About the school
The theatre department at HKB has been renowned for being an innovative school for young actors since its foundation. In 2007 the program was adapted to the demands; the ever-changing theatre world is making on young actors today. It is a challenge to become an actor or actress. Theatre studies at HKB provide the necessary time and space to meet that challenge: to discover the medium of theatre as well as oneself as an actor/actress, to learn the craft of acting, to find one’ s own theatrical language. HKB provides artists with a context in which to question the world and develop their own performance work. Theatre beyond the conventions of theatre. The HKB offers the framework: workspaces, workshops with renowned guest lecturers, and individual tuition by mentors. HKB supports networking with artists and theoreticians, institutions, and other art disciplines. Students are able to independently work on performance projects – as performers or as authors, alone or in a team, in their own discipline or across disciplines.
MANIFESTO
Four students from India, Croatia, Taiwan, and Switzerland present their very personal theater manifesto. An evening on the borders between dance, performance, opera, acting, puppetry, and aviation.
As part of a workshop in the master’s degree program EXPANDED THEATER at the Bern University of the Arts, four students have created their very own personal manifesto. In contrast to Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (Manifesto Du Futurisme), Hugo Ball (Dadaist Manifesto), Yvonne Rainer (No Manifesto), George Maciunas (Fluxus Manifesto), Natasha Vita-More (Extropic Art Manifesto of Transhumanist Arts), Milo Rau (The Ghent Manifesto), and many other predecessors, they did so not with pamphlets published in newspapers, books, and on websites, but in the language of their medium: theater. They danced, performed, narrated, installed, and acted their ideal work of art, directly implementing what they demanded.
MANIFESTO features four completely different approaches to the performing arts and stretches the boundaries of the medium in all directions. From danced painting to sung ritual, and from an intermedial theater journey to an aviation puppet show.
An evening that, in its colorfulness, refutes the fathers of many manifestos (yes – most artists’ manifestos were written by men and sometimes smell strongly of testosterone) who assumed that the history of art is a linear, evolutionary process with a front and a back. In front the avant-garde, in back the die-hards (although the authors of these pamphlets regularly assigned themselves to the first group). These four solos show that theater is not one-dimensional, but rather grows in all directions; it is colorful and diverse. It’s also not two-dimensional: we can’t map it with images or text, and it can’t be streamed. Theater takes place in three dimensions, in the here and now, and on location, and sometimes – if we’re lucky – a fourth dimension is added.
Author: Millie Vikanis , Kuan-Hsuan Lee, Moritz Praxmarer, Tejus Menon
Director: Millie Vikanis , Kuan-Hsuan Lee, Moritz Praxmarer, Tejus Menon
Dramaturgy: Millie Vikanis , Kuan-Hsuan Lee, Moritz Praxmarer, Tejus Menon
Script: Millie Vikanis , Kuan-Hsuan Lee, Moritz Praxmarer, Tejus Menon
Set design: Millie Vikanis , Kuan-Hsuan Lee, Moritz Praxmarer, Tejus Menon
Costume design: Millie Vikanis , Kuan-Hsuan Lee, Moritz Praxmarer, Tejus Menon
Light design: Millie Vikanis , Kuan-Hsuan Lee, Moritz Praxmarer, Tejus Menon
Production: HKB Bern Academy of the Arts
Cast:
Milie Vikanis
Kuan-Hsuan Lee
Moritz Praxmarer
Tejus Menon
