Alliance of International Production Houses

Ten years ago, the directors of the seven largest independent performing arts institutions in Germany decided to institutionalise their exchange and increasingly intensive cooperation practices and formed the Alliance of International Production Houses. The Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media has been funding the alliance since the 2016/17 season. In addition to their already established programmes and practices, the Alliance theatres jointly realise special artistic projects at their respective locations, some of which last several years.

We want to honour the 10th anniversary at several events this year!

The seventh edition of the Claiming Common Spaces festival will kick off with an artistic survey that seeks new (cultural) political answers and formulates artistic echoes of increasingly repressive politics worldwide. [Still] Claiming Common Spaces will take place from 3-5 April 2025 at Kampnagel in Hamburg.

In addition to a top-class discourse programme, the wrestling show ‘Armageddon’ by Choke Hole will satirise the political climate in America, Europe and the world. With ‘Four Walls and a Roof’, Lina Majdalanie and Rabih Mroué bring a multi-layered performance to the stage that deals with contemporary questions of exile and homeland based on Bertolt Brecht’s experiences in 1947 before the ‘Committee for Un-American Activities’. The work, realised in co-production with several Alliance theatres, was premiered at the Festival d’Automne in Paris and will receive its German premiere as part of Claiming Common Spaces.

The festival opens on 3 April 2025 at 5.30 pm with the cultural policy panel Austerity and Art – Strategies for Resilient Cultural Funding with Carsten Brosda (Senator for Culture Hamburg), Annekatrin Klepsch (Mayor for Culture Science Tourism of the state capital Dresden) and Daniel Wesener (former Senator for Finance of the State of Berlin), among others.

The entire festival programme can be found here.

Below you will find a selection of other activities organised by the Partnership Houses as part of the anniversary until summer 2025:

24 April 2025, Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt am Main
Before the Frankfurt premiere of the Alliance-funded production ‘News from Beyond’ by Gob Squad, the Mousonturm invites you to a celebration at 7 pm with speeches, short impulses and special surprise moments. The evening also marks the start of the continuation of the Alliance’s Art & Encounters event series. From 25-27 April 2025, the Mousonturm will present the activities of the Junge Theaterwerkstatt am Zoo as the only model in Germany for an international production house for children and young people with the Denkwerkstatt Aufmachen!

April 2025, tanzhaus nrw, Düsseldorf
The residency project Residency for Digital Dance Creators explores the potential of digital dance practices and is dedicated to an area of dance that has rarely had the necessary resources and framework conditions for artistic development.

9 and 10 May 2025, FFT Düsseldorf
In ‘The Phantom of the Operetta’, the transnational collective La Fleur examines the socio-political context of the late Viennese operetta and its contemporary echoes. Emmerich Kálmán, a Hungarian Jew, was Vienna’s most successful composer before his works were banned by the Nazis and he was forced to emigrate to the USA. Based on his life and work, the performers use performative means to analyse the entertainment genre from a post-colonial perspective.

25-28 June 2025, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin
The machina eX collective has been researching the interface between games and theatre since 2010. They create walk-in (computer) games that are also playable theatre pieces – in both analogue and digital spaces. To mark the group’s 15th anniversary, HAU Hebbel am Ufer is presenting a retrospective with current productions and a new adaptation of the classic ‘15,000 Gray’ from 2011 by pupils from the Fritz-Karsen-Schule in Berlin-Neukölln.

25-28 June 2025, HELLERAU – European Centre for the Arts, Dresden
Due to its geographical location, Dresden is predestined for cross-border exchange with its neighbouring countries Poland and the Czech Republic. The event Im Dreieck springen. Dance Encounters between Poland, the Czech Republic & Germany shows current developments in the dance sector in the two neighbouring countries and invites Polish, Czech, Slovakian, Belarusian and Ukrainian artists to exchange views on their artistic work and production conditions on the topics of solidarity structures.

3-6 July 2025, PACT Zollverein, Essen
The transdisciplinary festival Shifting Grounds is dedicated to new narratives and regenerative social practices in the post-resource extraction era with performances, botanical walks, gatherings, installations and lectures. The expansive slag heap on the grounds of the Zollverein colliery will become a future laboratory, a place for exchange, participation and life stories and a meeting point for urban society.

More to follow!