Impulse Theater Festival

About the Festival
For almost 30 years the Impulse Theater Festival has been the leading platform for independent theatre in the German-speaking region. Every year the festival by NRW KULTURsekretariat shows outstanding and challenging works from the independent theatre scene of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. This year the Showcase is presented at a range of venues in Düsseldorf in co-operation with the FFT Düsseldorf.

The Showcase presents a chance to see outstanding productions of the past year and the most interesting newcomers of the season: these are challenging works that represent a plurality of diverse theatre forms and aesthetics and in that plurality epitomize independent theatre.

Some of the Showcase highlights are:

Julian Hetzel
All Inclusive
June 14 / June 16 FFT Kammerspiele, Düsseldorf
Suffering can be turned into art and therefore money. All Inclusive uses this insight to develop a cutting satire on how easily a Western audience may consume war and violence.

Markus Öhrn
Domestic Violence (Häusliche Gewalt)
June 18-19 / June 21-22 Botschaft am Worringer Platz, Düsseldorf
A man, a woman, a living room. In this setting the audience become witnesses to the noxious routines of a relationship in which intimacy invariably leads to brutality. The spiral of violence continues for over five hours: distressing and apparently inescapable.

Club Real
Beyond Nature - All Species Inclusive Democracy (Jenseits dr Natur - Volksherrschaft Im Garten)
June 14–16, June 20–22 Brause, Düsseldorf
Do away with nature and bring on politics! Club Real has established a community government in Vienna where all living creatures from snails to chestnut trees are equal members of a single political body. In Düsseldorf they will open the State Archive and present the work of the Parliament of Organisms.

The programme also includes the Impulse Academy in Mülheim an der Ruhr and a site-specific City Project in Cologne about fears that recurrently haunt the media and exacerbate social divisions– a problem that has been particularly prominent in Cologne since the events of New Year’s Eve 2015.

The Impulse Academy regards itself as forum that is key to understanding the identity of independent theatre. Workshops, lectures, panels and experimental formats will consider issues arising out of independent theatre-making practice: its annual chosen themes cover aesthetic and political questions as well as financial and production matters. The Impulse Academy is aimed primarily at professional theatremakers, students, producers and academics but does not exclude interested members of the public.

Academy #1 – Art Under Pressure
June 14–17 
Independent theatre between the shift to the right, identity politics and personal responsibility

Everywhere in the world art has become a cultural battlefield: from the heckling of far-right groups and demands to cut the budgets of critical cultural institutions to fierce repression. How can artistic freedom be protected—and used—under these conditions? At the same time traditional modes of representation and power structures within the cultural sector are being criticised. Whose freedom is at stake here? And what is art allowed to do? The Academy invites its participants to exchange their experiences and views and to collaborate on a manifesto for artistic freedom which will document the present debate and sketch out a vision for a feisty and constructive approach to the challenges of the present.

Academy #2 – Overcome Yourself!
June 20–23
Independent theatre between empowerment and self-optimisation

In many places targeted work is being done of improving working conditions and outcomes in the independent theatre scene—through lobbying, evaluation and additional training, through critiques of existing power structures and feedback techniques in the artistic process. These developments can be regarded as a professionalization and empowerment of the independent theatre and its practitioners but also as a form of optimisation in competition for funding and programming space. In several days of workshops and a conference, the Academy will investigate various dimensions of such current developments and ask how these affect the self-image and actions of theatre professionals as well as their artistic results.

Tickets online at impulsefestival.de or via phone T +49 (0) 211 87 67 87 18, Monday-Friday 10am–5pm
info [​at​] impulsefestival.de

Online-Ticketsale starts April 3

All dates, shows and further information at www.impulsefestival.de/en

The Impulse Theater Festival is presented by NRW KULTURsekretariat in co-operation with FFT Düsseldorf, studiobühneköln and Ringlokschuppen Ruhr, together with the cities of Düsseldorf, Cologne and Mülheim an der Ruhr. The festival is funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, and Kunststiftung NRW.