Dr. Wunder AG
(For DOWNLOADS scroll down.)
„Wer wie was wieso weshalb warum, wer nicht fragt, bleibt dumm“.
The members of Frl. Wunder AG have been nerds ever since they were young. They watched sesame street and together they lived through the school of Hildesheim. There they learned the following set phrase: theatre production= theorie -> practice. That’s what shaped them.
At the end of our studies we didn’t want to give up our lust for discovery. Nor did we want to decide whether we would keep on working as cultural scientists, theatre producers, or theatre educators.
Research and theatre production, science, and artistic practice- Frl. Wunder AG doesn’t consider these categories opposites, rather thinks of them as productive conflict potential. Frl. Wunder AG has developed a specific investigation and research approach, which we call artistic field research. Our rehearsal process starts with an investigation. We equip ourselves with cameras, voice recorders, and notepads. As ethnographers we dive into social fields and groups (e.g. human-animal relationships as we did for “Ein Bankett für Tiere”), as biographers of our own family history and origin (“Auf den Spuren von…”), or as sociologists of contemporary societal and political topics (exhaustion of workers in “Gehenlassen”). We collect our impressions, stories, objects, atmospheres. we learn cultural practices, we become accomplices to individuals and initiatives. This process of documentation is followed by an evaluation. What could we find out about the topic and how do we want to present our findings to the audience? How can we create a performance situation that enlightens the audience to our research process and connects them to it?
Then we, the performers, build a physical and verbal connection to the investigated material. That’s when the conceptional and cultural scientific research questions come together as artistic questions. During our rehearsal process we navigate between appropriated (experienced) knowledge and the openness of theatrical translation. The result is derived from a question, that presented as the beginning of our process: Where did the animals in all those movies go? Aren’t all our family’s histories migration stories? What type of work wears you out? Frl. Wunder AG’s artistic work is then reflected in academic contexts, where many of us work as doctorates, professors, or scientific staff at universities.
Gossip from Dr. Wunder AG
Anne’s doctorate deals with the political dimensions of contemporary theatre practice for which she conducted interviews with our role models She she Pop, Turbo Pascal and Neue Dringlichkeit.
Malte’s doctorate focusses on artistic field research as a theatre educational approach. His manual for schools has made us the subject for high school diplomas
Marleen`s post graduate project revolves around the cultural practice of veiling.
Melanie hosted a laboratory conference at FH Dortmund 2016 with the topic “Researching Theatre in social fields” in October 2016.
DOWNLOADS (german language)
Vanessa Lutz
theatre and migration (on the process of “Auf den Spuren von…)
Melanie Hinz
artistic field research (lecture, Wolfsburg 2014)
Melanie Hinz
Nachahmung auf Probe (from: Hinz/Roselt (Hg.): Chaos und Konzept, Berlin 2011)
Marleen Wolter
The veil as instrument of an experimental approach to postcolonial mimicry
