Top-class and international

This year is different. This year you will see hardly any projects onstage during the Theater Spektakel, but will get to experience a lot of other formats: Interventions in public spaces, collective listenings on the Landiwiese, a moving interactive installation in the city, an audio boat tour on the lake, a durational opera, utopias on the island, simulations, a mini-series drawn into the net, distance DJ sets and productions whose genre designations have yet to be invented. The festival will not only take place on the left lakeside but also in different urban districts and spheres of present time.

The selection of artists remains top-class and above all - despite all - international. It includes stars such as choreographer William Forsythe, visual artist Shilpa Gupta or the band Mashrou’ Leila and artists who present their works for the first time at the festival, such as performer and musician Nashilongweshipwe Mushaandja, currently researching in Cape Town, or the Nigerian-American poet and performer Jaamil Olawale Kosoko. It also includes theatre makers such as ZKB Prize winners Samara Hersch (2019) and Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol (2011) and artists from various disciplines who have joined forces to realise works between music theatre and installation: Dorine Mokha & Elia Rediger and Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė & Lina Lapelytė. Furthermore it features the Dutch-Swiss winner of the Swiss Grand Prix Theatre Yan Duyvendak and Zurich cultural and literary scholar Elisabeth Bronfen.

Those are some of the artists in the programme of this year’s Zürcher Theater Spektakel. They come from all continents, but a lot of them will not be coming to Switzerland this year. With tenacity and ingenuity, we have managed to find ways for them to be present in Zurich nonetheless. We«reconstruct» some works for you with sketches of the artists in one hand and the telephone in the other. Other projects have been transformed into a new medium in the course of the past weeks. The realisation of some of the productions have been made possible due to cooperations between local artists and their distant colleagues. And some projects simply take place - just as if nothing happened, or as if they had been specifically conceived for times of global pandemic.

We are looking forward to surprising encounters with international art - and with you.

The festival direction

PS: Many of the projects of the festival are free of charge. However, due to the current Corona measures, it is often necessary to register and, in some cases, to buy a ticket. The advance ticket sales start on August 5.

26.06.2020