banden­theater

bandentheater is an association of theater, film and circus professionals who share an interest in using performative art to question existing conditions, intervene in them and go against the grain of history. The group is convinced that a play can tell more than a linear story. In their productions, they explore new approaches to storytelling in the theater and address various social and political issues.

Friederike Bérat was born in 1971 in West Berlin. She has been a freelance artist, director, performer and curator since 2003. In her work, she always combines artistic, biographical and social confrontations. Her latest documentary film explores the role of women in the Northern Ireland conflict and won an award for best film editing at the Diagonale.

Anja Gessenhardt, born in Erfurt in 1974, is an artist, actress, musician, circus educator and theater scholar. Her work focuses on physical theater and contemporary circus. She deals with socio-political issues, gender, East-West, body and age. She works solo and in various ensembles. In 2021-2023 she taught at ETAGE, Schule der darstellenden Künste and at Seneca Intensiv, Centrum für künstlerische Bewegung in Berlin.

Anika Lachnitt, born 1984 in Hamburg, grew up in Leipzig, is a director, theater scholar and theater educator. In her collaborative works, she devotes herself in particular to narrative-aesthetic negotiations of social reality and the creation of counter-stories. She experiments with genre boundaries and oscillates between documentary and fiction, with biographies and journalistic research as well as methods of devising theater and performance art forming the basis of her projects. She studied “Staging the arts and media with a focus on theater” at the University of Hildesheim, among others.

Dag Lohde, born in Greifswald in 1979, works as a dramaturge and cultural manager. His work is concerned with the artistic articulation of experiences of marginalization as well as emancipatory demands. Dag studied Modern German Literature and Philosophy at the FU Berlin. He works with independent theater groups, among others.