A postmonetarian double conférence
by Nele Stuhler & Falk Rößler (FUX)
WORLD PREMIERE

Directed by Nele Stuhler & Falk Rößler (FUX)
Music & Dramaturgy Jacob Suske

Premiere: 11th of March 2017
 
Our current social and economical situation is more and more often compared with the interwar period. An era of crises, upheavals, utopias and: of theatre. In the Red Vienna of the 1920ies the so called double conférence, imported from Budapest, turned out to be a crowd puller. Trivia, stories of everyday life and world affairs were dealt with in quick speech and replies, always with a clear distribution of roles: one was always smart, the other the stupid, sometimes complemented by someone who teases. Besides from several items on the programme like piano improvisation, fast drawing and operetta hits, these double conférences were embedded in the revues of Cabaret Simpl. At the same time theatre visionary Erwin Piscator worked on a version of political revue in Berlin and developed a multimedia and technical high performance spectacle that shaped the German theatre landscape for a long time. Confidently he tried to make his bourgeois audience open up to socialist utopias according to the motto „barrage against the audience’s passivity“. Simultaneously he provided access to the bourgeois education for the Berlin working class, true to the „Volksbühne“ spririt. Theatre understood itself as nucleus of social progress.
 
In consideration of the state of our current capitalistic system we are once again confronted with the question how we will proceed, socially as well as economically. Lately the focus of the discourse has been on alternative concepts „Sharing Economy“ and „unconditional basic income“. „Sharing Economy“ has been imbibed by the market before the term had even arrived in mainstream thinking. Even private help like overnight stay or a lift immediately become a business model. Whereas an unsucceesful going to the polls put a damper on the project „unconditional basic income“ and now one has to wait and see how the attempts in Finland will develop. But at least both models have achieved one thing: Capitalism in its current form does not seem to be without any alternative. And only a few doubt that the next big system crisis of world economy is imminent.
 
So it is worth thinking about new society ideas and therefore the Berlin performance group FUX is dealing with one of the most recent and most radical concepts in their first production in Austria: the moneyless economy. Surely there have always been moneyless, need-oriented relations, starting with breast milk. But recently more and more production and service models have been emerging that voluntarily renounce the principle of service and return service. Phenomena like free software development, open source projects from Firefox to Wikipedia or the fast growing importance of the volunteer sector to name but a few. Based on the possibility of more and more complex digital data capture, one could develop new complex value storage systems that could make a modern life under completely circumstances imaginable…
 
FUX confronts this utopia with revue, a half forgotten theatre form, and the bourgeois show with proletarian spectacle. A double conférence between past and future, between social utopia and dystopia and between the old theatre métropoles Vienna and Berlin.
 
In 2011 Falk Rößler and Nele Stuhler together with Stephan Dorn founded the group FUX who is looking for new theatrical forms with the help of already existing theatrical formats. FUX was nominated as best upcoming artists by Theater heute for their first productions in Gießen and at Münchner Kammerspiele in 2014. In their second order observations they create performative spaces with a great joy of playing and experimenting. They are interweaving elements from performance, music, drama, minor arts and choreography and turn them into complex as well as entertaining theatre bastards.
 
Falk Rößler (*1983) finished his degree of European media science at the University Potsdam and at the same time realised his first productions as director in Germany and Norway. Subsequently he studied Applied Theatre science in Gießen. In addition he is also working as composer, director, performer and publicist.
 
Nele Stuhler (*1989) studied Applied Theatre Science in Gießen, directing in Zurich and from 2014-2016 she participated at „Forum Text“ by uniT Graz. Besides she is founding member of the group „Leien des Alltags“ whose projects were invited to Körber Studio Junge Regie 2015 and Fast Forward Festival Braunschweig et al. In 2016 she received the audience award and was elected second by the jury of  Förderpreis für Junge Dramatik of the city of Munich.