The following artists are closely connected to brut on an artistic level and already developed several works in cooperation with brut, published under the label brutproduktion.
For enquiries on brutproductions, premieres or touring dates please contact Stephanie Höltschl (hoeltschl[AT]brut-wien.at).
„I`m a one-person show, telling the life of a woman I know" Anat Stainberg in Splitter
Anat Stainberg is a performance artist, busy mixing and sorting out reality from fiction, and the prepared from the improvised. She is working within various visual-art and writing disciplines as well as directing. Originally an actress from Tel Aviv and since 2004 based in Europe, Amsterdam and Vienna. A graduate of DasArts (dasarts.nl), she showed her work (amongst others) in De Apple Gallery and Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, in Kunstraum Niederösterreich and brut Vienna. These days, she is teaching at the Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien, at the performative Arts department. http://anat.klingt.org/
“A wonderfully humorous and subtle work [THE END, note], revealing the realm of the media trickster that strongly influences our view of the world.” Der Standard
2007, Andrea Maurer and Thomas Brandstätter have been working on various performative and installative formats, exploring the relationship between perception and illusion. In its works, the Vienna-based artist duo reflects conventions of representation and perception as well as their socio-historical references. With a liking for grammatical experiment and for semi-spontaneous constructions, Maurer and Brandstätter have predominantly dealt with strategies of sequential art and with the production of experimental animation films, which they realise in their
performance in various ways. Thematically the works often revolve around the question of the presentability of time and movement as well as around the border between sense and nonsense in language. In this process, the audience becomes part of an experiment including the context of the presentation, which uses subtle shifts to reveal social viewing habits. www.studio-5.at
Anne Juren was born in Grenoble in 1978. She is a choreographer and dancer. After graduating with a dance diploma from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Danse in Lyon and after her studies in French literature at the L’Université de Lyon, she joined the Trisha Brown Company
in New York. Among other works she developed the solo A? (2003), the solo Code Series (2005), Look Look (2007) together with Krõõt Juurak and
Komposition (2008), her first piece for a group. Afterwards, she presented the work Pièce Sans Paroles with DD Dorvillier and Annie Dorsen, taking
Tenessee Williams’ The Two-Character Play as starting point for a choreography without words. With Dorvillier and Juren as actors and Dorsen as director, the piece preserves the original dramatic structure, its psychological motivation, characters, stage directions and scenic elements. Without dialogue, it assumes a new life as form and movement, releasing a stage language beyond the spoken word. In 2010, also with Annie
Dorsen, she developed the solo MAGICAL, which celebrated its premiere at the ImPulsTanz Festival. Tableaux Vivants, together with Roland Rauschmeier and the Austrian composer Johannes Maria Staud, followed in 2011: it was realised together with the Tanzquartier Wien and the WIEN MODERN music festival. www.wienertanzundkunstbewegung.at
“She is a maid. As a maid, she serves others and herself. In this function, Barbara Ungepflegt runs the escort service Ungepflegt,
a service enterprise devoted to the served and unserved, the being served as such.” Barbara Ungepflegt
Barbara Ungepflegt is a performance, video and installation artist. The central medium of her works is language, which she employs as an instrument in the examination of socio-political questions in the form of metaphors and artificial language (in her own texts). In her current work Running Muschi [Running Pussy] (2012), a specially written text with installation, Barbara Ungepflegt uses the language of movement and standstill: an escaped revue horse and a Japanese errand boy run around in their Perpetuum mobile of ordinariness. After a few warm-up laps an odyssey is run on the fitness treadmill. Many of Ungepflegt’s works are interventions in the public space: NOTSTAND
[EMERGENCY STAND] (2011), created for the Freischwimmer Festival, is a temporary installation in the form of a raised hunting hide in the urban area offering the needy and horny entertainment and strategies in the form of interventions and mini dramas. Other works are the
guest room Zur schönen Aussicht [The Beautiful View] (2011) in the mumok, Überlebensführungen [Survival Tours] (2011) within the forum festwochen of the Wiener Festwochen, MISSWAHL (2010) [BEAUTY CONTEST], Frauen Zimmer Frei! [Ladies’ Rooms Free!] (2010) or Agentur des Verhinderns [Agency of Prevention] (2010).
Since 2008 she has been active for the Theater des Verhinderns [Theatre of Prevention] by Julius Deutschbauer, at the same time working as a lecturer at the Max Reinhardt Seminar of the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. www.ungepflegt.jimdo.com
Since 2009 the CLUB BURLESQUE BRUTAL (CBB), by and with queer performers, has been presenting bizarre, intelligent, wonderfully comical burlesque shows in brut Wien. With its performers, CLUB BURLESQUE BRUTAL continuously conquers their own bodies, the stage and
the audience.
As Frau Professor la Rose, the unmistakable show host, the unique Katrina Daschner guides through the constantly changing shows on subjects such as La Tristesse, Medikamentös [Treatment with Drugs], Zum Diktat, bitte! [To Dictation, please!] or Boobs and Balls in a rather pointed way ranging from the almost embarrassed to the extremely explicit.
CLUB BURLESQUE BRUTAL is predominantly geared towards a queer audience that is interested in sensual yet serious nakedness to experience countless inscribed narrations and epiphanies. Get dressed to undress – more is more and less is just less!
With Cunt, Dr. Sourial, Madame Cameltoe, Madame Don Chanel, Miss Bourbon, Miss Kottlett, Rosebutt Host Frau Professor la Rose
“The theatrical re-use of the rustic, of its clichés and contradictions, is a central moment of the Rabtaldirndln, just as the consistent recycling of
their own history.” Der Falter
The Rabtal (with just one a) just does not exist. It is an invention. The Rabtal is the imaginary territory of the Rabtaldirndln [Rab-Valley Dirndls] from Styria. The constant subject of their explorations is the rural idyll brought into the city. The Rabtaldirndln are a theatre combine who preferably deal with themes in the field of tension between the city and the countryside. They always perform together. So together, they select their themes and tell them collectively. Individual guests sometimes get into the group, are caught up in the whirlwind of production and then spat out again. Their performances play a cruel game with illusion and merciless disillusionment: in these shows, the artistic subject (Rabtaldirndln) and the art object merge, and a “Heimatfilm” – a sentimental regional film genre – can quickly turn into a horror film. Their bizarre evenings are funny, but can also abruptly become threatening scenarios. You cannot understand Rabtaldirndln, but it is worthwhile being one of their friends. http://dierabtaldirndln.wordpress.com
The Dirndln are Barbara Carli, Rosi Degen, Bea Dermond, Gudrun Maier, Gerda Strobl
Their guests so far Ed Hauswirth, Georg Klüver-Pfandtner, Carmen Brunner, Helmut Köpping, Michael Ostrowski, Nadine Puschnigg, Monika Klengel, Franz Sattler, Ulrich A. Reiter, Christina Romirer, Marcus Dross, Felix Klengel
“Ambiguously, Uhlich’s pieces combine lightness and depth, explicit cheerfulness and great seriousness. Her works are never thigh-slappers,
but always full of dry humour.” Der Falter
Within the shortest time, Doris Uhlich has advanced to become one of Austria’s most popular choreographers with her performances raising political issues in a very personal way. She goes to the core of the standardising restrictions in classical ballet in SPITZE [POINTE]. In her piece mehr als genug [more than enough] – possibly her most personal work – Uhlich examines how a body can become a trademark. She puts gestures from everyday life into the limelight with regard to their robustness and fragility in und [and] as well as in Glanz [Brilliance],
and looks into her own future with the help of her mother (Uhlich) or reinterprets the revolutionary-expressive ballet Der sterbende Schwan in her piece Rising Swan. With a team of 15 women, among them a nun, a clairvoyant and a soldier, Doris Uhlich explores the question of
where the Maid of Orleans can be found today (Johannen). In the Stadtkino Wien, in a duet with the atomic Japanese film monster Godzilla, she also questions the ability to depict invisible catastrophes (Sneak Preview). At the moment, Doris Uhlich is working with former ballet
dancers of the Vienna State Opera and the Volksoper at the project Come Back, which will premiere at the steirischer herbst in Graz 2012.
Doris Uhlich, born in Upper Austria in 1977, studied contemporary dance education at the Vienna Conservatory. Between 2002 and 2009 she performed with the theatercombinat company. Since 2006 she has been staging her own projects. She received the dance prize of Austria’s Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture for the project SPITZE and was named “Bemerkenswerte Nachwuchs-Choreografin“ [Remarkable young choreographer] in the 2008 Ballettanz yearbook. www.dorisuhlich.at
Gin Müller is a dramaturge, theatre studies scholar and queer theoretician as well as a lecturer at the Institute for Theatre, Film and Media Studies
at the University of Vienna. The artist participated in the queer performance band SV Damenkraft (together with Sabine Marte, Christina Nemec and
Katrina Daschner) and is co-founder of the VolxtheaterKarawane. With them, Gin Müller understood theatre as an intervention in public space. The artist’s works look for the connection between melodrama, telenovela and rebellion in the context of a staged global media world (Melodrom / The Making of a Rebellious Telenovela), for a progressive form of the television novel (Who shot the Princess? Boxstrop Telenovelas after Elfride Jelinek’s Prinzessinnendramen); they also represent major ideological designs or small rebellions against a controlled society in Transkatholische Vögel [Transcatholic Birds] or they arefree adaptations of and confrontations with queer texts, motifs, persons and various gender-subversive embodiment
arrangements (Orlanding the Dominant, a queer Burlesque after Virginia Woolf’s Orlando).
- Transkatholische Vögel
- Who shot the Princess? Boxstop Telenovelas
- Salon fauxpas brutal - DIE PRINZESSIN
- Rausch
- Salon fauxpas brutal
- Salon fauxpas brutal
- DIE KÖRPERPOLITIK
- DAS BIEST
- DIE PROTHESE
- DIE ZEIT-MASCHINE
- Ein Gespenst
- Mosh Mosh - DIE DAMENHAFTIGKEIT
- Orlanding the Dominant
- Melodrom/The Making of a Rebellious Telenovela
- Melodrom: Melodrama, Telenovela, Rebellion
- Aktionslabor für politische Interventionen
- TRANS GENDER MOVES
“They polarise, they provoke and presumably they are Austria’s most anarchic theatre group: the intercultural team of God’s Entertainment.” Kulturjounal Ö1
Don’t be afraid, this is not theatre! The God’s Entertainment (GE) collective repeatedly fobs off its commissioners – almost 100 per cent theatre houses or theatre and performance festivals – with no theatre. This happens just like that – without a second level or a fourth wall. So the reason must lie either in the performers’ charm or in their contemporary concept of theatre. Or maybe they have just had six years’ good luck. God’s
Entertainment constantly seeks to transcend the classical conventions of the theatre anew. This happens in the fields of performance, happening, visual art and sound. Their work is often opposed to Austria’s political and cultural identity. As a playground for their performances, GE not only make use of the theatre stage: their actions take place again and again in public or also in private apartments. One of the most striking characteristics that decisively marks their work is the inclusion of the audience. This has finally made it impossible to ignore GE so easily any longer. Once captured, you stay with God’s Entertainment for life. www.gods-entertainment.org
Jan Machacek studied sculpture and stage design in Vienna and Karlsruhe. Since 2002, he has been working at the intersection of media art and performance. Besides live video performances he realises experimental short films and video installations in public space. His work focuses on the relationship between the body and the pictures of it that the media apparatus produces. For Jan Machacek things get exciting if he can react spontaneously to something mediated – through this room for manoeuvre a rigidly defined (video) picture starts to slide. Machacek regularly co-operates with artists such as Oliver Stotz, Sabine Marte, Andrei Andrianov, Anat Stainberg, Billy Roisz, Anna Mendelssohn, Martin Siewert
(dieb13). His works have been shownamong others at the Wiener Festwochen, in the Tanzquartier Wien, at the Frankfurt Plateaux Festival as well as at festivals in Italy, Holland, Britain and Bulgaria. His works have received numerous prizes, e.g. at the Flexfestival, Gainesville, at the Diagonale, Graz, including the International Prize for Performance in Trento. http://machacek.klingt.org
"The modern “just-in-time” lifestyle could hardly be portrayed more concisely or aptly. Ein.Küchen.Bau offered a highlight already in the first evening of the Freischwimmer Festival." Hans-Christoph Zimmermann, Westdeutsche Zeitung
Joonas Lahtinen is a performance artist, director and researcher who lives and works in Vienna and Helsinki. Since 1995, he has performed in various Live Art, theatre and TV productions. In his projects, Joonas explores the politics of space and of the everyday from perspectives that are both humorous and disturbing. Many of his performances are site-specific and have a strong installational character. His recent works include the performance/installations YOYO – You are On Your Own co-produced by the URB 14 festival / Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art Helsinki and brut Wien; I BLAME YOU, TONY BLAIR! that premiered at the imagetanz 2014 festival in brut Wien; and EIN.KÜCHEN.BAU that toured internationally as part of the Freischwimmer-festival 2012–2013 and was invited to STAGE Helsinki Theatre Festival 2013. He also directed the lecture performance Love! Inspiration! Innovation! by the Helsinki-based Mysteeriteatteri in 2011 and performed his solo piece trackings in London, Helsinki and Vienna (at the Underground City 21 Vienna festival, in LABfactory, and in Lust Gallery) in 2009-2010. Joonas has studied Performance at Queen Mary, University of London and is writing a PhD thesis about the problematic of “emancipatory” participative art at the University of Helsinki. He has published several theatre research articles in Finnish and English. Joonas creates his projects together with the dramaturge and producer Luzie Stransky. She studied Theatre, Film and Media Studies in Vienna and Helsinki and worked for several Vienna-based theatre companies such as theatercombinat and Nomad Theatre.
Joonas is the artistic director of onemorequestion, a new Austrian-Finnish artist collective. The members of the group have worked together in various projects since 2005. http://joonaslahtinen.wordpress.com
„GOOD BAD GO - QUESTION THE RIGHT POSITION - STOP STAND STARE - BODIES IN REPETITION - GO MOVE STAY - CAN SOMEONE TELL US WHO IS TALKING, TALKING, TALKING NOW .“ Lisa Kortschak, INSIGHT THE OUTSIDE
Lisa Kortschak was born in 1976 in Salzburg. She currently lives and works as a musician, performer and fine artist in Vienna. In her works she combines installation, performance, video and sound. Kortschak works within the tense relation of space and sound, as well as the shift of image and sound. She combines video, sound installation and live-music in the stage area. For her final project at the University of Fine Arts in Vienna, OSZILLENTRENOUS, she was presented with the BMWF-award of excellence. Numerous collaborations with artists, bands and collectives reflect her effort to expand artists‘ and activists‘ networks. Kortschak participated in various international performance events, concerts and exhibitions, e.g. the TsEKh in Moscow in 2011 with BETWEEN THE LINES and the NOW-Festival in Amsterdam in 2013. Since 2013, together with Rania Moslam and Gregor Mahnert, she has been curating BRUTTO, a monthly concert series at brut which is open to cooperations with all art forms. http://lisakortschak.klingt.org/
Michikazu Matsune was born in Japan and has been living and working in Vienna for more than ten years. His conceptually strong, but at the same time playful works for the public space, for museums, galleries and the stage explore the boundaries of artistic formats. Matsune is always also on the lookout for unusual forms of realisation for themes with a social reference: among these are a stage play in sign-language (ZEICHENSTURM,
2011) [SIGNSTORM], an exhibition for the audience of the year 2111 (Hello 2111, 2011), a demonstration on which the demonstrators
contradicted themselves (Yes and No, 2010) and a tourist information about unnoticed places (Tourist Office, 2011). In his work a particular tension arises between performance and other art forms, between language and action, between art and various social and cultural factors. To this end, Matsune repeatedly co-operates with other artists. Together with David Subal, between 2004 and 2010 he developed various installations and performances: among other things, for example, they opened a shop selling performances (STORE, since 2005). In 2008, for the video performance
One Hour Standing for, they stood in front of tourist attractions in 24 world capitals for one hour without moving. In the live installation DANEBEN, 2010, [BESIDE] they document the paths of life and hopes of 30 migrants. In recent years, Matsune has also developed projects with Naeem Mohaiemen (Le Saigon Quiz, 2009) and Maxim Ilyukhin (Peeping M, 2010 and Walking Distance, 2011). www.michikazumatsune.info
Behind the nadaproductions label are the Chilean/Mexican choreographer Amanda Piña and the Swiss-born artist and film-maker Daniel Zimmermann,
who have been working together under this name since 2005. The projects that Piña and Zimmermann have produced together since then focus on situations of reception and mechanisms of perception in contemporary theatre. Their performances are always aimed at involving the audience and getting it to actively participate in the evening. New performance concepts play a role in this context as much as the updating of well-known techniques of participation. Under the nadaproductions label, the two artists have realised the tetralogy SELF, YOU, WE and THEM as well as IT,
which were shown in brut and in the Tanzquartier Wien. Current works such as TEATRO and NATURE have been developed in co-production with brut. Their scope of activity is not restricted to Vienna, however. Besides invitations all over Europe, they have already had guest performances in South America. In the nadalokal, which they founded in Vienna, they also show exhibitions and performances and invite musicians for concerts. The nadalokal has thus become a popular Viennese meeting point for artists from all disciplines. www.nadaproductions.at
The co-operation between Laia Fabre and Thomas Kasebacher under the namenotfoundyet started in 2007 with the performance Second Life. Since then, seven joint performances have been developed, whose base material the two derive from everyday events and everyday routines. They then try to arrange them in their performances, dance pieces and installations in a thematically pointed way. For this, notfoundyet often collaborate with other visual artists, musicians, dancers and performers. notfoundyet’s projects are created out of such co-operation, in process-oriented development phases. Based on an initial idea, in intensive work phases improvisation, text work and choreographic elements and music combine to new forms of expression. www.notfoundyet.net
Laia Fabre, born in Barcelona, graduated with a BA in performance from the Universitat de Barcelona and studied visual art/video under Dorit Margreiter at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. In the process, her interest in dance and visual art developed. She collaborated with various
theatre groups, choreographers and freelance artists, among them Paul Wenninger, Nature Theater of Oklahoma, toxic dreams, Alexandra
Sachs, nadaproductions, studio 5 and Krzysztof Kaczmarek. Currently she is collaborating with Malin Franzen on a 16mm film-trilogy project in Stockholm and on a full-length film with Eva Hausberger in Vienna. She lives and works in Vienna.
Thomas Kasebacher, performer and director. Studied stage direction, performance and devising at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts and comparative literature at the University of Innsbruck. He has worked among others with Kate McIntosh, nadaproductions, Michikazu Matsune, David Subal, Oleg Soulimenko and Sarah Vanhee. In 2011 he produced a site-specific performance about alocohol and alienation within the Scope of the Austro-Russian artists’ exchange Music here, Music there: Mowscow-Vienna. He is currently working with Phil Hayes and Maria Jerez on a new performance. Kasebacher lives and works in Vienna.
“It is difficult to find anything more creative and witty than the performance [MADE IN RUSSIA, note]. It skilfully plays with clichés and prejudices. It hits the mark!” Wiener Zeitung
The Russian performance artist Oleg Soulimenko lives and works in Vienna. After studying engineering at the Moscow State Technical University, he
decided to embark on an artistic career and trained as a dancer and performer at various theatres in Moscow. In 1990, Soulimenko founded the international workshop Saira Blanche Theatre, whose provocative performances toured the globe. With the Saira Blanche Theatre, from 1996 to 2000, Soulimenko participated in a co-operation with Lux Flux, Vienna. They worked together on a method of making theatre without the theatre, of producing stage presence without directing. Within this constellation, he performed all over Europe at dance and theatre festivals. As a curator
together with the Tanzquartier Wien, under the title East meets West, he initiated a dialogue between Russian and Austrian artists. With brut Wien, in 2010 he originated the exchange project Music here, Music there: Vienna – Moscow between Austria and Russia, which resulted in several-day showings both in Moscow and in Vienna. In addition, many of his works have been produced within the framework of international co-operation,
for example with Lisa Nelson, Markus Schinwald, Meg Stuart, Jennifer Lacey and Steve Paxton. Since 2005, he has been passing on his knowledge of dance and performance at the Dance Department of the Bruckner University Linz and he regularly develops projects with SEAD (Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance).www.avantart.com/dance/soulimen.htm
Sabine Marte was born in 1967 in Feldkirch. She writes, performs, and creates music and experimental video art for theatre space, blackbox, whitecube, music clubs and living rooms. In addition to collaborative projects e.g. with VolxtheaterKarawane, Gin Müller and Jan Machacek, she is a member of several band projects, including SV DAMENKRAFT (2003-2008) and PENDLER (since 2006). Sabine Marte performed as Madame Cameltoe from the very start of CLUB BURLESQUE BRUTAL. She received numerous awards and scholarships, e.g. the national scholarship for video and media art in 2009, as well as the Diagonale Innovative Cinema Prize in 2010. Her video/sound plays and performances are based on the work with and on language. The same is true of her current work HOTEL TOTALE; which premiered in 2012 at the Donaufestival Krems and at brut in Vienna. In Hotel Totale – revisited, she develops her play further and shows a solo with a video figure and a doll- thereby incorporating the conditions of the stage area into integral elements of the play.
http://sabine.klingt.org/; http://pendler.klingt.org
Simon Mayer, performer/dancer, choreographer and musician, born in 1984 in Austria, studied at the Vienna State Opera Ballet School and the Performing Arts, Research and Training Studios (P.A.R.T.S) in Brussels and was member of the Vienna State Opera Ballet. In 2009, he founded the band Rising halfmoon as singer, guitarist and songwriter. As dancer/choreographer and musician he was involved in productions of Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker/ ROSAS (The Song), Wim Vandekeybus (Frisking) and Zita Swoon. His choreographic repertoire includes solos, duets and group pieces that have been performed internationally (o feather of lead; dancing with the soundhobbyist/Zita Swoon; Monkeymind and others).
Simon was Artist in Residence at Theatre de LL in Brussels and is the artistic director of the festival SPIEL, which he started together with his brothers and the club m-arts. Until now, he has produced two performances, Monkeymind (imagetanz Festival 2013) and SunBengSitting (2014) at brut. http://simon-mayer.tumblr.com
“(…) the TiB remains funny. And how! The cutting-edge treatment and ingenuity that make the punchlines jump between text and representation never cease to surprise.” Der Falter
The Theater im Bahnhof (TiB) is the biggest free theatre ensemble in Austria. It considers itself as contemporary popular theatre and examines the beginnings of the Austrian identity between tradition and pop. About 18 artists work continuously on the formulation of an individual, up-to-date concept of theatre beyond the norm. The principle of the popular theatre calls for a subjective and a social approach – since its beginning, self-developed pieces resulting from the observation of the existing conditions have represented this theatre’s main identity. The TiB does not run a fixed theatre venue. So part of TiB’s practice is to stage events at unusual venues and at the margins of the conventional concept of the theatre. For TiB, the theatre production is a daring and collective process that does not compromise anything of itself or its audience. It is this aspect that makes it so special in the first place. The optimisation of the now is not an innovation. Expect the unexpected!
http://theater-im-bahnhof.com
“toxic dreams is a comic name for a group whose works seem to be somewhat smart rather than poisonous. A theatre in which experiment and humour for once are not mutually exclusive.” Der Falter
The label toxic dreams was founded in Vienna in 1997 by the Israeli director Yosi Wanunu and the producer Kornelia Kilga. Since then, the label has developed more than forty productions and has occupied its own aesthetic niché in the city. The connection between old and new styles, between high and low and the equality of all theatrical elements (body, music, media and objects are as important as the text) are characteristic of their works. They work within the scope of severalyear cycles of themes – the current cycle is devoted to the political in the theatre.
toxic dreams consists of a core group continuously working together and regularly invites artists from all artistic disciplines to collaborate with them. Members of the core group are Michael Strohmann (video and music), Irene Coticchio and Anna Mendelssohn (performers). www.toxicdreams.at
Frans Poelstra and Robert Steijn work together under the pseudonym united sorry. The duo wants to introduce semiintellectual, semi-sentimental and rudimentary-conceptual events into the field of art. They are developing performances for stages, museums and galleries as well as rituals in public space. They also create poetic universes of text, dance and music and deal with themes they encounter in everyday life. They see
themselves in the most naive and most childlike way as concept artists. Together they have developed among others the performances Frans Poelstra, his dramaturge and Bach, feminine delight, how low can you go and lost in space. Among their performance actions are Hosting Matt Mullican (Lentos Museum), Holy Shit (3. MANNTOUR), united sorry @ egon schiele (Leopold Museum, Vienna), s-s-s-sink in the work of Beatriz Melhazes (Foundation Cartier). Their most recent works are Propaganda and The Beat Goes On, which premiered in May 2011 at brut.
Since the beginning of 2012, united sorry have been working on a series of interventions in public space, in which under the title GREEN CONVERSATIONS they perform songs, monologues and dances with the trees in Vienna. www.unitedsorry.com
Robert Steijn has worked with Latifa Labiissi, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker and Georg Blaschke. Together with Maria Hassabi he wrote the duet Robert und Maria, which was shown on the occasion of ImPulsTanz 2011. He regularly works with the Theater der Jungen Welt, Leipzig
and the Theater im Bahnhof, Graz.
Frans Poelstra is coach of the Viennese youth theatre compagnie schallundrauch and a dancer in the new performance somatic script by Georg Blaschke. Most recently, he was performer in Oleg Soulimenko’s Made in Austria. Since 1989, the performer and choreographer Mark Tompkins has been among his constant partners.
Film-maker, director, actor and singer/ songwriter Zachary Oberzan is known as a solo performer in his daring filmtheatre hybrids, in which he skillfully mixes autobiographical facts with film quotations – often from action films. As early as the 1980s, together with his brother he re-enacted scenes from Jean-Claude Van Damme films. For Your brother. Remember? Oberzan returned to their childhood home 20 years later to re-enact, shot-for-shot, the original re-enactments. In the live performance drawn from re-enacted material and the original films, the history of the two
brothers who shared the same childhood emerges. Yet this childhood could not have had a more seemingly different outcome: while one of the histories resulted in drug abuse and prison, the other ended on the stage. Together with their childhood idols, the brothers step into the ring one last time for a title shot at redemption. Oberzan is an original member of the New York based Nature Theater of Oklahoma theatre collective,
with whom he collaborated in the creation and performance of Poetics: a ballet brut, No Dice (Obie Award) and the one-man show RAMBO SOLO. Since 2007 he has also been creating his own productions. Oberzan’s film Flooding with Love for The Kid (an adaptation of the novel First Blood, also: Rambo) is a “one-man cinematic war” in which he directed, filmed, edited and performed all 26 parts by himself in his 20-sq.-metre
flat in New York, all for under $100. He is currently working on a new film-theatermusical hybrid, Tell Me Love Is Real. www.zacharyoberzan.com