Dublin Theatre Festival and Theatre Forum

FORECAST. A School of Thinking-With

30.09.2021-17.10.2021

Where do you work? How does your surrounding sound, smell, what is its texture? What does it tell? And how does it inform your practice? Who actually shapes the landscape around you? What does its structure tell about its past and future? What would it look like if it was drawn by your neighbour living two doors away?

Dublin Theatre Festival and Theatre Forum invites theatre makers, curators, dramaturgs, directors, thinkers and producers from Ireland and abroad for an international school Forecast. A School of Thinking-With – a digital space of common learning and sharing practices. During the 17 days the school participants will take part in online workshops, lectures and conversations, as well as watching festival performances online. Participants will also have time to take a break from the tiring online environment and delve into offline wanderings in our local contexts.

The workshops, conversations and lectures will be run by guest international performing arts makers and thinkers, invited especially for the school. Their practices, based on diverse contexts and backgrounds, are deeply political and poetic at the same time. In their everyday work, they dismantle dominating power and colonial structures and practice a feminist approach not only as a topic, but as the very logic of their work and as a the way of building relationships with their audiences.

Inspired by transnational perspectives, we will observe carefully our own local contexts and landscapes, share experiences and desires relating to it and make a collective attempt to see the layers that might not have been visible from a singular perspective.

Curator: Marta Keil (ResKeil)

Format

Forecast. A School of Thinking-With starts on 30th September and runs to 17th of October 2021. The school will happen mostly online, but keeping in mind the level of screen fatigue, afternoons will be free from zoom.

Group workshops, lectures and performances will happen online and will take place in the mornings. In the evenings, there will be online Dublin Theatre Festival performances. During the day participants will switch offline and continue their paths individually following the scores and exercises proposed by the invited artists, testing them in their own local contexts. Sundays will be free, and there will also be some free afternoons. The school ensures that participants will be given a rich input of ideas with enough time to digest them.

Eligibility

Applications are invited from anyone working professionally in theatre and the performing arts. Theatre artists and makers at an early career stage as well as more established and experienced professionals are invited to apply. The school is international, which means that applications are open to artists and art professionals based either in Ireland or abroad. 2/3 of the places will be given to locally based participants in Ireland, while 1/3 will be open to international participants. It is important that the group is diverse, bringing a multiplicity of backgrounds and contexts, for participants to get the most of the programme. All participants must commit their time to the Forecast School period, taking place from 30th September to 17th October. The working language of the school is English.

Application

Participation in the Forecast School programme is by application only. You can complete this online application form from 27th July 2021.
Deadline for applications: Monday 23rd August 2021.

Applications from diverse backgrounds, contexts and perspectives are welcome and encouraged.

For further information, please click here.

Any questions: please email Katie at coordinator@theatreforum.ie.

Selection

Each year, participants are selected by a panel made up of Dublin Theatre Festival and Theatre Forum representatives as well as the programme facilitator. The panel reviews all applications received and the following selection criteria are applied:

  • Applicant’s artistic ethos and goals
  • Applicant’s artistic output to date
  • Applicant’s likely role and fit with the group
  • The overall group dynamic and its diversity
  • The potential for future collaboration within the group

Participation Agreement

Each participant is required to confirm their availability to attend all online sessions and performances during the Forecast School. There is no fee for participation in the school, however participants are asked to commit their time from 30th September to 17th of October. The school participants will meet every day in the morning for collective workshops and lectures. The afternoons will be offline, allowing space to follow individually the exercises given in the morning classes. In the evenings there will be festival performances to attend online. Sundays will be free, and there will also be some free afternoons during the course of the programme.

Questions

Please contact us with any questions, or email Katie at coordinator@theatreforum.ie.

Marta Keil –  performing arts curator and researcher, based in Warsaw, Poland. She focuses her curatorial and research practice on possible alternative processes of instituting and on redefining modes of working transnationally. At the moment she works on curatorial project “Breaking the Spell: feminist artistic practices of being-with”. Since 2019 she co-runs Performing Arts Institute in Warsaw, an independent organisation that aims at developing the independent performing arts field in Poland. She often works in a curatorial tandem ResKeil with Grzegorz Reske, recently they have been curating together with Tim Etchells the “Common Ground”, a season at Komuna Warszawa (2020). Together with Agata Adamiecka-Sitek and Igor Stokfiszewski she has been working on the research project „The Agreement” at Teatr Powszechny in Warsaw (2018-2019), that aimed at feminisation of public theatre institution. She has been working as curator and dramaturg with i.e. Agnieszka Jakimiak, Lina Majdalanie, Rabih Mroué, She She Pop, Agata Siniarska, Jagoda Szelc Ana Vujanović. In 2019-2021 she cooperated as facilitator with the Reshape project. She teaches curatorial practice and institutional critique at the Jagiellonian University, Kraków. Editor of several books, including “Choreography: Autonomies” (2019), and „Reclaiming the Obvious: on the Institution of Festival” (2017). Holds PhD in Culture Studies.