Creative Projects
The creative projects are at the heart of the European Theatre Lab. Using results gleaned from the OpenLabs, creative projects will break new ground in three key research areas: “new technologies & aesthetics”, “new technologies & audience participation” as well as “new technologies & communication and dissemination”. Read below what our creative projects are all about.
Stage Your City is merging the trends of digitisation and participatory theatre and a play with augmented reality, 360 video, gaming elements and an app-guided city walk. The participatory approach brings theatre directly into the community.In a dystopian fairy tale about a future city ruled by artificial intelligence, the audience is asked to explore their city interactively and make decisions about the question in which world they want to live in 2070. The digital interaction starts once they buy an online ticket: a prologue with photos and information will introduce them to the world of the play by email and their facebook page. They are invited to download an app to their smartphones that is crucial for the show. In the theatre, an AR installation introduces the audience to characters of the future who are asking for their help. Starting form there, they are lead through their towns, using the app on their smartphone and earphones, solving dilemmas, collecting photos, texts, audio files and other data. Together, they explore selected places of their cities and the stories that are connected with those. Being modern hunters and collectors, they are picking up traces of humanity on an emotional walk leading back to the theatre. Back there, they encounter real actors, and the stories behind the stories is revealed…
The partners from three theatres are working together with artist Bruno Cohen, founder of the Urban User Lab (the “UULab”), an experimental space based in Nancy, as well as Bernd Lintermann and Jan Gerigk of ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, and media and theatre artist Chris Ziegler who will create the art installation, stage and app design.
Stage Your City will premiere on 12 April 2018, opening of the RING Festival Nancy. The show involves the audience of the three partner cities Nancy, Karlsruhe and Tbilisi, and adapts to the surroundings and living conditions of each town. The version presented in Nancy is taylor-made for the local French audience, while dealing with issues that concern human beings everywhere.
The blogpost and the video of OpenLab 1, held in Nancy on 15-16 November 2016 is about the first steps in the process of this project development. OpenLab 6 in Tbilsi (24/25 October 2017) focussed on the overall dramaturgy of the story and the complex interaction of technology, text, actors and audience.
IDIOMATIC / Dub it: One Voice, Many Languages
Innovation in captioning for performing arts: This multilingual, transnational project identifies translation via new technology as the key to expanding audiences and increasing intercultural dialogue so it will use the research phase to find new ways to develop translation aids. The theatre makers, together with scientists from the Universities of Craiova, Liège and Bucharest, and the partner companies Incesa and Multitel, have been doing research in synchronized broadcast, vocal recognition and “speech to text” technology, The results and tests that have been conducted so far will be presented in the OpenLabs. The artistic part of the project is being developed by the Belgian company Transquinquennal. Their production IDIOMATIC picks up the topic of communication borders in a non-linear play for 5 actors speaking different languages and a machine giving instructions.
OpenLabs for this project took place from 27 – 29 June 2017 in Craiova and from 2 – 4 November 2017 in Liège. Rehearsals in Belgium start on February 26 and the play premieres in Craiova on May 16. Read more here.
This project brings together two large scale stage production of modern classics, “Peer Gynt” by Henrik Ibsen and “Kraljevo” (The King’s Fair) by Moroslav Krleza, that will be staged in the partnering theaters exchanging directors and bringing a part of their cultural heritage to the other country. The Norwegian play will be directed by Erik Ulfsby in Zagreb, the Croatian text by Ivica Buljan in Oslo. The dimensions of parallel universes, dream worlds and distorted perceptions of reality in both plays and its decisive narrative techniques are suitable for investigation and a transfer into a digital context. Both productions work with the same composer and will experiment with new audio technology. The project partners also look into the work that is done in the field of live electronic music at the Music Academy in Oslo and Zagreb. They have made contact with the Acoustic Research Center (ARC) at Sintef in Trondheim who study 3D sound and auralisation. We will also try out advanced sound equipment’s (psycho-acoustic effects). Meanwhile, more than 30 students of the Music and Sound department of the University Trondheim are involved and developing new audio and visual techniques, tools and equipment serving the artistic purposes in the communication between stage and audience. OpenLabs with the artistic and technical teams took place from 16 – 20 October in Oslo and on 24 October 2017 in Zagreb.