40th International Pantomime Theatre Festival

Nov. 12, 7pm
Opening Gala

A warm welcome to the anniversary festival! Once again, we look forward to unforgettable days this year with artists from Italy, Israel, Czechia, Spain, and France.
The gala presents an insight into the spectrum of this year’s festival program with the ensembles that have already arrived.
On this evening, you will experience the DAVAI group from Tel Aviv, the Mangano-Massip group, Carlos Aller and Cecilia Bartolino from Berlin, the host actors from the Mimenstudio Dresden, and the participants of the weekend workshop, who will present the results of their work.
Performance duration: approx. 70 minutes, without intermission
Recommended age: 10 +

Nov. 13, 7pm
Under Construction, Davai (Tel Aviv, Israel)

Three eccentrics drinking tea. It doesn’t get any more bizarre than this! Humor and poetry at its finest.

Under Construction combines humor, poetry, and physical comedy at its finest. Where are we? Where do we come from? Forget it! But one thing is certain: it’s time for a cup of tea. Based on the Chinese proverb “The whole world fits into a teapot,” we experience a brilliant physical comedy that draws us into a poetic world full of illusions and absurd humor.
Three gentlemen share a dilapidated, bizarrely overcrowded apartment. Light bulbs burn out, pipes burst, mosquitoes bite, brains are blocked, and the outside world sends threatening signals. But no matter what happens, these gentlemen want to drink tea—and they will get it, even if the whole world falls into the abyss.
Beyond the clownish and grotesque, the physical virtuosity and laughter, the show offers surprising insights into our world and how we deal with it.
DAVAI is a theater group from Tel Aviv founded by artists Fyodor Makarov, Losha Gavrielov, and Vitaly Azarin. The group believes in visual theater that is simple enough to reach a large audience and sophisticated enough to touch experts. Clowning, music, and circus merge in their shows to create stories that make the joy of theater palpable.

Performance duration: approx. 80 minutes, without intermission
Recommended age: 10+

Nov 14, 7pm
Light in the Darkness, Tantehorse (Czech Republic)

Expressive poetic show based on Dante, De Sade, Bach, and Dalí

The main impulse for the two-person play Light in the Darkness was to create a sophisticated, compositional unity that reflects the diversity of pantomime theater in its many forms. The play offers an exceptionally theatrical and expressive portrayal of a relationship with images of death, love, and hell, guided by precise physical expression, using contemporary pantomime and dance techniques as well as objects, puppets, and masks.
The creators were inspired by Dante’s Inferno, excerpts from the Marquis de Sade, and the spiritual overtones of Bach’s The Art of Fugue.
The poetics of the entire work range from surrealism and decadence to elements of rococo and mannerism to scenes reminiscent of the early paintings of Salvador Dalí, Giorgio De Chirico, or the films of Jan Švankmajer, Ingmar Bergman, and Peter Greenaway. Light in the Darkness is the extraordinary work of two renowned artists, choreographers, directors, and performers: Miřenka Čechová and Radim Vizváry.
Participants:
• Authors and performers: Miřenka Čechová, Radim Vizváry
• Direction & dramaturgy: Petr Boháč
• Music: Matouš Hekela
• Set design & costumes: Lucia Škandíková, Petra Vlachynská
• Lighting design: Martin Špetlík, Jiří Šmirk
About the artists:
Miřenka Čechová is a Czech dance and physical theater performer, director, author, and teacher. She is the co-founder of the theater group Tantehorse (together with Czech mime Radim Vizváry) and the art group Spitfire Company (together with Petr Boháč). She began her career as a classical ballet dancer at the Dance Conservatory in Prague. After completing degrees in theater and nonverbal theater, she earned her doctorate in physical theater at the Music Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, where she has been a professor of authorial theater since 2012.
Radim Vizváry is a mime artist, author, director, choreographer, and one of the most respected figures in contemporary and classical movement theater in Europe, having received numerous international awards. Since January 2021, he has been the artistic director of the Laterna Magika ensemble.

Performance duration: 60 minutes, no intermission
Recommended age: 15+

Nov 15, 6pm, Rémanence, Mangano-Massip (France)

A journey through the myths and symbols of our civilization—what remains?

Leaving a trace, tangible or invisible, fleeting or indelible, that is the meaning of our life’s journey and our civilization.
Concrete poetry in three scenes. Two women and two men, three suspended moments in time, figures who are all too often seen in the background. The one who doubts shortly before the birth of humanity. The woman who continues to obsessively pursue her lover beyond death. The one who tries to weave the fabric of a life between memory and forgetting. Objects, materials, and bodies unite in a symbolic fresco. Grass, concrete, plaster, water, thread, clay, fabrics—the company stages a work of matter on stage and experiences the effects of time in a very concrete way. Accumulation, limbo, erosion, burial, and collapse are physical and poetic metaphors for the power of what remains: remnant.
The choreographic language is based on the idea of doppelgangers and shadows. The characters split up to represent different timelines of the same life, the imprint of the past on the time in which we live: the present.
The performers play with the presence of the other within ourselves, like a shadow projected onto our actions.
Mangano-Massip was founded by Sara Mangano and Pierre-Yves Massip. They met in 1994 at Marcel Marceau’s mime school.
Performance duration: 90 minutes, with intermission
Recommended age: 10+

Guests at the event are cordially invited to attend the anniversary celebration at Rudi’s afterwards.

Nov 16, 11am, Paperboy (kids show), Radim Vizváry (Czech Republic)

A fantastic nonverbal fairy tale, conjured up from paper, on a minimalist stage set, working above all

Following repeated requests and very positive feedback in 2021, we are inviting Radim back to Dresden with his children’s play.
Radim Vizary needs nothing more than a large roll of paper to unfold a world full of imagination, play, and adventure on stage. The mischievous narrator initially plays with the harmless paper, but is soon engulfed by the supple material himself. On his journey through the secrets of the paper world, he is accompanied by the shy boy Paperboy, with whom he discovers that this world is also full of dangers and excitement.
This non-verbal fairy tale on a minimalist stage set works largely with the imagination of the audience. The hands of experienced puppeteer and mime artist Radim Vizváry are capable of conjuring up fantastic fairy tale scenes out of paper. He also invites children from the audience to join him on stage and act out situations.
Performance duration: 50 minutes, without intermission
Recommended age: 4+

Nov 16, 6 pm, Saudade de Ti and Nothing Happens, Carlos Aller & Cecilia Bartolino (Berlin)

Experience modern physical theater and dance theater

Saudade de ti
Saudade de Ti revolves around a feeling that is difficult to grasp yet universal: saudade—the bittersweet longing for the past. It is the desire to return once more to places, people, experiences—or to a former self—and to live the life we once had. This feeling is often associated with the “decline of old age,” but it can occur at any stage of life.
In their performance, Carlos Aller and Cecilia Bartolino immerse themselves in nostalgia, not to dwell on it, but to seek a path to healing. Using contemporary dance inspired by theater, partnering, contact improvisation, and elements of breakdance and hip-hop, they create an intense, physical dialogue with the audience – an exchange that touches us and leads us into our own memories.

Performance duration: 35 minutes, followed by an intermission

Nothing happens
Nothing Happens reveals the fractures and contradictions of our modern lives. With absurdity and irony, the artists introduce us to global problems that are often hidden behind the façade of the familiar. Inspired by works such as Schrödinger’s Cat and Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus, the piece reveals the unresolved paradoxes of our time.
The performers switch between fractured identities trapped in endless, surreal loops, reflecting a world that eludes truth. Hidden realities, silent wounds, shifting roles, and the pressing reality of global warming reveal a culture that obscures itself to avoid consequences.
Through their physical expression, the artists capture the conflict of our time. Voices of artificial intelligence echo like distant echoes through this space between self and reflection. And the piece asks: Are we ready to break the silence and face the pressing truths of our time?

Performance duration: 30 minutes
Recommended age: 10+