POWERS OF SPEECH
Project on Public Speaking with Premieres from Four Countries
Brussels: November 25 – December 10, 2011
Essen: December 15 – 17, 2011
Johannesburg: November 15 – 20, 2011 / Bogotá: March 27 – 28, 2012 /
Zagreb: April 20 – 22, 2012
In a series of new theatrical works, the POWERS OF SPEECH project highlights public speaking as a driving force. Text and staged material will be developed in Europe, South Africa and Colombia to be presented at the Kaaitheater in Brussels at the “Spoken World” festival in a closely knit program revolving around the power of speech.
Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom „Rhetorical“, Photo: Ruphin Coudyzer
Great speeches make a difference because they make it possible to perceive social challenges differently to how they were perceived before. In every age, country and culture, and in every societal context speeches have been one of the most important driving forces in the political functioning of states and communities.
The themed project POWERS OF SPEECH devotes theatrical research to formal and substantive forces behind speech: forces that can lead a community to war or peace, to ‘good’ or to ‘evil’. Invited by the Siemens Stiftung, together with the Kaaitheater, writers and theatre-makers from three continents will be creating a performance in which they examine their relationship with the speech given and make a space for it in their own political and cultural context. The productions are to be developed in Johannesburg, Bogotá, Brussels, Sheffield and Zagreb in cooperation with cultural institutions in four countries.
Say It Loud © Satch Hoyt, Photo Peter Gabriel
The idea behind the project stems from an interview with Obama’s speech writer Jon Favreau where he explains how he had to compose two versions of a speech for the presidential elections: one for victory and one for defeat. The second version seldom known about served as a model here for the creative process: what events, which may or may not happen in the future, might we have to equip ourselves for in rhetorical terms? What course would history have taken if key speeches had been written differently? The project shifts the imaginative potential of theatre into the limelight in order to sound out afresh the art of speech in the force field of politics, art and society.
All productions will be presented at the „Spoken World“ festival at Brussels’ Kaaitheater for the first time in Europe and will be accompanied there by a closely knit program on public speaking. It will range from resounding names from Afro-American spoken word and speeches without words to speeches written by playwrights and performed live by Belgian ministers. To complement this a new, young committed generation of speech-makers from all areas of Brussels will develop their own version of “I Have a Dream”.
Afterwards the productions will be staged as German premieres at the PACT Zollverein in Essen, made possible by the Ministry for Family, Children, Youth, Culture and Sport of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Cooperating Partners
Siemens Stiftung and Kaaitheater Brussels in collaboration with The Market Theatre Johannesburg, Goethe Institute Johannesburg, Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro de Bogotá, Festival Internacional de Teatro Santiago a Mil, PACT Zollverein and MSU – Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb
Artists
Production Commissions: Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom & Aubrey Sekhabi [ZA], Tim Etchells [GB], Mapa Teatro [CO], Barbara Matijević & Giuseppe Chico [HR/FR]
Spoken World: Amiri Baraka, Eleanor Bauer, Geert Beulens, Nicoline van Harskamp, Satch Hoyt, Saul Williams, Joost Vandercasteele, Kris Verdonck, Dirk Verstockt
