Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz Prize for Drama awarded
The prize
Since its inception in 1997, the drama competition for the Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz Prize of the City of Jena has been reinvented with each new edition. In this way, the prize has been able to adapt to the current requirements of the modern, changing theater landscape. This approach, which was not intended from the outset, has proven to be very productive, as the prize has built up a very respectable reputation in the theater scene over the years. Nevertheless, for a long time there was criticism, particularly from the inner-city political sphere, that the impact on Jena itself was not yet great enough. Similar to the Botho Graef Art Prize, there were louder calls for it to be more directly linked to Jena itself and thus pay off for Jena in the truest sense of the word.
This was achieved with the last edition in 2017. The prizewinner Boris Nikitin was nominated directly by the jury for the first time and was given the task of curating an artistic symposium, the Martin Luther Propaganda Symposium, with the awarding of the prize.
In this respect, the expectations for the upcoming competition were also high. The initiators from Theaterhaus Jena and JenaKultur have therefore decided to once again think very politically. 2021 marks the 10th anniversary of the revelation of the so-called NSU, whose roots are unfortunately to be found in Jena.
The applicants invited by a jury of three - Das Peng! collective, Dean Hutton and Antje Schupp - were required to conceive a site-specific work in Jena's urban space, which should be theatrical and/or intermedial in nature, preferably in the districts of Jena-Winzerla and/or Jena-Lobeda , where the convicted perpetrators of the so-called NSUcome from or with reference to them.
The three-member jury selected Basel-based director, author and performer Antje Schupp (born 1983) and her multi-part concept idea with the working title "The Courageous Majority" for the award.
Prize winner
Antje Schupp studied directing for theater and opera at the Bavarian Theater Academy August Everding as well as theater, film and media studies and cultural studies at the University of Vienna. She directs spoken and music theater, develops her own productions in the independent scene, and often works in co-creative work processes as well as with non-professional performers, such as currently in the mediation project Music was my first love, in which a concert of their favorite songs and the story behind the respective song is developed with people suffering from addiction.
Antje Schupp is interested in contemporary political, ecological and social issues and combines different stylistic elements in her works to create semi-documentary and semi-fictional narratives. She has created various site-specific works that are located between installation and performance, as well as two solo performances (rein gold and Loss & Luck). She has been producing and writing her own plays for many years.
She wrote her first play "Ein Stück Geschichte" in 2017 and the memoirs of nine senior citizens in a care home for the production "Time of my Life" in 2018. She is currently writing her new play. She has staged plays at Theater Basel, Schauspielhaus Zürich, Theater am Neumarkt, Kaserne Basel and Staatstheater Augsburg, among others, and has been invited to festivals such as Theaterspektakel Zürich, Politik im Freien Theater, Berliner Theatertreffen "Shifting Perspectives", Antigel Geneva and Heidelberger Stückemarkt.
Antje Schupp regularly works in international collaborations, e.g. in South Africa for PINK MON€Y, most recently for Nouvelle Nahda (Theater am Neumarkt / Station Beirut) with artists from Beirut, soon with artists in Teresina (BRA). Many collaborations with Beatrice Fleischlin, e.g. Islam for Christians - A Crash Course (Level A1). Music theater productions of Mozart, Massenet, Vivaldi and Menotti as well as various world premieres. Antje Schupp is the winner of the Festival Prize of the Zurich Festival 2020 - associated with the interdisciplinary world premiere of REVUE 2020 in co-production with the Zurich Opera House and Schauspielhaus Zurich - and is part of the Swiss Performing Arts Selection of the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.
She has already received several awards and grants.
The work "The Courageous Majority", which will be realized in Jena until autumn, consists of three main elements: 1. a digital city exploration "(In)Visible Traces", 2. a "German Studies 2021", which mixes different formats such as performances, workshops and lectures and 3. a nationwide campaign "The Courageous Majority". The aim is to show the "blind spots" in the public engagement with German history and to get the silent majority to speak out. This transformation towards a (re)speaking majority thus takes place artistically on 3 levels: 1) individually 2) in groups 3) as a nationwide action. Each part works independently of the other, it is conceived as a trilogy within a trilogy.
Antje Schupp expresses her gratitude for the award and sees it as confirmation of her thesis that The Courageous Majority is not a utopia, but a necessity and an attitude that must be cultivated just as much as the memory of the victims of right-wing violence.
No conclusion
Jonas Zipf, director of JenaKultur and initiator of the nationwide theater project "Kein Schlussstrich!", emphasizes that he finds the artistic approach to the topics so important because it uses aesthetic means to broaden the view and make it clear that right-wing violence, racism and discrimination have long since found structural expression in our society and endanger our democracy.
The jury was impressed by the diversity of the project, which enables approaches from very different perspectives and in this way calls for a new way of thinking about what already exists.
And Jena's Lord Mayor finds it important that the prize with the name Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz consciously places itself in a tradition on the one hand, and on the other hand breaks with tradition and brings the postmodern, searching, non-all-knowing author into dialog with society.
The jury
The nomination jury consisted of:
- Sabine Westermaier, dramaturge and co-founder of the theater publishing house "rua"
- Simone Dede Ayivi, cultural scientist, dramaturge and artist
- Boris Nikitin, playwright and last winner of the Lenz Prize
The decision-making jury consisted of:
- Maik Pevesstorff, dramaturge at the Freie Bühne Jena
- Tunçay Kulaoğlu, filmmaker, journalist, translator
- Thorben Meißner, dramaturge at the Theaterhaus Jena
Submissions:
- Dean Huttun, South Africa
- Das Peng! collective, Berlin
- Antje Schupp, Basel
Award ceremony
The prize is endowed with 10,000 euros. The award ceremony will take place on 17.06.2021, 6 pm at Theaterhaus Jena.