English Theatre Berlin | International Performing Arts Center, 06.09.22, 19:00
There are currently a noticeably large number of authors who write multilingual plays and receive recognition for it. For example, Sivan Ben Yishai’s multilingual play Wounds Are Forever (Selbstportrait als Nationaldichterin) won the most important prize for contemporary drama in German, the Mülheim Drama Prize, in 2022. But what path do multilingual texts take in a theatre culture traditionally focused on German as the dominant written and literary language? Can multilingual writing change the theatrical and literary canon? What does the increasing collaboration of translators on original multilingual texts mean for the notion of a “German-language theatre”? How does the concept of multilingualism relate to the concept of diversity?
In our panel discussion, we will talk with the playwrights, translators and theatre-makers Elise Wilk, Ian De Toffoli and Thomas Perle about the significance of multilingual theatre texts in contemporary theatre. And together we will take a look to the future, asking what new forms of writing for theatre might emerge from a multilingual production and performance practice and, conversely, how multilingual plays, not written for a particular production in a particular venue, anticipate a transformation of theatre yet to come. We consider what role translators will play in multilingual theatre practice and writing and discuss the possibility of a translatory turn in theatre studies. We will ask about the significance of multilingual drama in countries such as Luxembourg and Romania. Together we will draw a differentiated picture of multilingual writing for the stage as a political strategy and aesthetic process.
The discussion will alternate with short staged readings of new multilingual plays. In this way, we will demonstrate the potential multilingual writing is already unlocking now and how it can develop in future.
Entrance to the panel discussion and reading is free, but please register here.
Panel discussion guests
Elise Wilk is one of the most performed dramatists of the younger generation in Romania. She grew up bilingual (German and Romanian) in Brașov/Siebenbürgen. In 2008, she was awarded the Romanian prize for drama, “dramAcum”, for her first play, What Happened on a Thursday. Since then her plays have been staged both in Romania and abroad, and have been translated into twelve languages so far. She translates plays from German into Romanian and is a member of the German-language committee of Eurodram.
Thomas Perle is an author and playwright and is active as such in Austria, Germany and Romania. He has received numerous prizes and grants for his prose and drama. In 2018, his prose debut wir gingen weil alle gingen was published by edition exil. In 2019, he won the Retzhof drama prize for his play karpatenflecken, which premiered at the Deutsches Theater Berlin in 2021, where he was part of the playwright’s studio. He was born in Romania and grew up trilingually in Germany, he is based in Vienna.
Ian De Toffoli, born in 1981 in Luxemburg as the son of an Italian-Luxemburgish family, is a writer, playwright and literary scholar. He has written plays that have been performed, published and translated in several European countries, as well as a PhD and academic and literary articles in international journals. He writes in several languages, but mainly in French. From the 2022/23 season, he will be the associate artist at the Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg.
Artists staged readings
Sarah Günther is a performance artist and freelance teacher who lives in Berlin and Budapest. After studying performance in Gießen and co-founding Mobile Albania, she dedicated herself to her network Pneuma Szöv. an experimental theatre and life, in which art and radical play generate unconventional energies and communities of resistance: <A journey beyond capitalist regression in a frenzied standstill <resisting the selling of the self <subverting (art) market mechanisms.
Mareike Hein, born in 1987, grew up in Halle, and studied acting at the Westfälische Schauspielschule in Bochum. She has performed in theatres such as the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, Schauspiel Frankfurt, Theater Bonn, Theater Basel and the Staatsschauspiel Hannover. Most recently she has worked with the Berlin collective PKRK and the Institut für bewegende Künste. Since 2010, she has acted in various radio play productions all over the German-speaking region. Mareike Hein lives in Berlin Neukölln.
Panni Néder (director, writer, performer) studied directing at the University of Theatre and Film in Budapest and at the HfS Ernst Busch as a DAAD guest student. Her graduating production was performed in the biggest theatre in Budapest for ten years. She sees herself as a multidisciplinary artist, who explores different forms of autobiographical and documentary theatre and who interweaves her texts with movement, song or video art. She creates socio-political stage performances, in which an honest encounter between the audience and actors takes place beyond all categories. Her piece “Wann hast du das letzte Mal auf der Spitze eines Berges Sex gehabt?” was invited to several theatre festivals.
Iringó Réti is an actor. Her debut as a theatre director and playwright took place during the last theatre season at the Jurányi Art Incubator House in Budapest. She has also acted at theatres such as the Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin and the Trafo Haus für Zeitgenössische Kunst Budapest. She has created several of her own experimental projects (art performance, experimental film) and has also worked with other performers (Igor and Ivan Buharov).
An event by Drama Panorama: Forum für Übersetzung und Theater e. V. as part of the project panorama #2: übertheaterübersetzen, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media and the Deutscher Übersetzerfonds as part of the Neustart Kultur programme. In cooperation with the taz.
