Projects
The first production was a version of Bertolt Brecht's "The Threepenny Opera" (autumn 1994 and September 1995), followed by the Greek play "Penthesilea" (March 1996), "We can't pay? We won't pay" (June-November 1996, "Chor der Werkstätigen und Nichtwerkstätigen" (Choir of the Working and the Not Working) (Winter 1996), "EKHberet" (January 1997) "Theatercollagen" (Theatre Collages) (March 28 and 29 1997), "Der Auftrag" (The Commission) (May/June and October 1997) and "Schluss mit Lustig" (No More Joking) (December 1999). "Schluss mit Lustig" was developed in reaction to the rise to power of Austria's extreme right-wing Freedom Party, and premiered in the Vienna Schauspielhaus.
Since November 2002, the Caravan has been producing full-length video and musical performance play based on the book, "Bukaka Spat Here," by Alexander Brener and Barbara Schurz.
In addition to full-length plays, the Volxtheater sees itself as an actionist group provoking political responsibility and moral courage by artistically intervening - spontaneously or planned - in public space, via street theatre and "guerrilla fun".
A few of the street theatre actions of the Volxtheater include: crossing the Danube channel (spring 1995), army parade (October 26, 1995), matamorphile hexaphonium (spring 1996), demonstration against the government's cuts on social payment (April 1996), street theatre during trials against people who signed an appeal to refuse to obey orders in the army (fete of Bewegung Rotes Wien in June 1996) Krems: performance of the play "We can't pay? We won't pay!" on the street (July 1996), "Auf zur großen Grenzschutzaktion" (Let's Go for the Big Frontier Protection Action) (April 26, 1997). "Spendenaufruf für die europäische Sicherheit" (Call for Charity for European Safety) on the army parade (October 26, 1999).
In summer 2000 the idea emerged to form a caravan to advance the political actionism of the Publix Theatre. As a part of the "cultural caravan through Carinthia and Styria", that held cultural events in villages and small towns in Carinthia and Styria and international resistance days in Klagenfurt, the caravan moved through Austria. The aim was to combine theatrical actions and information campaigns to enact change. The caravan left monuments with the inscription "no border no nation - for an open carinthia, for an open Europe" in its wake. The Publixtheatre caravans of 2001, 2002 and 2003 took this idea to an international level. Creating public theatrical interventions while dressed as UNO soldiers, police, border guards, and biometric researchers, the Publixtheatre has always provoked confusion as to whether they represent fiction or reality.
Read more about this topic: Publixtheatre Caravan
Famous quotes containing the word projects:
“But look what we have built ... low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace.... Cultural centers that are unable to support a good bookstore. Civic centers that are avoided by everyone but bums.... Promenades that go from no place to nowhere and have no promenaders. Expressways that eviscerate great cities. This is not the rebuilding of cities. This is the sacking of cities.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)
“One of the things that is most striking about the young generation is that they never talk about their own futures, there are no futures for this generation, not any of them and so naturally they never think of them. It is very striking, they do not live in the present they just live, as well as they can, and they do not plan. It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for a future, none at all.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)