Impulse Theatre Festival 2017

On the occasion of this year's Impulse Theatre Festival, nine festival directors, curators, artists, authors, producers and theoreticians came to NRW from 27 June to 2 July as part of a cooperation between the Be My Guest programme of the Goethe-Institut and the International Visitors Programme of the NRW KULTURsekretariat.

The international guests from Brazil, France, Indonesia, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey and the USA visited performances and events of this most important meeting of the independent German-language theatre scene in Cologne, Düsseldorf and Mülheim an der Ruhr.

The programme also included talks with festival officials and artists (including Swoosh Lieu and Monster Truck) and discussion rounds with representatives of the local scene (including FFT - Forum Freies Theater, Düsseldorf; Ringlokschuppen Ruhr, Mülheim).

In Cologne the group of visitors took part in a network meeting with Guy Dermosessian (Zukunftsakademie NRW, Bochum), Fabian Saavedra-Lara (Interkultur Ruhr), Aneta Rostkowska (Akademie der Künste der Welt, Cologne), Stephanie Thiersch (Globalize:Cologne, Cologne) as well as Florian Malzacher (Impulse Theaterfestival), Dr. Christian Esch (NRW KULTURsekretariat), Susanne Traub (Goethe-Institut) and Julia Hanske (Goethe-Institut) took part under the title "(RE)PRESENTING DIVERSITY".

The visitors concluded their stay on 1 July with the festival conference "Decide or Else: Entscheidungen in Gesellschaft, Politik und Kunst" (Decide or Else: Decisions in Society, Politics and Art) at the studiobühne in Cologne, where companions, artists, advisory board members and guests from the current and previous editions of Impulse came together to discuss decisions in society, art and politics.