy: Jaka Ivanc; music: Erikk Mckenzie; lighting design: Kai Roger Havn; video: Mark Verhoef, Wilco Alkema; objects: Jim Barnard, Jože Lašič, Kari Noreger; costumes advice: Catrine Gudmestad; production: LGL - Lutkovno gledališče Ljubljana (si), DudaPaiva Company/Laswerk (nl), Kilden Teater and Riksteatret (no)
Bestiaires was created with funds from the Ministry of Culture Norway, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, Performing Arts Funds NL, Dutch Embassy in Oslo.
www.dudapaiva.com

DARK MATTER
WHO: Kate Mcintosh
WHEN: 21. 04. ob at 21:00 / 80 min / SME-EL/
“Let me just say this - tonight is a night of stripping, tonight is a night of peeling away, layer by layer by layer by layer. What will be left? What will we know at the end of it all? Much less! That's what! Let's begin…” 
A woman in a spotlight, dressed in a sparkling dress and a long grey beard. With the help of two assistants, some small strange dances and a few materials you might or might not have at home, she approaches the big scientific-philosophical questions in a full-on show-biz late-night theatre style, illustrating it's knotty conundrums: time and gravity, being and not being, thought and the body... through what look suspiciously like a series of improvised home-science experiments.
Kate McIntosh is a New Zealand-born artist working in theatre, performance and video, now based in Brussels. Originally trained in dance, she has been performing internationally since 1995, working, amongst others, with Australian Dance Theatre, Wendy Houstoun and Tim Etchells.
project by: Kate McIntosh; performers: Thomas Kasebacher, Kate McIntosh, Bruno Roubicek; text: Kate McIntosh, Tim Etchells; dramaturgy: Pascale Petralia; lighting design: Minna Tiikkainen; sound design: Mikko Hynninen; light technician: Nadja Räikkä; sound technician: Vincent Malstaf; technical director: Joëlle Reyns; costumography: Sofie Durnez; production: Margarita Production, for SPIN vzw co-producers: CONNECTIONS Network, Kaaitheater, Les Spectacles vivants - Centre Pompidou; in partnership with: De Pianofabriek, STUK Kunstencentrum, WorkSpace Bruselj, WP Zimmer, Fabrik Potsdam; Tanzplan Potsdam: Artists-in-Residence, Sophiensaele; supported by: de Vlaamse Overheid, Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie; tour management: SPIN
CONNECTIONS is a mentorship and production initiative of the theatre festival SPIELART Munich in cooperation with CAMPO - Gent, Republique - Copenhagen, Forum Freies Theater - Düsseldorf, Theaterhaus Gessnerallee - Zürich, Huis en Festival a/d Werf - Utrecht, Choreographisches Zentrum NRW/PACT Zollverein - Essen, Theater im Pumpenhaus - Münster, Kanuti Gildi SAAL - Tallinn, The Student Center - Zagreb, Koproduktionshaus brut - Vienna.

SPRINGVILLE
WHO: Miet Warlop
WHEN: 23. 04. ob at 19:00 / 50 min / ŠB /
In Springville we witness the constant metamorphosis of a small universe in which characters, half human, half object, try to function together and alongside one another. By employing an absurd logic and by playing with proportions, these characters move us with the results of their disfunctionality in their poetic game of chaos, expectation and surprise.
Along the way they lose their trusted nature and the environment changes into the scene of a still landscape that’s running wild and unfolds into infinity. 
Springville is a performance dominated by the visual. Set design, costumes, props and characters are closely interwoven and merge into one another.
Miet Warlop creates visual art, scenography, performances, actions, interventions… Under the title Grote Hoop/Berg (2006-8) she developed a number of very visual performances, a.o. Proposition 1: Reanimation, Proposition 2: Reconstruction and Proposition 3: Play the Life. From September 2012 on Miet is associated artist of Beursschouwburg Arts Center in Brussels. Beside this she is appearing in different forms, shapes and places.
concept: Miet Warlop; design: Miet Warlop, Sofie Durnez; with: Sofie Durnez, Arend Pinoy, Seppe Baeyens, Katja Dreijer, Miet Warlop, Laura Vanborm; outside eye: Nicolas Provost; technique: Piet Depoortere, Bart Huybrechts & Akim Hassani; executive production: Buda (be), Campo (be); coproduction: Vooruit (be), Workspace Brussels (be), Festival Aan De Werf (nl); in collaboration with: Gessnerallee Zurich (ch); supported by De Vlaamse Gemeenschap, Provincie West-Vlaanderen; photo: Reinout Hiel
www.mietwarlop.com

SCHWALBE CHEATS
WHO: Schwalbe
WHEN: 23. 04./ 21:00 / 70 min / LGL
Who do we become when we are driven into a corner? Who do we become when our opponent appears to be the weaker party? Who do we become when our opponent does not play by the rules? People try to save themselves by saying “it’s only a game”, but once you’ve uttered the words, it’s too late to turn back to reality.
“To cheat does not mean that we don’t play by the rules, yet neither does it imply fair play. This performances addresses people’s darker sides: that part which everyone hopes, or perhaps believes, is not present within them.
We look upon the acting game as a struggle which has ceased to be a part of our daily lives since we have become too civilized.”
Schwalbe makes physical performances in which physicality is taken to the extreme, resulting in energetic, raw and visually expressive theatre. The collective, consisting of seven young actors and makers, all graduated in mime at The Theatre School of Amsterdam. Afterwards they took the opportunity to develop their work under the wing of Productiehuis Rotterdam and OMS K. In cooperation with Lotte van den Berg, Schwalbe produced Spaar ze (Spare them) and Schwalbe speelt op eigen kracht (Schwalbe perform on their own). In cooperation with Tim Etchells they produced Schwalbe speelt vals (Schwalbe cheats).
concept, performance: Christina Flick, Melih Gençboyaci, Marie Groothof, Hilde Labadie, Floor van Leeuwen, Kimmy Ligtvoet, Ariadna Rubio Lleó, Daan Simons; dramaturgy: Anoek Nuyens; set design, stage technicians: Joost Giesken, Dave Staring, Jasper Kop; costumography: Sarah Hakkenberg; directed by: Tim Etchells; producer: Joost Allema; co-production: Productiehuis Rotterdam, NXTSTP - Rotterdamse Schouwburg (De Keuze), Baltoscandal (ee), Alkantara Festival (pt) - OMSK; special thanks to: Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, SNS REAAL Fonds; photo: Pepijn Lutgerink
www.schwalbe.nu

DEATH IS CERTAIN
WHO: Eva Meyer-Keller
WHEN: 24. 04./19:00 + 21:30 / 35 min / CD-M1
Cherries have tender skin, meat and a kind of bone inside them. Their juice is red like blood. When you treat them like humans sometimes treat other humans, then they become human themselves or at least animate objects, which invite you to identify yourself
with them. Inspired by fairy tales, where sometimes objects come to life and so become a projection screen for your own experiences and fantasies.
In the performance Death is Certain Eva Meyer-Keller has installed sweet cherries as her protagonists. The stalks are removed from the fruit, but they are not washed or stoned. Instead they are being killed. She takes care of this business manually, in a way which turns the everyday into something brutal. The viewer is reminded of deaths from films, but also the reality of executions, how they really happen: associations from individual and collective experience in the face of sweet death at the kitchen table.
Eva Meyer-Keller works mainly on performances and has been showing her work throughout Europe and America, in galleries and theatres. She often works on several projects at the same time, makes performances, organises festivals/events, develops projects together with other people or groups such as Baktruppen, Jerome Bel, Christine De Smedt/les Ballets C de la B…, and makes more and more video works.
production: Eva Meyer-Keller; with friendly support by: Vooruit Gent, Stuk Leuven; thanks to: Alexandra Bachzetsis, Juan Dominguez, Mette Edwardsen, Cuqui Jerez, Martin Nachbar, Rico Repotente 
www.evamk.de

CADAVRE EXQUIS
WHO: Kassys + Nature Theater of Oklahoma + Tim Crouch + Nicole Beutler
WHEN: 24. 04. ob at 20:00 / 80 min / CD-LD
“A Cadavre Exquis (exquisite corpse) is a poem (or drawing) written by several poets, without knowing what the others have written. The first writer composes a line of poetry on a piece of paper. He then folds the paper so that only the last word is visible. The second writer continues, guided (or not) by that last word. The third writer follows and so on.” 
For this performance, four theatre companies have come together to create a live Cadavre Exquis on stage. Each will create a 15 minute section that starts with the last image of the previous part, without knowing what has taken place previously. In a completely open situation, the set may be changed or even destroyed, a dance performance can suddenly become a film and the story can go any number of unexpected ways.
This innovative international project is being led by Kassys theatre company (nl), who creates the first and final sections. The intervening parts are contributed by Nature Theater of Oklahoma (us), Tim Crouch (uk) and Nicole Beutler (de/nl).
directed by: Liesbeth Gritter (Kassys), Pavol Liška, Kelly Copper (Nature Theater of Oklahoma), Tim Crouch, Nicole Beutler (nbprojects); performers: Esther Snelder, Hannah Ringham, Jarid Rychtarik, Bas van Rijnsoever; coordinator, artistic assistant: Mette van der
Sijs; lighting design, technical direction: Adriaan Beukema; managing director: Merrill Abrahams; intern: Vincent Brons; advice: Sanne van Rijn; publicity: Lonneke van Eden, Bureau TamTam; design affiche: UNDOG icw Machine, Vincent van de Waal en Hoax; production assistant: Annelies Wuyts; co-producers: Kunstencentrum Vooruit, Gent (be); Kunstencentrum BUDA, Kortrijk (be); Culturgest, Lizbona (pt), Mousonturm, Frankfurt (de), Züricher Theaterspektakel Festival, Zürich (ch); made possible by Fonds Podiumkunsten, VSBfonds
www.kassys.nl

TOMORROW'S PARTIES
WHO: Forced Entertainment
WHEN: 25. 04. ob AT 19:00 / 80 min / SMG
Forced Entertainment’s latest performance explores ideas and clichés of hope. Writing and collecting future scenarios as well as small narratives concerning optimism and despair, the company investigates the speculative nature of anticipation and the myriad possibilities the future holds in store.
Tomorrow’s Parties draws on ideas of utopian and dystopian projections, the optimistic stories we tell ourselves and on the pleasures of invention that arise as the work twists and turns in performance. From these conjectures, day dreams and gripping but well-worn narratives the piece will move out in different directions to other kinds of speculations – the realistic, the personal and the evidently fantastical.
Tomorrow’s Parties is Forced Entertainment in intimate and comical mode – a playful, poignant and at times delirious look forwards to futures both possible and impossible.
Since forming the company in 1984, the six core members of the group have sustained a unique artistic partnership for quarter of a century, confirming their position as trailblazers in contemporary theatre. The company’s substantial canon of work reflects an interest in the mechanics of performance, the role of the audience and the machinations of contemporary urban life. The work is distinctive and provocative, delighting in disrupting the conventions of theatre and the expectations of audiences. Forced Entertainment’s trademark collaborative process – devising work as a group through improvisation, experimentation and debate – has made them pioneers of British avant-garde theatre and earned them an international reputation.
conceived and devised by the company: Robin Arthur, Tim Etchells, Richard Lowdon, Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden, Terry O’Connor; performers: Forced Entertainment; directed by: Tim Etchells; design: Richard Lowdon; lighting design: Francis Stevenson; producers: Ray Rennie, Jim Harrison; management team: general manager Eileen Evans, marketing manager Sarah Cockburn, production manager Jim Harrison, administrative assistant Natalie Simpson
Tomorrow's Parties is a production of Belluard Bollwerk International, made possible thanks to a contribution of the Canton of Fribourg to culture. In co-production with BIT Teatergarasjen (Bergen), Internationales Sommerfestival (Hamburg), Kaaitheater (Brussels), Künstlerhaus Mousonturm (Frankfurt), Theaterhaus Gessnerallee (Zurich) and Sheffield City Council. With the support of Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation. Forced Entertainment is regularly funded by Arts Council England.
www.forcedentertainment.com