Lab for young professionals form the fields of theatre and dance

How do you do?

Under the title «How do you do?», AUAWIRLEBEN will bring together young Swiss professionals form the fields of theatre and dance from all language regions for a 11-day lab to discuss the question of relevance in the performing arts.

Conversations about performing arts often question the relevance of that which is put on stage. Presenters and funders name «relevance» as a criterion, artists want to make a mark with relevant productions and critics use «lacking relevance» as an easily made accusation.

But what does that mean exactly? For whom should a topic be relevant? For society? Yes, but which society? And who decides which issues are relevant? How does relevance depend on the context? Do relevance and urgency always go hand in hand? Do trends determine relevance or does a specific relevance determine trends? What’s better, a bad production about a relevant topic or a good production about a hardly relevant topic?