TERRORisms | 2013 – 2015
A two-year theatre project of the Union of European Theatres, France Schauspiel Stuttgart, Germany National Theatre of Oslo, Norway Jugoslovensko Dramsko Pozoriste, Belgrade, Serbia Habima – National Theatre of Tel Aviv, Israel Young Vic Theatre London, England Shiber Hur Company, Palestine Comédie de Reims, France
Theatre productions, creation of new texts, translations, production exchanges, conferences, academic and literary publications, work meetings of artists and a TERRORisms festival.
With the support of the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union
Between 2013 and 2015, theatres from Oslo, Stuttgart, Belgrade, Tel Aviv, and Reims dealt with the issue of TERRORisms. They elaborated different points of views and explored different aspects that are likely fundamentally determining our societies.
All through 2013–2015, new texts written by renowned contemporary playwrights from all over Europe gave way to a series of production exchanges among the participating theatres. Two conferences in Oslo and Stuttgart marked the beginning and the end of the project that lead to two publications dealing with the issue of terrorism and its appropriation by artists. Finally, a festival in Stuttgart showcasing these productions took place in the summer of 2015.
“There is no terrorism in singular form, but a variety of TERRORisms” OSLO 2011. On the 22 July, a young man detonated a bomb in the government quarter of Oslo. A few hours later, he shot young people at the ruling party’s summer camp. 77 people died. In his manifesto he explained his motivation behind the attack. | HAIFA 2012. After preparing dinner for her family, a 35 year-old woman briefly leaves the house to get some rice. When she comes back at night three days later, her hair has turned white. | TEL AVIV 1948. “Oley Hagardum“ threw bombs on buses and hotels, they broke into jail in order to release all the underground members, they kidnapped British sergeants and later hanged them in the forest; finally they were arrested and executed after a trial. Today, streets are named after them. Museums immortalize their acts. | SARAJEVO 1914. Gavrilo Princip was seventeen when he assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie on 28 June. He was a poet. He was a Yugoslav nationalist. | NEW YORK 2001. “Over Christmas, in too long nights, at the transition between one year and the next, the ghosts of the lives that disappeared on September 11th at Ground Zero rose up around the world, they rose up to the heads and the brains of the people. The thought of REVENGE was suddenly incontestably plausible.” (Rainald Goetz, Elfter September 2010) We are still living among those ghosts (and new ones).
TERROR. Fright is multi-faceted and surprising. As Laqueur pointed out in 1977, "the term terrorism has been used for so many different meanings that it almost completely lost its sense." 26 years later he made following observation, “There is no philosophical introduction to the basis of terrorism, there is no Clausewitz, not even a Jomini and this may also never change for the simple reason that there is no terrorism in singular form, but a variety of terrorisms. What works for one variety does not necessarily work for all of them.”
With the support of the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.
