Maximilian Haas und Joshua Wicke
Maximilian Haas is a dance and performance theorist and dramaturge living in Berlin. He studied Applied Theater Studies at the Justus Liebig University Giessen and received his doctorate with a practice-based dissertation on "Animals on Stage: An Aesthetic Ecology of Performance" at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. His research interests include ecology and the arts, theory and practice of dramaturgy in contemporary dance and theater, aesthetics of performative arts, methodology and epistemology of artistic research, science, animal, and environmental studies, and the philosophy of poststructuralism, new materialism, and pragmatism.
Haas has worked as a dramaturg/curator at theaters such as Volksbühne Berlin, Berliner Festspiele, and HAU Hebbel am Ufer, and collaborated dramaturgically with artists* such as Hannah Hurtzig, Lucie Tuma, Martin Nachbar, and Jeremy Wade. He has taught at numerous (art) universities, and was a member of the DFG Research Training Groups Forms of Life & Knowledge of Life (Doc) and Knowledge in the Arts (Postdoc). With Margarita Tsomou, he curates the ongoing lecture and discussion series Burning Futures: On Ecologies of Existence at HAU. With Sandra Umathum, he most recently finished a study on the promotion of sustainability in the freelance performing arts commissioned by the Fonds Darstellende Künste/BKM. In the course of the research, he took further training to become a sustainability manager for culture and media.
Joshua Wicke studied Philosophie, Economics and Dramaturgy in Berlin and Potsdam. As a dramaturge he has worked at the interface between city theatre and the independent scene in Berlin (including Deutsche Theater, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, and the Sophiensaelen with focus: Lorey, Martin Laberenz, Max Linz, Turbo Pascal). In addition, he co-curated the discussion series «Das ABC der Krise» at the Sprechsaal, and developed the radio play «Funkstille» with the artist and author Anna Zett. Most recently, Joshua Wicke has co-curated the «Palast der Republik», a three-day festival moving between art, discourse and para-parliament; addressing a critical revision of the events during the time of the reunification and its aftermath. At the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne and the Freie Universität Berlin, he has taught seminars on the theory and practice of dramaturgy and the «art of the destruction of money».
Together with Sandra Umathum and Björn Pätz, he is organizing a platform for emerging performance artists called «Dirty Debut». Currently, he is increasingly interested in the ecologies of theatre.
Joshua Wicke has been working as a dramaturge at the Schauspielhaus since the 2019/2020 season.
"Lockdown Theatre" is a collection of theoretical thought experiments on the current condition. Introduced by Maximilian Haas und Joshua Wicke
The theatres are empty. Nobody is on the stage, performing for no one in the audience. The box office is unstaffed, the foyer is deserted, and possibly illuminated only by energy-saving emergency lighting. Maybe now and then a mouse scurries across the stage or a moth gnaws at the curtain - also here, in the theatre, as everywhere else, everything is different at the time of the lockdown. Here, as everywhere else, the void could be a resonating body to let the busy day-to-day production activities echo and leave room for quiet transformations which become noticeable in the unexpected silence.
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