In Cologne at last – Nature Theater of Oklahoma
16 March 2016
The Great Nature Theater of Oklahoma is calling you! It’s calling you today only! If you miss this opportunity, there will never be another! Anyone thinking of his future, your place is with us! All welcome!
With its unmistakable blend of a delight in theatrical play, conceptual rigor and skillful handling of modernist artistic strategies, Nature Theater of Oklahoma has consistently searched for new opportunities to form a community with their audiences. After many years of successful touring to theater festivals around the world, several prizes and whole load of praise, Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska are finally coming to Cologne to try out even more radical forms of directly engaging the audience. Unlike many other so-called participatory projects – in which most of the people ultimately still spend most of the time sitting in the dark – the camera now provides them with the perfect tool to genuinely invite the audience to participate. The city becomes a film studio – and theater expands towards infinity. From the leading parts to hundreds of extras – all the parts have yet to be cast. And anyone who comes to watch will become part of the film.
Last year, the New York-based company filmed their own version of the Nibelungen saga with amateur performers in a series of villages in the Odenwald, digging down deep into the world of German history and sagas. Now, as part of the Impulse Theater Festival 2016 in co-production with the Akademie der Künste der Welt, Berliner Festspiele/Foreign Affairs and in collaboration with studiobühneköln, they turn their attention to an uncertain German future, a future which is also still haunted by the past. ‘Germany Year 2071’ presents a world in which revolutions come and go like summer storms, in which aliens are processed for meat production, children are raised in the Greek colonies until they are fit for work and emotions have been replaced by emojis.
Against the backdrop of Cologne’s modernist architecture and the vast building site of Berlin, Nature Theater of Oklahoma will make a retro science fiction film together with people from both cities about an imaginary city reflecting the West Germany of the 1950s and 1960s and which is now turning into a new, old, utopian, nostalgic city, an Alphaville of the 21st century … an imaginary Germany … a future invented together from images, words, gestures and costumes by Nature Theater of Oklahoma and the participants.
Help us shape this future! We are looking for a total of 8 performers with a range of ages and genders who are able to be with the project for its complete duration in both Cologne and Berlin. At the same time we are also looking for hundreds of enthusiastic extras and people who have always wanted to take part in a film project as costume designers, make-up artists, props managers, best boys or girls or camera assistants.
Please note: We are not looking for professional actors! We are looking for children, students and retired people, people in between and beyond these demographics, either locals or those who are newly arrived, who have time and curiosity, who want to take part in an unusual theater/film project, who ideally have a basic knowledge of English and time this summer to spend with Nature Theater of Oklahoma.
If you are interested please send a brief biography and photo to: germany2071@festivalimpulse.de
Casting Cologne:
7 April 2016, 14-20 h and 9 April 2016, 14-20 h at studiobühneköln
(Universitätsstraße 16a, 50937 Cologne)
Please register for the casting!
Duration of project:
10-25 June 2016 in Cologne / 5-17 July 2016 in Berlin
Location:
Various locations in Cologne and Berlin
Working hours:
Subject to availability and role
Produced by:
Impulse Theater Festival, Akademie der Künste der Welt and Berliner Festspiele / Foreign Affairs with support from studiobühneköln
Further information:
www.germany2071.de
