SPRING WORKSHOPS 2015 IN NEW YORK, LOS ANGELES AND PORTLAND (OR)

NEW PRODUCTION: Transit, directed by Paul Binnerts, produced and performed by Theater Willy Praml in co-production with Wu Wei Theater, in the Naxos Halle, Frankfurt a.M. Première: August 28, 2015.

NEW PLAY, Transit, based on the novel by Anna Seghers is about (mainly) German refugees, who desperately seek to escape Europe from the last open harbor of Marseille. Their life depends on entrance visa to the USA or Mexico, on transit visa to cross countries like Spain and Portugal to get there, to exit visa from France, and with numerous other rubber stamped papers that allow them to leave. Their very lives are ‘in transit’ and hang in the balance.

Willy Praml is the initiator and director of the ‘free’ theater group that bears his name, and was one of the participants of a Brecht ‘Lehrstück’ experiment in 1974-1976, directed by Paul Binnerts: The Exception and the Rule, performed as clowns in a small one ring circus.

Theater Willy Praml is residing in an old ‘industrial cathedral,’ the Naxos Halle in the Ostend, the former Jewish Quarter of Frankfurt. www.theater-willypraml.de

Wu Wei Theater was founded by Angelika Sieburg and Andreas Wellano, two members of Schlicksupp teatertrupp, one of the first professional so-called ‘free’ theater groups in Germany. Paul Binnerts was the director of this collective. ‘Free’, or independent, theater came about in the slipstream of the revolt of the sixties. ‘Free’ means that theater groups were and are not part of the established cultural system, and therefore not regularly subsidized, as city theaters and regional theaters are. www.wuweitheater.de

TEACHING: ATKA (Amsterdam Theaterschool): a three week acting workshop, together with Nancy Gabor: August 31-September 18, 2015.