In this interview, IRC-Fellow Navtej Johar, one of India’s leading dancers and choreographers, talks about his current research project “Naming Anxieties around Sacred/Erotic Dance”. He speaks about his training in Bharatanatyam, his research on Yoga and the history of Indian philosophy explaining how his work reflects questions of nationalism, body images, and the politics of dance in India today. 
In 2009, inspired by Yuan Dynasty dramatist Zhong Sicheng's Lu Gui Bu (Book of Ghosts), IRC-Fellow Danny Yung invited four Asian traditional performing arts masters to experiment dance and theater under the theme of "Ghosts" to reconnect the past with present, while showcasing the beauty of traditions in contemporary theater. Watch this trailer to learn more about the project. 
In this interview, IRC-Fellow Janez Janša, contemporary artist from Slovenia, speaks about his research project "Performing Name" following up his artistic project "I am Janez Janša" that he started in 2007 together with two other artists. He describes possible ways of approaching and reflecting on theater and explains in what way, to him, the social relevance is the most important aspect of an artwork. 
In this interview, IRC-fellow Richard Gough, Artistic Director of the Center for Performance Research (CPR), Professor of Performance Research and editor, speaks about his central working interest and research project, “Devouring Theater: After Taste”, on food in performances and food as performing art. He explains the importance of the concept of “interweaving” for his work and the impact of his fellowship on his research. 
In this interview, IRC-Fellow Nora Amin, a writer, performer, choreographer, theater director and educator from Egypt, discusses her reasons for creating "La Musica Independent Theatre Group." After the short overview of her theater experience, the interview focuses on her switch in interest from a more traditional theater to street theater and theater as a clear form of activism. In this context, she talks about her involvement with the first production of An Enemy of the People in Arabic language and her research project on her experience in producing a play during politically turbulent times. Her research focuses on the intersection between the culture of performance and the culture of protest. 
In this interview, IRC-Fellow Narges Hashempour, Iranian scholar, actress, director, writer, curator and dramaturge, talks about her connection to German theater and her first works as a director in Germany, introducing her comprehensive theater project Unwritten Whisper. She speaks about the role of women artists in Iran and the issues of gender in her own work. Explaining her motivation to expand her artistic work by a more academic dimension, she discusses the themes of her ph.d.-thesis on Iranian theater culture and gender performance. Pointing out the challenges caused by the mixing of her academic and her artistic work and by her cultural background, Narges Hashempour gives a thoughtful and differentiated insight into Iranian culture characterizing it as living "in-betweenness". 
In this interview, IRC-Fellow Cody Poulton, Professor of Japanese literature and theater in the Department of Pacific and Asian Studies at the University of Victoria, Canada, talks about his interests in and current research on drama and theater in Japan. After giving a short overview on the development of his research in the past twenty years, Poulton describes the scope and aims of his current research project in Berlin, which investigates how humanity’s place in the world is conceived of and represented in contemporary theater and performance in Japan. 
In this interview, Shen Lin, the Chinese Professor for Theater Studies, Deputy Head of Research at the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing, Chief Editor of The Drama Journal, writer and translator, is introducing his research project "The Formal and the Political in Modern and Contemporary Chinese Performances.“ Shen Lin speaks about the dominant role of Shakespeare as a global theater figure, as well as – in a very personal manner – about his own project’s connection to the Center’s fields of research. En passent, he gives important insights into his work as a cultural consultant for China’s leading performance organizations. Surprisingly clearly, he finally discusses the question of how "political" theater can be in China... 
In this interview, the dramatist, researcher, and theatre director Femi Osofisan, a fellow at the center since 2012, explains how colonialism shaped his conception of ‘theatre’ during his childhood and how he became aware of the political, ethical, and moral dimensions of performance and theatre while studying in France in the 1970s. Osofisan also shares his rich experience as a political dramatist and theatre director who has been working around the globe for more than 30 years, practicing ‘interweaving’ as an aesthetic strategy for addressing current social and political problems in Nigeria and many other places where he has staged his fascinating work—including the U.S., the U.K., China, and Germany. 
Stephen Barber has published many books on urban cultures in relation to performance, film, photography and digital art; his most recent book (2012) is on the personal archive of the moving-image pioneer Eadweard Muybridge.
The London Times called Barber’s books ‘brilliant, profound and provocative,’ and The Independent described him as a ‘writer of real distinction.’ The short video by Thomas Martius documents the work of Stephen Barber as a Fellow at the International Research Center “Interweaving Performance Cultures.” It provides insight into his extensive primary research into Muybridge’s personal archive. With the work of Eadweard Muybridge, Barber raises questions that reconceptualize the dynamics of corporeal and urban forms. His focus is on the conjunction of performance and film within exterior spaces, the origins of cinema, and its early prefiguring of the digital world. Thomas Martius’s short video is a dense insight into this researcher’s practice as well as an artistic reflection on the contemporary visual culture itself.