A series of events organised by Doris Kolesch and Kai Padberg, Research Area 2: "Travelling Matters".

This event will be streamed live.

To participate in the discussion, please register with Judith König (j.koenig2@fu-berlin.de) by 20 June 2021.

Prof. Dr. Magda Romanska is an award-winning writer, dramaturg, and theatre and performance theorist. She is the Executive Director and Editor-in-Chief of TheTheatreTimes.com, the largest global digital theatre portal, for which she won the 2018 Elliott Hayes Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dramaturgy. In this capacity, she leads a team of over 140 Regional Managing Editors around the world, covering theatre in over 80 countries and regions. Romanska is the author of four critically acclaimed theatre books, including »The Post-traumatic Theatre of Grotowski and Kantor«, »Reader in Comedy: An Anthology of Theory and Criticism« and »The Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy«, a leading handbook of dramaturgy. Her research on theatre and performance has been recognized with two international awards from the American Society for Theatre Research and from the Polish Studies Association.Prof. Romanska's research interests focus on the intersection of theatre, media, and technology. She has taught 30 different courses on theatre, dramaturgy, performance and transmedia at Harvard University, Yale School of Drama, Cornell University, and Emerson College. She has worked on over 30 theatre and opera productions, and served as the resident dramaturg for the Boston Lyric Opera.In the past, Prof. Romanska served on the editorial board of among others »Theater Magazine«, the «Yale Journal of Law and Humanities« and »Diacritics Review Journal of Criticism and Theory». 

Kai Padberg  studied theatre and media studies and sociology at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg in his bachelor's degree. After completing his bachelor's degree, he moved to Berlin in 2015 and began a master's degree in theater studies at the Freie Universität Berlin. In 2018 he completed his master's thesis: »Störungen: Vom Buhruf bis zur Bühnenbesetzung«. During his studies he received a scholarship by the Hans Böckler Foundation and was involved in academic administration. Since October 2019, he has been working as a research assistant affiliated with the Extended Audiences research project at the Cluster of Excellence "Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective" at Freie Universität Berlin and is a member of the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School for Literary Studies. In his doctoral project »Extended Audiences - Audience Performances and Public Spheres in Transition« he focuses on contemporary audience practices in the performing arts against the background of social and technological transformations. Next to his studies, Kai Padberg works as a freelance cultural mediator (for the Performing Arts Program, among others) and is artistically active as a performer with the collective »schmarrnintelligenz, die«.

It was the middle of March 2020 when Germany went into lockdown. Back then, there had already been a curfew in Wuhan, China, for several weeks. In many other countries in Europe and worldwide, public life was abruptly shut down. The consequences for the cultural sector have been dire everywhere. All over the world, theatres have had to shut down unexpectedly and most remain closed. Schedules have been cancelled. Professional existences are endangered. At the same time, public and cultural life has shifted to the digital sphere. Many theatres and artists are using this way to stay in touch with their audiences and are exploring digital spaces more than ever before. But what forms of community-building are even remotely possible for theatre and the performing arts? What is the character of the relation between local institutions and these transnational spaces, which might open up and expand while national borders remain closed? What does it mean for artistic practice if humans assemble as a virtual audience while being physically alone in their respective homes? In what ways will the pandemic change theatre? What will digital assemblies mean for theatres after the pandemic?

In the series of events entitled "Temporal Communities and Digitality – Theatre During the Pandemic", theatre directors, theatre artists and scholars from around the world will report on the practical effects on theatre operations and their work. They will examine the various strategies with which stage and theatre creators have reacted to this situation, online and offline. Together with researchers from the Cluster of Excellence "Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective", they will discuss how the global crisis of the theatre has created new temporal communities and to what extent these are created under the conditions of digitality.

This event is part of our series "Temporal Communities and Digitality - Theatre During the Pandemic".