39th International Pantomime Theatre Festival

6.11.23, 7 pm Opening Gala

Get a taste of the festival programme – all in one evening? It’s possible! This year’s grand opening gala reveals the first secrets and announces what will be on stage. In the joint show with the ensembles and artists who have already arrived, we give our audience a first insight into this year’s programme. On this evening, you will experience the Duo Diagonal from Germany, the 044 Mime Company and Anetta Anisimova from Ukraine, the French Mangano Massip and their performance developed with the workshop participants, the Derevo Creative Lab from Germany and the actors of the Mimenstudio.

8.11.24, 7 pm, Mime on the Moon Radim Vizváry (Czech Republic)

About the soul of a truthful man.

It is an escape from a world obsessed with perfection, an attempt to distance yourself, to find a friendly corner that allows you to be yourself for a while and observe the events around you unobserved. And then? To wonder, to laugh, to yearn and to frolic childishly. Here, the moon becomes such a place. A celestial body that is a metaphor for the soul of an outsider with a rich inner world and at the same time a stage for its message about us. ‘In the etudes of the unearthly, we see the guilelessness, purity and beauty, but also the cruelty, ruthlessness and absurdity that make up everyday life.’ Few may accept life as it flows, but how do those who doubt themselves, who long to escape everything in order to find inner freedom in solitude, face it? The solo performance speaks a universal language – an example of contemporary pantomime in which author and performer in one person emphasise sparing design, minimalist gestures and clarity. Visitors can expect a poetic performance at a high level of mime. Radim Vizváry is a mime artist, author, director, choreographer and teacher and one of the most respected figures in contemporary and classical mime in Europe, who has received numerous international awards for his productions. He has been artistic director of the Laterna Magika ensemble since January 2021. At the same time, he runs his own company Mime Prague. His one-man show ‘Solo’ and his children’s play ‘Paperboy’ were part of the programme at the 36th International PantomimeTheatreFestival Dresden in 2021.

9.11.24, 18.00, Kuku, Anatoli Akerman & Christoph Schiele (International)

Old-school clowning – comic tragedy, melancholy humour, absurd reality – an elegy about friendship, love and separation.

KuKu, the inhabitant of a cuckoo clock, and its owner, a restless contemporary travelling from here to there with his clock, are the protagonists of this performance. We meet these two characters in a marvellous togetherness and antagonism in nightwear and jackets. In their search for fulfilment, they stalk and ensnare each other, embrace and outwit each other, drink and knock each other down, give each other presents and steal from each other, dance with and against each other and end up sitting on the same train of recurring everyday life. A play for young and old with a subtle, melancholy humour that makes its audience laugh happily one second and pause in wonderful silence the next. Anatoli Akerman is one of the most subtle clowns in the world. He began his career as a child, learnt artistic skills in circus schools, studied acting in order to be able to work in a variety of ways and develop different characters – and was initially also a sports boxer. When he won first prize at the International Mime Festival in Jaffa in 1990, he made an important life decision and became a clown. From 2003 to 2012, he was engaged by Cirque du Soleil, where he developed his very own comedy characters. His shows travelled the world. Since 2014, he has repeatedly toured Germany and Austria with the renowned Circus Roncalli. In 2024, he was honoured with the Gold Award at the International Festival des Artistes de Cirque in Saint-Paul-Les-Dax. He and his equal friend Christoph Schiele complement each other wonderfully. Christoph Schiele is an artist of Nouveau Cirque, a clown, physical comedian and photographer, lives in Vienna and works internationally in and with various formations. He is the initiator and part of the Compagnie Filou.

24.11.24, 10 pm, News 044 Mime Company (Ukraine) & Peace inside us, Anetta Aleksandra Anisimova (Ukraine)

A double bill and coffee & cake with the artists after the event.

News
News What is true and what is false? A world of news floods and what it does to us.

Fashion, weather, lifestyle, what’s for breakfast, do we make our own decisions or do we just follow advice all the time? Information is a powerful instrument of manipulation. We are confronted with masses of unverified, shocking, foolish or grotesque news, filtered or unfiltered. We are told what is true, false, good and evil and how we should live our lives. The mimes reflect their view of the influence of information on the changes in relationships between different human characters through the variety and abundance of daily news, in a grotesque allegory and in a comedic way. The 044 Mime Company from Kiev/Ukraine consists of three artists: Kateryna Spodoneiko, Pavlo Vyshnevskyi and Oleksandr Symonenko. All three have been living in the Netherlands since 2022. After completing their master’s degree at the Kiev Circus Academy, they have been practising modern pantomime for 10 years. The ensemble has participated in numerous festivals in Ukraine and abroad.

Peace inside us
How to preserve vitality? At a time like this.

Credo: If everyone creates peace on the inside, there will be peace all over the world. Anetta developed this performance through her own story during the war. The main message is that everyone has an inner world that gives them vitality and that everyone is a creator of their own life. But something can radically change life. The story is about the protagonist’s difficult decision to stay at home with her family and loved one or to leave the country after a massive attack in order to save her own life. This decision completely changed her life and left a painful wound in her heart forever. Nevertheless, she shows strength, courage and power to heal her inner world. Anetta is a Ukrainian actress, mime artist, dancer and model who currently lives in Tromsø/Oslo, Norway. She combines mime, dance and gymnastics in her own creative way. She graduated from the Academy of Circus and Performing Arts in Kiev and obtained a Master’s degree with the qualification Mime and Gesture Theatre Artist, was a co-founder and participant of the mime theatre ILINASTROE (2018 – 2021) in Ukraine. Today she is a member of the Norwegian group Rådart and is involved in other projects in the field of physical theatre. The premiere of the play took place in November 2022 at the international pantomime festival HELMIME in Helsinki.

10.11.24, 18:00, Through the Looking Glass, Derevo Lab (Germany/Russia)

An extraordinary premiere with international participants of the Derevo ArtHouse Pantomime Creative Labs

After five days of intensive rehearsals with artists from different countries, Derevo ArtHouse presents a performance that was created during the Creative Mime Lab with Anton Adasinskiy. The performance is based on the ideas of the participating artists, who worked on the material themselves during the project, full of poetry and individuality.
One of the aims of the Creative Lab is the self-realization of the actors through the processing of personal experiences and knowledge gained.
It is not primarily the external things such as masks and costumes, light and music that attract visitors. It is simply about showing what is going on in the artist’s soul. That is the message that the audience will see and feel.
The performance consists of an interactive part in which Anton presents the approach together with the audience using selected exercises. In the second part, the result of five days of work will be shown.
DEREVO has dedicated itself to the “language of the body, the emotions and the soul”. The idiosyncratic expressive dance in their performances is characterized by clowning, pantomime, improvisation, anarchy and chaos. DEREVO was also inspired by Japanese Butoh. Due to the resulting dramatic power, the audience is captivated by the tension between attraction and repulsion. In addition to participating in numerous festivals, DEREVO has worked for many years in Prague, Amsterdam, Florence and, since 1997, in Dresden. DEREVO’s major stage productions have been created in Dresden and have made their way around the world from here.

2 and 3 November 2024, 10 a.m. – 3 p.m. workshop with Mangano Massip (France)

Workshop days – development of scenes, for beginners and advanced students and performance of the developed production on 6 November 2024

Sara Mangano and Pierre-Yves Massip were already guests at our festival in 2022 with two of their own pieces. This year, they are our lecturers for the open workshop, which invites the curious, amateurs and professionals to get to know the medium of mime or to expand their special spectrum of expressive possibilities. Sara and Pierre met in 1994 at Marcel Marceau’s mime school. Since then, they have been exploring the wide world of their imagination together and creatively transforming it into modern physical theatre. ‘We work with the drama of movements that reflect our everyday lives with all their little ups and downs,’ say the two. We are looking forward to seeing the work that emerges from the workshop days in the Project Theatre.

150,- EUR full & 80,- EUR reduced price
 Book the workshop by sending an email to info@mimedresden.de

9.11.24, 10 – 12 Uhr, Workshop mit Anetta Aleksandra Anisimova (Ukraine)

Plasticity improvisation based on the mime corporel technique

During the course, Anetta will teach her students the practice and the way she creates a performance by introducing and practicing basic mimic body techniques.
The main theme is plastic improvisation to a specific task.
Participants will learn simple and complex movements as well as exercises to develop their bodies. They will then explore how to expand their own space by drawing inspiration from various elements from nature, experienced structures and emotions. In this way, individual stories are created using only the expression of each person’s body and face.
Finally, the performers will create a sphere together in which they can feel a connection between their own bodies and the bodies of others.


Book the workshop by sending an email to info@mimedresden.de

6.11. – 10.11.24, Exhibition ‘The European History of Pantomime’

The exhibition was created in collaboration with Nils-Zdeněk Kühn. He was headmaster of the ETAGE Schule für Darstellende Künste, Fine Arts e.V. in Berlin and head of the pantomime and physical theatre department for 37 years. In 2013, he was co-founder of the FEM – Federation of European Mime. He passed away this year. With him, a great veteran of pantomime has passed away. We would like to remember him with you.