Abstand Bitte Festival. PAF.
Artwat Berlin.
Artists
Artists of the Abstand Bitte Performance Series. PAF Berlin 2021
Niall Fallon
Niall Fallon is a theater maker, director and facilitator, specializing in physical collage and ensemble devised work. He is a graduate of Rose Bruford London, University of Kent and LISPA (Arthaus.Berlin). He co-founded the award-winning absurdist physical theater company Bacterial Factory and worked with organizations including White Horse Theater, Company Theater India, Fleabag, and English Theater Berlin. He is also a professional musician / composer and professional taekwondo trainer. His work has been supported by organizations inc Nau Coclea Spain, Destelheide Belgium, Erasmus +, Arragua Center, and IYAF. His work has been performed in Wakefield Th, The Gulbenkian, Marlowe Theater, The Warren, Sweet Venues and Resonance FM. His work has won a Best of Brighton Fringe Award, and his work has toured India in 2019.
Michelle Madsen
Michelle Madsen is a multidisciplinary artist with a background in live poetry, devised theater, activism and journalism. From giant salad tosses and interpretive haiku to compulsive moutaineering, Michelle's work uses the absurd, the unexpected and the subversive to question power and privilege in the structures we live by. She studied English Literature at Oxford University and embodiment, devising and mythology at Arthaus (formerly LISPA) in Berlin where she now teaches.
Michelle has appeared at Glastonbury Festival, at the Royal Albert Hall, on the BBC and has performed on four continents, creating site specific performances in Argentina (Zona Imaginaria), Germany, Greece and Belgium (Maison Follies, Mons). She is the host of experimental art radio show Bears at a Picnic on Resonance FM, is an associate of the Center for Investigative Journalism in London and is a visiting lecturer at Greenwich and City Universities.
She is also co-director of award-winning UK / Berlin-based theater company Bait whose productions Kill The Princess and Cronivision have met with critical acclaim. Her debut poetry collection Alternative Beach Sports is published by Burning Eye Books.
Leigh S.a.yers
Leigh is a queer interdisciplinary artist based in Berlin, whose work is often concerned with revealing the extraordinary in the everyday. Leigh studied at Courtauld Institute of Art, LAMDA & Arthaus Berlin. Their practice is research-led, rooted in a background of devising & ensemble theater, creating from stimulus such as visual media, verbatim histories, & found sounds & objects. Leigh created original Site Specific performances around the world including for California Academy of Sciences & Sydney Justice & Police Museum. They also work as an actor, dramaturg & facilitator in theater, & on script coverage & story consulting for independent filmmakers.
Angharad Matthews
Welsh Artist Angharad Matthews is a versatile freelance performance maker, performer and designer, working within the field of theater, dance, film, and circus. She has worked extensively throughout Wales and Europe with companies including National Theater
Wales, National Dance Company Wales, NoFitState Circus, Gothenburg Opera, Volcano, Frantic Assembly, Company of Sirens and National Youth Theater Wales. Angharad was a founding member of Nurture Creative Dance Theater based at Rubicon Dance, where she began developing her choreographic process with 'The Audition' funded by ACW. Angharad now resides in Berlin where she completed her MA with Arthaus Berlin / Rose Bruford London. And is continuing to develop her ongoing practice, and creative collaborations.
Tommy Gore
Tommy Gore is a performing artist and graduate from The Fourth Monkey Acting School, London. Having lived and worked in Madrid for three years, Tommy trained in dance and acrobatics, and since 2019 has lived in Berlin, creating Theater with professionals. Tommy specializes in physical theater, vocal practice and clown.
Thomas Mayer
Thomas Mayer is a Berlin based performer, theater maker and musician. He trained in Devised Theater and Performance at Arthaus.Berlin. His work takes a multi-media format, combining elements of physical theater, live music and video projection, His work has been performed and supported by CTM Fest Berlin, Arragua Spain, Emergency Fest Manchester, and CHI_CX20. He trained extensively in mime, puppetry and clown. Strongly informed by process art, his approach is embodied, intuitive engagement with mixed media and explores themes around the duality of the human condition, subjectivity, ephemerality and transformation.
Holly Eloise Foy Roberts
Holly is a multidisciplinary Artist who practice plays with and questions structures, theory and education. She uses humour, nostalgia and absurdity to explore mistakes, dreams, interruptions, lack, and how aesthetics inform meaning. Her work is preoccupied with the subjects singular response to language, desire, death and sex. She likes to make work which makes the viewer feel implicit.
Holly works in the mediums of painting, performance, installation, writing and film, lives in London, and her recent work has been exhibited/performed in spaces such as Hundred Years Gallery and the Barbican Centre.
Holly is also training to be a Lacanian Psychoanalyst, and considers her practice to be a form of Sinthome.
Clara Isenmann
Clara works as an actress, performer, dancer, workshop leader and theater- and moviemaker in various projects (eg Volksbühne, Performing Arts Festival Berlin, Theaterspektakel Zürich). She studied Physical Theater at the London International School of Performing Arts / Arthaus Berlin (LISPA, MA) and film and audiovisual media (BA). She is the creator and director of The Bureau for the Transgression of Reality and The Dinner of Decadance and teaches clown and theater at her Wild Theater Laboratory in Berlin and beyond.
Lizzy Shakespeare
Lizzy (she / her) is a clown, drag & cabaret artist, performer, facilitator & playworker. She is co-director of Bait, ( Tales Brighton Fringe 2018, Kill The Princess ***** Edinburgh Fringe 2019, The Office Party for Those Without An Office VFD / Ed Fringe 2018-2020, associate company at Bathway Theater, Uni. of Greenwich) and a founding member of award winning international street theater company Collectif 2222 based in Normandy, France ( Traverser La Riviere Sous La Pluie 2017-Present & Pourquoi Les Vieux Qui N'ont Rien A Faire, Traversent- Ils A Feu Rouge 2019-Present). She is a regular on London's alternative comedy and drag circuits & has performed at The Glory, Dragprov Reveiw, Pinata, Queer House Party. She is a regular MC for The Big Gay Story Slam and co-hosts Bait's cabaret club night The Office Party for Those Without An Office. She works with The Flying Seagull Project taking clowning to vulnerable communities across europe, performing with them regularly on tour and at festivals & works in TIE facilitation back home in the UK. She is a visiting lecturer for the University of Greenwich drama department.
Laura Stefanidis
Laura Stefanidis is a German/Greek Physical Theatre actress and workshop facilitator. In 2016 she studied Physical Theater at the École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris and at LISPA (currently: Arthaus Berlin) in Berlin. As a performer, she finds her inspiration in mask and object theater, in martial arts, dance and circus. Under the direction of Gozde Atalay Kokkoris she began a 1-year formation in clowning that resulted in 7 shows in Avaton Theatre, Athens, (2018/2019). With Familie Flöz , she deepened her knowledge and skills in mask play and mask making in workshops and the Summer Academy,2018. As a dancer, she has worked and trained with choreographers Patricia Carolin May, Maya M. Carroll, Christina Souglioutzi and Athanasia Kannelopoulou. Since 2020 Laura develops the dance theatre solo: ‘Passacaglia in collaboration with choreographer Maya M. Carroll, which will be premiered in winter 2021. She has played and collaborated with the mask theatre company Theater Derweil (Leipzig), with BAIT Theatre(UK), with the pupeteer Evi Arnsbjerg Brygmann (Berlin), to name a few.
Leon Ospald
Born and raised in Würzburg. 2008 A-levels, civilian service in neurology in Marburg. Acting training from 2010 - 2013 at the Hamburg School of Acting. Received stage qualification. 2015 Admission to the Academy for Performing Arts in Ludwigsburg. Transferred to the UdK in 2016 to study scenic writing. Scenic readings at festivals: "Ganz Ohr", Literaturtage Koblenz," "4+1" at the Leipzig Theatre and in Berlin at the Vagantenbühne. Freelance teacher of German as a foreign language since 2015. 2019 artist in residence at Maschinenhaus Essen with the ensemble "Vision Zerstörung". In 2019 he receives the 2nd prize of the Else-Lasker-Schüler-Dramatikerpreis for "Guppysterben".
Lars Preisser
Lars Preisser grew up in Berlin (West) during the time when the Berlin Wall came down. As an adult he lived in Dunedin, Aotearoa/ New Zealand for six years before moving back home. He is working in the intersections of film, weaving and drawing. He often uses specific and combined characteristics of each medium in order to conceptually support the work’s respective content or narrative. In his work, Lars Preisser often reveals a very personal affiliation to his topics, which encompass urban space, architecture, machines, gentrification, the surreal, aviation, family history and others. Lars Preisser holds a Bachelor degree from the Otago Polytechnic School of Art in Aotearoa/ New Zealand and a Master's degree from the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig. He has completed postgraduate programs at The Fabric Workshop & Museum in Philadelphia and Kawashima Textile School in Kyoto and exhibited in various institutions worldwide. He and an old friend run a small neighbourhood café/project space called “Spinner & Weber” in Berlin-Wedding.
Valentina Bordenave
Valentina Bordenave is a freelance dancer, choreographer and Alexander Technique teacher from Argentina, based in Berlin.
Valentina has been creating pieces since an early age individually and collectively with dancers, musicians, actors and visual artists. She understands dance as a poetic and concrete reality that has the power to invoke more dimensions in the alchemical space-time of the present. During her dance studies at the Folkwang University in Essen, she founded the dance collective "Giraffen am Hafen”, and won the first prize at the International Choreography Competition in Cagliari, Italy. In 2016 she founded the international Collective Anderplatz in Berlin with nine other actors and dancers, where she directed and performed. In the last years she dived into the instant composition.
She is part of the core teaching team at ARTHAUS Berlin and at the theatre company FAMILIE FLÖZ. Others pedagogical experiences include the Inter-University Center for Dance Berlin (HZT), the Acting Departements at the University of Arts (UDK) and at Ernst Busch University, both in Berlin. Valentina is the founder of UNFOLD TECHNIQUE.
Photo: Daniel Nartschick
Giulia Palombino
Giulia Palombino is an artist from Italy living in Berlin. Her practice is centered on small-scale drawing and animation. She creates dreamlike and somewhat humorous images characterized by delicate lines, empty spaces, and unusual compositions. She is inspired by the desire to create mysteries rather than solve them. Using a typically associative method —that of combining different moments of her ever-evolving sketch collections— she tries to capture the fleeting visions that come to her mind, before being reabsorbed by the void. Female characters, shown as fragmented but not necessarily sexualized, and mundane objects are a recurring theme in her work.