Directors and dramatic texts

for the IN EXILE. QueerWeek22 festival
in Studio Я at the Maxim Gorki Theatre

In order to open the festival to a multi-voiced approach, the festival is calling for both dramatic texts as well as directors who deal with queer exile.
Is this what they call Gayropa? // 1001 reasons drive queer artists into exile in Berlin, hoping to find An Apartment on Uranus. But behind Berlin‘s queer-friendly façade, the freely-lived-out-self encounters constant labelling from the outside, as if the self-alienation of one‘s own body were not challenging enough.
I can queerly see // Exile conceived as a reaction to (impending) violence in the range of possibilities also shifts (in)security into a spectrum. This directs the gaze to those heterotopias where neither exile nor queerness play a role because they are taken for granted: in safer spaces - or where one‘s own identity can be freely shaped: on stage.
For some, their own body becomes an exile, and for others, the traumas left behind are only replaced by new ones. Sometimes the changed view of one‘s own situation also rewrites (family) history: Queer Awakening thanks to exile.
The In Exile. QueerWeek22 festival explores Berlin at the intersection of queerness and experiences of exile. // Let‘s show them what Gayropa really feels like.
 
Other Perspectives, New Voices: Queer Practices of Collaboration
Three writers and three directors will be selected from the submissions. Together with ensemble actors from the Gorki, they will meet for a workshop, which will culminate in a day at Studio Я, where the submitted texts will be presented in staged readings as part of the festival. Whether in a large group, a single marathon reading, or in smaller teams, showings of each work will be scheduled and the use of the rehearsal opportunities provided will be organized in the group.
Submitted texts (max. 10) that meet the criteria but are not selected for the staged readings will be included in the first festival weekend as part of an Endless Reading.

Submitted texts should address Berlin as queer exile. Applications and submissions from queer persons in exile are especially welcome.
 
Deadlines and dates:
Submission before 23:59 on: 05.06.2022
Announcement of selection: 03.07.2022
Workshop and rehearsals: 29.08.–01.09. + 06.–08.09.2022
Endless Reading: 03.09.2022
Staged readings: 09.09.2022
 
Submission details:
– By e-mail to: opencall@gorki.de
– With subject: »Open Call Direction« or »Open Call Text«
– Attachments: short biography and text or outline if applicable
– Texts selected for staged readings and Endless Reading will be compensated. So will rehearsal times for the staged readings.

Additional requirements for dramatic texts:
– The dramatic text should be approximately 20,000 characters long (a text outline of 9,000 characters is enough for the submission; 20,000 characters should be completed by the beginning of the workshop at the end of October).
– Working languages in the workshop are English and/or German. If the original text is not written in mostly German or English, please include a translation in German or English. (Translations by free online machine translation providers are sufficient.)
– If no translation is possible, we can develop solutions on a case-by-case basis. Please mention this separately in your submission.

Maxim Gorki Theatre
The Maxim Gorki Theatre is a post-migrant theatre. It invites you into a public space where life together in today‘s diversity can be tested, experienced, expanded. The Gorki shows how important it is to assert one‘s own - be it national or gender - identity and how necessary it can be to escape it.
In addition to the theatre programme, the Maxim Gorki Theatre offers a wide range of conferences, lectures, discussion events, because the Gorki not only presents and performs, it also questions and attacks, it polemicizes and clarifies.
 
Since 2018 the PUGs IN LOVE – Queer Weekend and, since 2019, PUGs IN LOVE – Queer Week festivals, all hosted at the Maxim Gorki Theatre, make space for queer togetherness and queer exchange. The most recent edition of the festival PUGs IN LOVE – Queer Future in particular, which took place exclusively in digital space due to the pandemic, showed how important spaces for encounters are. In order to enable as much access as possible, the In Exile. QueerWeek22 hybrid festival will take place in both digital and analogue space.

In cooperation with Missy Magazin, Siegessäule, Dussmann das KulturKaufhaus.
Funded by the Region of Berlin, Senate Department for Culture and Europe.