Zürcher Theater Spektakel: a festival that confronts and includes

Landiweise and other venues, Zurich
August 15-September 1, 2024

Upon entering the lakeside, park-like main festival grounds of the Zürcher Theater Spektakel at the Landiwiese this year, one of the first sights that visitors came upon was a house made of bales of densely packed used, discarded clothes donated by the global north to the global south. Inside the installation, titled Return to Sender, created by Nairobi-based Nest Collective, a documentary illustrated that up to forty percent of the clothes we donate to the global south are unusable, and that we thereby export the burden of disposal to these countries. What’s more, the sixty percent of donated clothes that are reusable prevent local textile industries from developing. Our good deed is their misfortune.

The urgency of the installation’s message, confronting visitors with a complex global injustice in which they are no doubt complicit, was echoed by innumerable other works I encountered over the course of my six days at Theater Spektakel.

A celebration of contemporary performing arts, the festival’s main program showcased the perspectives of more than 240 artists and thinkers from about 30 countries, many of whom put concrete inequities near and far centre stage in their theatre and dance work.

In Dies ist keine Botschaft (Made in Taiwan) (This is not an Embassy), the Berlin-based documentary theatre group Rimini Protokoll confronted, educated and entertained audiences as they established a Taiwanese embassy in the safe space of the theatre, with the audience as accomplices. The cast of three, a former Taiwanese diplomat, an activist and a musician, shared personal stories and conflicting perspectives on Taiwan’s past, present and future, letting all points of view resonate across stage. In so doing, they also directly challenged the Swiss audience to ponder their own complicity in Taiwan’s oppression through their (neutral) refusal to recognize it as a sovereign entity.

Dies ist keine Botschaft, and many other works at the festival, integrated documentary techniques, leaving audiences uncertain at times as to what was real and what was not, thereby blurring the line between fact and fiction. Were those true, personal anecdotes or composite stories based on fact? Not that it truly mattered, as, in all instances, the experiences and situations relayed were all too real.

Similarly, in Song for Wartime, by Polish director Marta Górnicka, audiences encountered Ukrainian and Belarusian women singing of personal wartime experiences beyond the frontlines. And, in the documentary musical Los días afueras (The days out there), by Argentinian writer and director Lola Arias, viewers experience via former inmates what it means to live in a women’s prison on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.

Most of the works I saw also blurred the boundaries of clear-cut categorisation, emerging out of innumerable artistic genres and styles to present as something entirely new. In Hatched Ensemble, for example, South African dance artist Mamela Nyamza cracked the constraints of Western classical ballet and other imposed, Western movement styles, by integrating incantatory opera, traditional dance, percussive sound, storytelling, and more into a haunting, liberating visual poem. Other works included everything from aerial acrobatics to silent theatre, from contemporary-krump street dance battle to performative therapy session, from multi-media projection to museum tour.

In addition to the main program, innumerable performance sites were freely accessible across Landiwiese’s 400 meters of lakefront grounds, with the price of a ticket whatever you put in a hat. On the days I was there, with temperatures soaring above 30°C, the site resembled a mix of street market, carnival, and county fair with families, theatre aficionados, groups of friends and sunbathers mingling among musicians, storytellers, balloon artists and food vendors.

Frequently, at one end of the grounds, street performers vied for audience attention, while, at the open-air central ‘Zentral’ stages, shows ranged from circus acts to tragicomic puppet play to poetry reading to diversity-themed game show. At the same time, ticketed shows took place at temporary main stages such as Seebühne, half open and with views of the Alps; the barn-like Nord and Süd; Werft, a shipyard hall; Rote Fabrik, a former factory; and at collaborating theatres and museums throughout Zurich.

I attended a handful of ticketed performances and free, non-ticketed shows, participated in various audience-engagement events, listened to lectures, and explored performance venues throughout the city. Overall, what stood out, was the breadth of the programme. The mere presence of such disparate works communicated a point of view on the performing arts that advocates an inclusive understanding of what they are and who they are for. Indeed, being accessible to a wide range of people was a main concern of the festival programmers this year, as was explicitly noted in a one-page program spread on efforts to be ‘A Festival for Everyone.’

Beyond breadth of programming, one way Theater Spektakel aimed for this was through complementary events that gave visitors opportunities to engage with works, artists and issues in ways beyond passive consumption. Public warm-ups, such as a 30-minute krump workshop before that evening’s performance, gave spectators an embodied experience of certain works. A weekend-long dance workshop for children gave them an experience of dance making.

Nightly 9pm ‘Stammtisch,’ sessions invited festival goers to share perspectives on questions that arose related to artists’ works. At each of these, over drinks at a long table, different hosts including artists, activists and socially-engaged people, offered their view on the issue in focus as a starting point for an unmoderated discussion. One session focused on Switzerland’s obligation towards artists at risk; another dealt with restitution of stolen artworks; another, hosted by the local Jewish and Muslim organization, Gemeinsam Einsam (together alone), focused on ways of sharing, listening, and being open to individuals whose viewpoints and experiences are contrary to one’s own; a focus that in many ways was emblematic of the festival’s overall aims since its inception.

“Bringing people with different backgrounds and perspectives to Zurich has been a fundamental commitment of the Zürcher Theater Spektakel since 1980,” the festival directors state in a program editorial. “The international encounter with contemporary art requires openness to other points of view and the courage to examine one’s own.”

Many festival goers may have gravitated towards artistic styles and current issues that they already cared about, rather than seeking out new perspectives. Sometimes, a few audience members walked out on what the were seeing, perhaps thereby not fully examining their own views. But it’s also true that, for juts over two weeks, a wide array of backgrounds, perspectives, experiences, and agendas mingled throughout the festival sites, creating opportunities for new encounters, ways of engaging, and possibly questioning one’s point of view.

One striking example of this happening outside curated formats was during a tour of the exhibition, In Dialogue with Benin: Art, Colonialism, and Restitution, at the Museum Rietberg. The tour was to be followed by the Cameroonian artist Zora Snake’s performance of L’Opéra du Villageois, which condemns European museums for housing stolen African artifacts. While the museum exhibition had been a joint effort, developed by it and partners from Nigeria, and while it also included works of contemporary African artists, our initial tour guides were European and white.

Halfway through the tour, one, then two, then several more audience members questioned this choice. The organiser paused the planned programming for long enough for a debate to at least start between audience and exhibition collaborators. No consensus was reached, but perspectives were allowed to be voiced and heard, before the regular programming continued and Snake’s performance denounced the practices of establishments like the very one we were standing in and summoned to life the spirits of stolen artworks.

For more about Zürcher Theater Spektakel and what was on, click here.