, March 9, 2016
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". read more
, February 2, 2016
"The main loss in this situation is a loss of human communication and of identity. A loss of human behavior."

Nora Amin, current IRC-Fellow, states this about the rapes that took place on Tahrir Square five years ago. The following essay relentlessly describes those attacks on women and the Egyptian state - a political statement on the sexism and racism as "two sides of the same coin". read more

, January 20, 2016
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. read more
, January 12, 2016
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... read more
, December 17, 2015
As of October 2015, the Research Center hosts four visiting doctoral candidates from India: Dwaipayan Chowdhury, Ankush Gupta, Anirban Kumar (all three from New Delhi) and Supriya Shukla (Hyderabad), all of whom will stay in Berlin for twelve months. The new initiative was launched in close collaboration with their home universities, the School of Arts [...] read more
, July 8, 2015
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. read more
, June 2, 2015
Stephen Barber 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. read more
, April 23, 2015
Nanako Nakajima In this interview, the dramaturge and dance scholar Nanako Nakajima, a fellow at the center since 2013, discusses her research project on the aging body in dance. The project developed out of her experiences of training and teaching traditional dance in Japan for more the 20 years as well as out of her work as a dramaturge for independent dance productions in the U.S. Describing the ways in which age is performed and perceived differently in dance communities in Japan, in the U.S., and in Europe, Nakajima emphasizes that during the creative production process of dance pieces, interweaving practices can open up various perspectives and thus prevent offending stereotypical representations of ‘other’ cultures in performance. read more
, April 10, 2015
Azadeh Sharifi In this interview, the theatre scholar Azadeh Sharifi, a fellow at the center since 2014, speaks about her research project on ‘post-migrant theatre’ in Western European countries. Explaining that her research is influenced by her personal experiences as a refugee in Germany, Sharifi describes how her interest in the effects of migration on contemporary European theatre developed—effects that must be considered as formative but are, in fact, very often ignored, marginalized, or misrepresented. Strongly emphasizing the need to investigate and highlight this formative role of migration for the aesthetics of contemporary Western European theatre, Sharifi strives to critically rethink the potentials of the term ‘post-migrant theatre’. read more
, March 2, 2015
“A Future Archeology.” Photo: © Thomas Martius The socio-political changes in Northern Africa and the Middle East since 2011 have resonated with an ongoing and wide-spread perception of crisis in Europe, begging the questions: What kind of society do we want to live in? What kind of conditions are necessary for this society to emerge? In 2013, twelve Egyptian and European artists, architects, and cultural workers from the fields of choreography, architecture, and theater addressed these questions in and for Berlin, Vienna, and Cairo. They worked to build spaces that might respond to the needs and questions of the local, cultural, and social contexts in which they were involved. read more