“Art as experience, theater as reality.” With these words, composer, theater maker and professor of applied theater studies Heiner Goebbels announces the program of the Ruhrtriennale from 2012-2014. Goebbels and his dramaturgy team focus strongly on music and music theater, show a lot of visual art, include museums as venues and give more space to performance.

The 2012 opening is a commitment: radical polyphony and the discipline of chance: Heiner Goebbels’ first directorial work brings John Cage’s almost never performed operas Europeras 1&2 to the Jahrhunderthalle Bochum. Boredoms on the Haniel slag heap = noise. Power. Performance. Folk. by Romeo Castellucci stages the drama of community and the drama of being alone as a baptismal act in a pool in the Gebläsehalle in Duisburg.

The beautiful memory of Soapéra by Mathilde Monnier brings the words “foam” and “time” to mind. Beyond that, it is difficult to describe what happened: theater as an experience. Life and Times 2 by New York’s Nature Theatre Of Oklahoma is theater as a series – episode 2 of 10 is showing at PACT Zollverein in Essen. The 12 Rooms live art parcours attracts a large audience to the Museum Folkwang. The intimacy of the spaces, the radicalism of the presentation, the power of the performers and also the humor of the international artists leave a lasting impression.

Source: RUHRTRIENNALE