Goodbye!

Well, that's it. After almost 80 days and 80 nights on our Occident-Express, we feel As If we haven't slept for the last two months (which is partly not that false); we spent Seven wonderful days in Zagreb and are just happy that we didn't end up like the Titanik Orkestra.

Sunday, we had the last performance on the Orientexpress. For the last time, the train entered the harbour of Stuttgart, the lights dimmed, Fatih opened the hydraulic stage, the train whistled and the German ensemble started their performance.

After the show, we had one of these unforgettable parties in the dining car, with Turkish music, Raki and Slivovic. Now, the train's on the way home again; what is left are good memories, a slightly expanded phone bill - and about a hundert hours of filmmaterial. Our documentary film will be ready by the end of this year and broadcastet on the German tv channel "Theaterkanal". For further information about our film, You may subscribe to our newsletter. (And don't worry: we won't spread Your email-adress or sell it to anybody)

So, that's the last blog. For two months we made this blog, with a movie clip every day, which was a very interesting (and pretty exhausting) experience to us filmmakers, as we normally don't work on a daily basis.

Now, we just want to do two things: sleep and say thank You. Dear technicians, actors, crew-members, organizers: Tesekkür ederim, Multumesc, Hvala and Danke to everybody who was on the Orient Express, we will never forget You. See You!

everything has to come to an end..

... the "Orient Theatre Express" also.

Last night we celebrated the last performance of the german ensemble "80 days 80 nights" on the Orient-Theatre-Express". The audience was more than happy and wanted to party the whole night long.

Today we will post last impressions of the final night and the departure of the train. We also want to offer you a possibilitie to register and receive a regular newsletter what is happening with the film. So please come back later and have a look.

For now we have to go one last time to Stuttgart Harbour and say good bye when the train is leaving in direction of Turkey.

Tiger wants to say something...

It's the second last day, and honestly, that feels a bit strange to us. We spent more than two months on the Orient-Theatre-Train which became very familiar to us. As You probably have noticed, we're pretty keen of the two stuffed animals of the German play. Here You will see, probably for the last time, a short interview with Tiger, sitting at the harbour of Stuttgart.

A slow interview

Sometimes we like to ask difficult questions... Sitting on the roof of the Orientexpress, Slovenian actor Primoz Pirnat explains, what theatre means to him.

Postdramatic

Postdramatic, that's how they call this style of theatre, at least, that's what a German dramaturgic advisor told us. In a pretty well-known internet encyclopaedia it's described as: „Postdramatic theatre is not primarily focused on the drama in itself, but evolves a performative aesthetic in which the text of the drama is put in a special relation to the material situation of the performance and the stage. Thus postdramatic theatre is more striving to produce an effect amongst the spectators than to remain true to the text.“

The play „Occident-express“ extends the scope of regular theatre playing: props and make-up are right on the stage itself, while the actors are primarily playing themselves.

The play was sold out, the audience at the harbour of Stuttgart enjoyed it a lot; the applause was long and warm. Luckily, the weather was good as well. The only thing bothering our minds is the forecast for the weekend: they announced hail and very low temperatures. So we hope (as usual) that the forecast might be wrong...

The secrets of the set design

The story of a human being. Not a specific human being, it's the story of human beings in general, the development of a woman and a man, from early childhood to older ages.

The serbian play "Kao Da" ("As If") is probably the most general of the orientexpress festival. The play has no particular setting, the plot could happen wherever; many dialogues are held in a fantasy language which for everybody is as difficult or easy to understand and, last but not least, the topic itself is very general. They tell the story of a woman and a man from early childhood to older ages, they meet, fall in love and split up again, they love and hate each other.
Which setup could be suitable for this play? Vesna, the serbian set designer, constructed a wooden box as a symbol for an uterus...

Performances: 17th and 18th of July, at the harbour of Stuttgart.

"Titanic orchestra"

Waiting and waiting. Waiting for something to happen, for a better life - or at least for a train. A group of clochards on a railway station, that is out of order, somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes a train passes the station, raising the hope of the clochards, but it won't stop. That's how life is going on until one day a magician steps into their life...
That's in short the setting of the Slovenian play "Titanic orchestra" which will be performed on July ...
Today, the stage wagon finally got officially repared, which means that it can travel all the way back to Turkey.

The play will be performed on july 17th at the harbour of Stuttgart.

Occident Express

In two days, the Romanian play "Occident express" will be performed at the harbour of Stuttgart, so we wanted to show You a short extract of the performance in Craiova, Rumania.

The play is about a group of Rumanian actors - the actors actually play actors, which makes the play a bit redundant, but in a very interesting way - who shall play a "typical rumanian" scene: in this case a gipsy wedding. They are simply not in the mood of fulfilling the chliché-based ideas of the french director and they refuse to play the scene till the end. The director leaves the set and the actors start improvising some scenes about their own view of their country. They talk about corruption, the Ceaucescu regime, neocapitalism and unfulfilled dreams and hopes of the Orient-Express, which was one of the only links of the country to the west during the dictatorship.

Performances on thursday 7:30 pm and saturday 9:30 p.m.

Teddy and Tiger's favourite scene

Sunday (July 12) and Monday (July 13), the German play will be performed again at the harbour of Stuttgart, so wanted to show you another extract of the interview with Teddy and Tiger, the two stuffed animals. We asked them about their favourite scene of the play.

the last performance of "Ex-Press"

Nine weeks ago the performance "Ex-Press" of the türkish national theatre Ankara opened the Orient-Theatre-Express and again this ensembles is the 1st one to have its closing night.

A last time we show the turkish ensemble onboard the train entering the fully booked theatre area in Stuttgart Harbor. Once again the stage opens and for sure it is not just for the directors Mustafa und Övül Avkıran but also for their ensemble, the only ones having been on the train for all of the trip, a miracle moment. At the end we see Mustafa and Övül standing up and cheering in tune with the thrilled audience - it`s a bit like saying goodbye to the "Orient Theater Express".

Just two hours later also the ensemble of the Zagreb youth theatre with their play "Seven days in Zagreb" had an emotional last night on the festival.

To be or not to be... an actor.

The crew of the Croation play "Seven days in Zagreb" will spend three days in Stuttgart, performing for a german audience. We met Franjo, one of the actors, and asked him a very basic but important question: Why is he an actor? Here's his answer.

"Political-poetic" storytelling

"Political-poetic", that's how a german journalist described their style. Övül und Mustafa Avkiran, the directors of the turkish play, talk about politics in a very poetic way. They combine music, traditional story telling and acting to an artistic performance, which was a way of avoiding the censorship during the military government of the 1980s.

"Ex-Press" will be performed on Fiday, 10 July, and on Saturday, 11th July, at the harbour of Stuttgart.

Press Conference

Shortly before the start of the Orient-Theatre-Express-Festival in Stuttgart the main organizers meet the media to talk about the project. The Press Conference was attended by: Carsten Strähle (Geschäftsführer Hafen Stuttgart GmbH), Hasko Weber (Intendant Schauspiel Stuttgart / Staatstheater Stuttgart), Jean-Claude Berutti (Präsident der European Theatre Convention (ETC)), K.Lemi Bilgin (Generaldirektor der Türkischen Staatstheater), Torsten Maß (Leiter Allgemeine Projektförderung, Kulturstiftung des Bundes), Christian Holtzhauer (Projektleiter Orient-Express, Schauspiel Stuttgart), Övül & Mustafa Avkiran (Regie Ex-Press)

After the press conference Jean-Claude Berutti talks to us about the ETC and his expreriences with the Orient-Theatre-Express.

From Thursday, July 09, the festival will start at Stuttgart Harbor. Everybody is more than welcome and there are still tickets left.

Wheels are slightly damaged

As we already wrote in this Blog, there are some severe problems with the theatre wagon. Actually, the wheels are slightly damaged - hardly visible to any normal person - but severe enough to loose any right of traveling. At least in Germany. The problem's now that it's not even allowed to pull the wagon 10 km to the reparation center as it lost it's international licence and without the latter, any traveling on official railway tracks is strictly forbidden.
Yes, in this case we are confronted with an interesting side of bureaucracy: You're obliged to undertake a reperation but not allowed to bring the wagon to a reperation center.

In the end, it's not that complicated. Yesterday, two metalworkers of German Railways prepared the wheels provisorically. Now it should be at least permitted to drive short distances at very low speed.

The German Rabbit

Yesterday, the German play had it's first performance in Germany, and everybody was curious about the audience, as the reactions in Turkey were not the most enthusiastic one could imagine. Was it because of the language or is the sense of humour just different in Turkey?
To make it short: the opening was a big success, the audience in Freiburg enjoyed the play very much.
We filmmakers have seen the play over and over again, and still don't get enough of it. Here's our favourite scene: an illegal immigrant at the German boarder.

A new place to play

Yesterday was a great night of performances with no rain at all. No matter what the rain forecast had been looking like.

Today the German ensemble is back on the "Orient-Express-Theatre-Train". It is great to meet up in Freiburg again. The Germans prepare for their 1st performance in Germany and have a look into the new improvised theatre wagon, as the original one is still standing in Stuttgart and waiting to be repaired. The Germans also look forward to perfom "80 days and 80 nights" in the "Depot", one of the venues of Schauspiel Stuttgart, after the festival itself is over.

Rain or no Rain

Seventy, that's the number of the day; 70 percent could be the probability of rain, whatever that means. It's nearly 7 p.m., and there was no rain the whole day, which of course is pretty nice, but still we're a bit suspicious. Will it stay like this for the whole evening? To rain or not to rain, that's the question nobody dares to ask.

It's hot and humid and one could ask himself, whether the risk of rain isn't rising from hour to hour as long as it doesn't rain, just in order to fulfill any statistical rules.

Will we live a Midsummer nights dream, are we waiting for Godot, rain or sun; could this be the Endgame or are we missing Mother Courage?

We simply don't know but hope that meteorolgists might be wrong sometimes and that clouds don't care about any statistics.

Where is all that water coming from?

On the road again! After a one weeks break in Stuttgart, the train traveled to Freiburg - a small town in southern Germany. Well, just to be precise, only half of the train could be moved, as the train technicians reported a "severe problems" on the wheels of the stage wagon. The latter is simply not allowed to travel unless the damage will be repaired.

So, a new stage has to be found; the solution will be to play in the second fraight wagon, which until now has been used for transport purposes only. Furthermore, they will set up an additional stage on the railway station of Freiburg, just to imitate the extended stage surface of the theatre wagon with it's own platform. There is no guarantee, whether everything will work out fine, but as our technicians are really good in what they do, so we're pretty optimistic.

In the meantime another problem occured: the weather. Today there were some really heavy rainfalls over Freiburg, and even if the forecast for tomorrow is not that bad, many people still have some doubts.

In the meantime, the "Orient Express Theatre Festival" is being prepared in Stuttgart. Between the 9th and the 19th of July all theatre groups of the project will meet in Stuttgart and have a couple of performances. We're looking forward to meet all the ensembles once again.

Fast Forward

Today we will show you a film-experiment. As we wanted to offer you impressions of one performance in full length we decided to speed up the show of the Croatian ensemble "7 Days in Zagreb" in a two-minute long film.

If you want to see the performances in full length you can still join the "Orient-Theatre-Train-Festival" on one its shows in Freiburg oder Stuttgart. For more information please visit Staatstheater-Stuttgart

Behind the Stage

What is happening behind the stage?

This is one of the questions many people in the audinece might have on this trip. So we want to give you an exclusive view behind the stage and you can see the actors of the German play "80days 80 nights" getting ready for their performance in Craiova.