LOVE PLAY FIGHT: TOWARDS AN UNCONDITIONAL THEATRE

11. August 2023

by Hayat Erdoğan, Tine Milz and Julia Reichert

Photo: Ela Çelik

Since 2019 the trio Milz, Erdoğan, and Reichert have collectively run the Theatre Neumarkt – a municipal theater with an own ensemble and workshops. Conceptually and structurally, they have opened the theater towards an institution that plays with the idea of being an institution. Theatre Neumarkt is Playground, Academy, Residency, assembly space and much more. The Theatre program tries to not reproduce canonical theater, it’s rather leaning towards experimental artistic creations. The production logics and processes have thus opened to more collaborative, co-creative processes.

 

Tine Milz

‘Love play fight’ is our credo and battle cry, our invitation to the city, our audience, the artists we work with, and our colleagues. Under this motto we are creating and shaping a contemporary art institution with four divisions–playground, theatre, academy, and digital–where people come together to love, play, and fight.

Hayat Erdoğan

We believe that Theatre Neumarkt is exactly the kind of place that allows us to do so – not only because of its eventful and political history, but also because it is one of the few institutions that has commissioned artistic experiment and institutional critique. Theatre Neumarkt has repeatedly made artistic statements, stretched boundaries, and provoked thought and discussion. We aim to stress this quality and to work it further, radicalize it. Our aim is to establish a place that loves, fights, breathes, moves, argues, and allows contradictions.

Julia Reichert
We work as an advisory collective and develop a culture in which we make decisions mutually and take responsibility for them mutually. We know that collective leadership and flat hierarchies require more exchange and greater skills in conducting dialogue and dealing with conflict (we are up for that). When it is about condensing, blending, and bringing different things together, we trust that collective processes produce more interesting results than conventional hierarchical management structures.

Tine Milz

We want to be an embracing and accessible place that invites and hosts everyone to ask what is worth loving, playing, and fighting for. we’re serious about love play fight and that’s what we stand for.


WORKING TOWARDS CHANGE

Julia Reichert:
Without claiming to have all the answers, we wanted to pick up the question posed by this symposium:How can we change systemic production conditions and traditions? Put in very generalized terms, our learning is: do it with structural changes—it has to be material or it will not happen—and do it with the patience for practices and the culture to change on a much subtler level. and remember that this takes time. Let us give you some examples.

READ FULL MANIFESTO

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If you want to diversify your audience -> diversify your programme

Tine Milz

If you want to diversify your artistic teams, ensembles, collaborators -> change the languages required

Hayat Erdoğan

If you want to diversify your audience -> change the price system

Julia Reichert

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If you want to change power structures and flatten hierarchies, learn how to stand together behind the stories you tell

Tine Milz

if you want marginalized people to be heard, let them tell their stories

Julia Reichert

If you want to create new and different narratives and rewrite canonical dominance, create more non-binary roles etc. -> write your own stories

Hayat Erdoğan

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If you get bored in classical theatre, don't reproduce it

Tine Milz