Sustainability

Since 2021, the Forum Ecological Sustainability in the Theatre has been held each year as part of the Theatertreffen. The project’s aim is the active development of a long-term network for themes of sustainability in the theatre that also links up with existing initiatives. Up to two representatives from each of the theatres and production houses responsible for the festival’s ten selected productions take part as Green Ambassadors in meetings and workshops where they discuss approaches to and challenges of sustainable theatre work and devise common strategies and projects for producing culture in an ecologically sustainable way.

Inspired by Bruno Latour’s essay on climate change, “Down to Earth” at the Gropius Bau in 2020 invited everyone to rethink their relationship with this planet of ours. At the same time this summer project in the Immersion series examined its own impact on the climate and asked the question: what would it actually look like if we organised an exhibition according to the principles in Latour’s book? The result was a four-week unplugged programme of objects, installations and performances – without electricity, loudspeakers, videos, screens, air travel or spotlights.

During his term as Artist in Residence at the Gropius Bau, the artist and theoretician Zheng Bo was concerned with the political life of plants and what we humans might be able to learn from them. His exhibition “Wanwu Council 萬物社” in the summer of 2021 picked up on this and developed strategies for a conscious and empathetic interaction between life forms. Among the exhibits were a series of drawings of supposed weeds and trees from Hong Kong and Berlin which Zheng Bo produced regularly over the course of one year as a way of becoming more familiar with these plants. There was also a series of public “Ecosensibility Exercises” which were intended to help visitors increase their sensitivity to their ecological environment.