Power of Diversity
– The Crossing Lines Project
was the title of the European large scale cooperation project, co-funded by the Creative Culture Programme of the European Union for performances in the public space.
One of its results was a new international ensemble, made up of participants from the site-specific productions initiated by the partners from 2015 to 2017.
In this first phase of the project (2015 and 2016), productions for the public space what been be created for festivals of the ten partners in seven European countries. These performances has been be developed in the corresponding cities with a focus on that city’s history, location and the ideas of the young adults that have participated in the project.
In total 196 young adults from the partner cities worked with the artistic direction team and developed ten productions in two weeks’ times.
They presented these productions within the scope of a festival or special framework program. In addition to the forms typical for this genre (such as acrobatics and theatre), the medium of expression for the productions was primarily hip-hop, and rap (poetry slam).
The venues of the performances were very different eg. like a train station, a cemetery, a former Air base of the Royal Air Force, an old castle, the centre of an old town, a park and others.
After these first period up to three participants from each of the ten partner cities were chosen and invited to come to Freiburg in June/July 2017 for an six weeks intensive production phase. There they developed a large-scale production and presented it for several thousand spectators at the premiere on 28 July 2017.
By the way they felt now like a big family and traveled with this new play with the title "Crossing Lines" to all the partners again. Unforgettable for sure the performance in the harbor of Murmanks, Russia in April 2018.
The youngsters participating in the initial productions were integrated again in the performances of the newly formed ensemble.
The final of this project was during the Temudas festival in las Palmas de Gran Canaria end of July 2018.
In addition to the artistic focus, whose overall concepted centres on many aspects of crossing lines, the project further aimed to reach and integrate new audiences from different backgrounds.
These audiences were also been interviewed on the several subject matters of the ten different site specific performances of the first period.
Their answers have been digitalised, visualised as aesthetic constructs.These exhibits remain in the partner cities as reminders of a very intense collaboration that changed many lives.
The partners were:
Pikene på Broen, Kirkenes/N,
Temudas Festival, Las Pamas de Gran Canaria/E,
Bytomskiego Centrum Kultury, Bytom/PL,
Teatrul National "Radu Stanca" Sibiu/ RO,
Festival „Tête-à-tête“ Rastatt,/D
Corn Exchange Trust, Newbury/UK,
Passage Festival, Helsingør/DK,
Creative foundation, Folkestone/UK
and the Gerhart-Hauptmann-Theater Görlitz-Zittau/D
Associated partner: Hochschule für Musik, Freiburg/D
Coordinated and artistically initiated by
Action theatre PAN.OPTIKUM, Freiburg/D,
in cooperation with Rapucation, Berlin/D,
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Contact
Matthias Rettner
Neunlindenstraße 35 | 79106 Freiburg | Germany
t: +49 (0) 761 5039 449 | m: +49 (0) 151 226 392 83
e: info (at) theater-panoptikum.de