For more than twenty-five years Impulse has been the platform for independently produced theater in the German-speaking world.

For the last edition under artistic direction of Florian Malzacher „independent“ for Impulse not only means that the works are produced outside the state theater system. It most notably means that they regard their independence as founded in the artistic possibilities. The works test theater as medium, expand it, question and strain it. They understand art as the space, where to repeatedly start from zero, where to confront the challenge to enact structures, hierarchies, roles, processes, and collaborations as continuation of the topical gesture of one’s work. Independence as freedom of form and content.

This is how independently produced theater sends impulses as to what theater can look like once it is not confined to specific spaces of staging and thinking. It sends impulses to not readily accept boundaries between genres as they are defined by application, market and marketing logics. It sends impulses to also claim the theatrical in visual arts, music, literature, film, theory, and politics as theater. It sends impulses to think theater as an art form differently.

Impulse Theater Festival accordingly regards itself as an interdisciplinary platform for a theater that withstands a doctrine of understanding ruled by the logic of ascriptions and one looking for moments of transgression.

In 2017 Impulse again will present the ten most remarkable independently produced theater pieces from the German-speaking world in Cologne, Mülheim/Ruhr and Düsseldorf.

We invite theater makers and other artists whose lives’ center in Austria, Germany or Switzerland to submit productions and projects to be presented during the festival in Köln, Mülheim/Ruhr or Düsseldorf from 22 June to 1 July 2017: a theater piece, a choreography, a performative installation, a collective performance, a musical sculpture, a public intervention…

This open call complements our ongoing research and screening and allows for a direct insight to current developments of independently produced theater offside the beaten paths. The review and discussion of submitted proposals will be conducted with support of our interdisciplinary advisory board until march 2017.

We are looking forward to surprising, provocative and consistent submittals and positions.

 
All the information regarding rules etc. can be found online at www.festivalimpulse.de