After our last successful editions of Rampenlichter in 2021 and 2019, we are already busy preparing for the upcoming festival in 2023. The trailer and text below (using the 2019 festival as an example) are meant to give you an overall impression of how Rampenlichter is structured, how it works and what it aims for:
The dance and theatre festival for children and young people
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Festival Overview
Rampenlichter has developed from a small five-day festival with four productions to one of the most important festivals for dance and theatre by children and young people in Germany and increasingly in an international context. In addition to its 40 evening and afternoon shows, the festival offers a variety of workshops by professionals and young artists for children and young people. As well as an extensive programme for school classes, performance and artist talks, a residency programme for young artists and joint festivals. Rampenlichter has become a space for artistic exchange and a laboratory for artistic ideas, visions and utopias.
Rampenlichter school program for all children and young people
The festival gives Munich‘s pupils the opportunity to select plays from a wide variety and diversity of the stage program according to their age group. Many students gain direct and immediate access to the performing arts by experiencing the high level of authenticity, expressiveness and ability of children and young people of the same age on stage. Aesthetic experiences and an artistic exploration of their own topics concern the kids themselves and their world views. Watching other kids on stage touches their own lives and leads to artistic exchange between them. In addition to the visit, school classes attend dance or theatre workshops. All types of schools and students of all ages can participate and thus spend varied and special hours at the Rampenlichter festival.
All children and young people, regardless of their physical, mental or linguistic abilities, are warmly welcome.
Young Days – performances and open workshops for young people
In 2019 we offered for the first time a special program with performances and open workshops for young people on the festival sundays. The performances and workshops could be booked individually or in combination. The workshops where given by experienced, partly internationally known professionals and artists and enabled the participating children and young people to enrich their interest in dance and theatre with new impulses.
ArtExchange – where young artists from all over the world interact and connect
The accompanying program for the young artists, cultural educators and artists working with children and young people and for all guests of Rampenlichter offers informal spaces for artistic and creative exchange in an creative and open atmosphere. In the 2019’s festival edition the thematic focus of the ArtExchange program was perception in all its facets relevant to artistic work with dance and theatre: How do we perceive dance and theatre performances and what role does our body play in this? What special interrelationship of perception and being perceived exists between performers and spectators? What influences our perception and what difference does it make whether we let our perception guide us or whether we consciously control it?
Go to ArtExchange
Exhibitions “Bühnenwelten” (stage worlds) and “Es fühlt sich einfach richtig an” (it just feels right)
In 2008 the first dance and theatre festival Rampenlichter took place in theatre Schwere Reiter. Since then, a large number of photos of meanwhile 135 dance and theatre productions by and with children and young people have been taken. Since shown fort the first time on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of Rampenlichter in 2018, the exhibition was created to show a selection of the best stage photographs, which impressively demonstrate the diversity and independent aesthetics of the various productions.
In the exhibition “It just feels right” we additionally showed our statement campaign with statements from children and young people about what dance, theatre and being on stage means to them.
Artists in residence
The Rampenlichter residence program gives young artists the opportunity to work intensively on their play during the entire festival period in rooms of PATHOS Theatre Munich and other spaces at the creative quarter. The residence program presents their piece to the public in the Schwere Reiter theatre at the end of the festival. After the successful residence projects with the Goethe Institute Belgrade in 2015 and the project with the association Hilfe von Mensch zu Mensch e.V. in 2016, the last project to be guest at the festival was the dance and theatre project “If you don’t know …” by Spielen in der Stadt e.V. in cooperation with the NS-Documentation Centre Munich in 2019.
