Hans-Werner Kroesinger and Regine Dura take their audience on a performance walk along the green border between Austria and Slovenia.
German language
Participation is only possible with a valid passport.
The performance takes place in all weather. Warm, rainproof clothing and good shoes are recommended.
With Ute Baumhackl (AT), Regine Dura (DE), Hans-Werner Kroesinger (DE), Helmut Strobl (AT)
“As soon as they arrive they are: Useful / desirable / harmless / undesirable / harmful / dangerous”, says the information sign at the edge of a circular hiking trail in southern Styria. Despite the fact that these terms refer to immigrated plants, such as hogweed, inadvertently one associates them with people whose arrival in Europe is supposed to be controlled and routed through the established border management system.
In the hilly landscape of southern Styria, the border is difficult to identify both in terms of geography and culture. Even during the existence of the Republic of Yugoslavia there were neither barricades nor fences marking the border, and for decades the wine region has been working on cross-border tourism. Now all that has changed – the aim is to close the border, fence posts are being put up again and plots of land are being divided.
Invited to the 2016 Berliner Theatertreffen festival, the renowned documentary theatre team Hans-Werner Kroesinger and Regine Dura took a look at contemporary history and the potential future scenarios of this border. At several points along the border two actors and an actress tell stories that jump back and forth between international, local and very private perspectives, historical and political ambiguities and between border and garden fences.
“Willkommen in der Europaschutzzone” is a guided walk dealing with political, social and scenic interventions and impressions that raise a series of questions: How are borders manifested and how are they experienced? Where and to what extent do the refugee movements change our relationship with them? And within what borders will we be living in twenty years’ time?
With Andreas Kiendl, Nicola Schössler, Otmar Wagner
Direction Regine Dura, Hans-Werner Kroesinger
Sound Daniel Dorsch
Video and photo Regine Dura
Commissioned by steirischer herbst
Project sponsor Weinhotel Gut Pössnitzberg
steirischer herbst
Dramatury Petra Pölzl
Project Management Barbara Musger, Jakob Schweighofer
Technical Direction Karl Masten
Regine Dura (DE)
Regine Dura works as an author, dramaturge and documentary film director. Dura studied Political Science, Theatre, Film and Media Studies, German Studies and Art Education in Marburg and Frankfurt am Main and Video at the Academy of Arts in Berlin. Since 1996 she has been working as a freelance director and curator and was awarded the Max Ophüls Prize for her documentary “White Blood/Weißes Blut“ in 2012. In 2014 she curated the exhibition “Open Spaces“ accompanying the theatre production “Schlachtfeld Erinnerung 1914/2014“. The show was also held at HAU Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin and the Tarabya Cultural Academy in Istanbul, among other venues. Together with Hans-Werner Kroesinger, Regine Dura has been working as a dramaturge on developing and researching for documentary theatre production since 2000.
Hans-Werner Kroesinger (DE)
Hans-Werner Kroesinger, born in Bonn in 1962, works as a theatre director and author. Kroesinger began working as assistant director and dramaturge for US director Robert Wilson in New York, Milan and Berlin while still studying Drama, Theatre and Media at the Institute of Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen. After graduating, Kroesinger initially worked as artistic assistant to Heiner Müller at Deutsches Theater Berlin before starting to stage his own productions in 1993 based on the tradition of documentary theatre of the 1960s and 1970s and dealing primarily with social, historical and global political topics. Kroesinger received the 2007 Brüder Grimm Prize for his production “Kindertransporte“; “Ruanda Revisited“ was invited to the Impulse Festival in 2009. Kroesinger’s latest performance “Willkommen in der Europaschutzzone“ – in collaboration with Regine Dura – is premièring at steirischer herbst.
