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Festival International New Drama
March 31 - April 10, 2022

We warmly welcome you to Festival International New Drama in 2022 and invite you to experience outstanding works of autheur theatre – this year coming from five different countries and three continents – in Berlin.

After restrictions imposed due to the pandemic obliged the previous edition of FIND to focus on Europe, the festival is once again presenting new works from other parts of the world, too. This year, we are paying special attention to the »Americas«, from Canada via the USA to Chile. We are also showcasing works from France and Belgium.

Artist in Focus: Robert Lepage

For this edition, we are focusing on the Canadian theatre director, writer, actor and filmmaker Robert Lepage (Québec) who, after a decadeslong absence from this city’s theatre scene, can now once more be seen on stage in Berlin.

Lepage’s œuvre is unique in its expansive utilisation of theat rical resources and has been formative for several generations of theatre makers. His work combines playfulness and humour with tragedy and profound reflection, and breathtaking visual power with a strictly planned economy of narrative and visual material.
At FIND 2022, the audience can experience live performances of two legendary productions from different periods of the director’s work, providing an intensive insight into his creativity.

One of Lepage’s most recent plays, the monodrama »887«, is being shown in Berlin for the first time. Lepage, appearing himself as an actor on stage, embarks on a journey into his own memory that is both touching and surprising. The individual reliving of childhood and its watershed moments becomes a simultaneously universal and humorous reflection on the mechanisms of memory: its risks, side effects and pitfalls. At the same time, Lepage illumi nates the common origin of memory and the theatre.

With »The Seven Streams of the River Ōta«, created between 1994 and 1996, Lepage is reviving a masterpiece from his early years for FIND. The eponymous seven branches of the Japanese Ōta River are embodied in seven stories that represent the great plagues of humanity in the half century between 1945 and 1995: from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima to the AIDS epidemic and the viral threats at the end of the millennium.

In addition to these performances on the Schaubühne stages, other events will also shed light on the various facets of Robert Lepag, especially as a filmmaker.

International Panorama

In »Until the Flood«, Dael Orlandersmith (St. Louis) draws on interviews with local residents to research the background to the riots in Ferguson, Missouri, after the shooting to death of teenager Michael Brown. The result of this research, which she performs on stage herself, explores the complex mechanisms of racism and power in the US today. In »Is This A Room«, another play based on documentary evidence – in this case the verbatim transcript of an FBI interrogation log as the Bureau investigated a data leak – Tina Satter (New York) develops a gripping and, at the same time, haunting portrait of a 25-yearold whistle blower and of state repression.

The Belgian theatre maker Anne-Cécile Vandalem (Brussels) is once again a guest at FIND: in her play »Kingdom«, a new home away from civilisation turns into hell for one family.

The new play by Caroline Guiela Nguyen (Paris) begins in a no less dystopian manner: in »FRATERNITÉ, Conte fantastique«, the survivors of a solar eclipse in which half of humanity has disappeared meet in a »Centre for Care and Consolation«. There, they form a utopian community and help each other to come to terms with the loss.

The Schaubühne Studio will also be hosting the latest production by Marcus Lindeen (Paris/Stockholm), »L’Aventure invisible« which, based on three reallife case histories whose unusual nature seems to make them border on the fantastical, addresses issues concerning identity, death and transformation.

New Drama at the Schaubühne

With the coproduction »Oasis de la impunidad«, the Schaubühne is continuing its longstanding collaboration with the Chilean director and writer Marco Layera (Santiago de Chile). In his latest production, which is celebrating its international premiere at FIND, he and his company Teatro La Resentida tackle the 2019 rebellion in Chile and the effects of violence on the streets and on stage: How is a disciplining violence inscribed into the body? And how long can state violence flourish in an oasis of impunity before retaliation erupts among the bodies of the oppressed?

»Erinnerung eines Mädchens« (A Girl’s Story), an adaptation of the text by Annie Ernaux, explores the correlations between the individual body and standardised gender roles. This directorial debut by Sarah Kohm (Berlin) is celebrating its premiere in the Studio.

And, from the repertoire, Maja Zade’s most recent play »reden über sex« (Talking About Sex) can be seen in a produc tion by Marius von Mayenburg (Berlin).

And in terms of talks, the artistic programme is accompanied by panel discussions including one on the subject of Whistleblowing in which Lisa Kretschmer from Reporters Without Borders speaks about her experiences and the fight to protect civil rights activists who are criminalised as traitors.

On the second Sunday of the festival this year, an edition of the Streitraum discussion series is being held as part of FIND.
With the title »Black Lives Matter – not just sometime and somewhere else, but here and now«, Carolin Emcke ties in with the theme of the production »Until the Flood« and discusses discrimination and antiBlack racism in Germany with Tahir Della, the activist and spokesman for the Initiative Schwarzer Menschen in Deutschland (Black People in Germany Initiative) as well as with the Frankfurt journalist Hadija HarunaOelker and others.