Earthport

„Als eine ganz besondere Theaterform im Bereich interkultureller Performance stellt “Earthport” eine neue Erfahrung im deutschen Kontext dar. 

Ausgehend von dem Konzept der Human Specific Performance führt Earthport ägyptische und deutsche Performer_innen zusammen, um Etiketten, Vorurteile und Diskurse, die Menschen zu „Anderen“ oder „Fremden“ erklären, zu hinterfragen und um Wege der Heilung, der Verbindung und zukünftiger Visionen eines anderen Lebens zu erkunden.

Im Stile von Nullo Facchinis Dänischem Theater Cantabile2 schafft das Projekt intime Begegnungen zwischen jeweils einem_einer Performer_in und einem_einer Zuschauer_in und ermöglicht so ein tieferes Verständnis der Politiken und Praktiken des Einordnens und Fremdmachens. 

Die Begegnungen enthalten Momente von gegenseitigem Austausch, biographische Erzählungen, sensorische Erfahrungen und/oder gemeinsame physische Erfahrungen. 

Auch nimmt das Projekt Impulse und Haltungen aus aktuellen aktivistischen Debatten über Diskriminierung und Ungleichheit im Feld der Kunstproduktion auf und verbindet diese mit Performancekultur – insbesondere One-on-One-Performance – und der Qualität sehr persönlicher Kommunikation und Auseinandersetzung.  

Earthport ist eine Kollaboration zwischen „meet MIMOSA“ und „Lamusica Independet Theatre Group“

EARTHPORT brings together seven German and Egyptian performers from various backgrounds in a reciprocal research process with their audience. The cast explores how humans can connect with each other and transgress dominant cultural and political narratives bound to labels that create difference (like for example: “Egyptians are muslims” and “Germans are white”). Gaining clarity about the complexity of the own identity, the value of the knowledge that rises from different backgrounds of experience as well as understanding the own entanglement in dominant cultural and political discourses the divers cast will challenge its own and the spectators perception of “the self” and “the other”. It raises the question how healing ourselves and connecting to the world and others is possible in a local and at the same time global society promoting inequality and oppression on divers levels.

The performance takes place in a fictitious airport.Groups of twelve audience members rotate through the terminals and are confronted with questions of identity, belonging and exclusion. 

The interaction with the audience encourages the challenging of existing stereotypes and help establish new aesthetic approaches. In their work the artists employ the Human Specific Performing Art Method as a tool to reexamine perceptions of ‘Self’ and ‘Other’.

Human Specific Performing Art (HSPA) –  is artwork that:

• offers personalised and intimate experiences to the members of the audience.

• is designed to receive small audience groups + relates individually to each person

• is dependent on audience participation

• facilitates genuine encounters in immersive environments

• explores and employs different forms of sensorial communication

Earthport employs this method to create a space where intimate interactions between members of the audience and individual performers can happen in one-on-one meetings. It uses the direct contact as a space in which one may possibly become aware of and let go dominant projections of “the other” and encounter the complexity and dignity of a person. The development of the content of the individual scenes largely depends on the performers. It is their needs, their experiences and their divers perspectives that shape the path the audience will take to meet them, in the true sense of the word.

concept/directing: Nora Amin, Eva Isolde Balzer

concept/dramaturgy development: André Vollrath

performance: Pasquale Virginie Rotter | Adel Abdel Wahab | Adham El-Said | Maha Omran

Nora Amin | Eva Isolde Balzer | André Vollrath

set and costume design/photos: Can Rastovic

video- documentation: André Vollrath

PR-design: Ibrahim Ghareib 

network, audience communication, moderation: Laura Werres

scenography set-up: Silvio Benzler, Can Rastovic

A collaboration between Lamusica (Egypt) & meet MIMOSA (Germany)

in cooperation with: Vierte Welt, Berlin

funded by * Senat für Kultur und Europa/Berlin  

* This production was originally created with funding from Szenenwechsel (ITI & Robert Bosch Stiftung) and Bezirkskulturfonds