Neuropolis
Neuropolis ( spelling neuropolis ) was an international media and theater festival that took place from 1999 to 2006 in Berlin- Mitte.
After completing the Theater Studies course at the Humboldt University in Berlin , the non-profit cultural association neuropolis e. V. , which pursues the goal of promoting, developing and implementing artistic, cultural or socio-political projects.
Surname
The name of Neuropolis results in the "good" reading as a combination of the main conceptual components: Neural processes form the lowest common denominator of the perception and processing of the theater audience, and the polis as a place of democratic-pluralistic articulation symbolizes the space for open discourse and for Exchange.
In the “bad” reading, Neuropolis is a coding of urban neurotic views with a simple play on metropolis .
organization
Neuropolis, although the infrastructure is supported by the Theaterhaus Mitte and Studiobühne, was organized on a voluntary basis by students from various fields. The size of the team varied between 8 and 25 people annually. There was just as little hierarchy in the narrower sense as there was a legal form - but there were people responsible for certain areas.
history
Theater meeting of the Berlin universities
Neuropolis began in 1998, when the theater studies and cultural communication department at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin was supposed to use the existing studio stage to give theater studies students in Berlin better opportunities to perform their works.
Accordingly, Neuropolis started out on a small scale as a “theater meeting of the Berlin universities” and continued to be organized on a student basis. Almost the entire organization took place within the seminar building, and the organizational team also consisted primarily of students from the Institute for Art and Cultural Studies at Humboldt University.
Festival for Young European Theater
In 2003 the festival underwent a fundamental expansion, both locally and conceptually. Through intensive contact with the Kana Teatr in Szczecin and the “Okno” (Polish: window) festival taking place there, a space for lively artistic exchange was created, a focus of the conception. Since then, both festivals and parts of the performing artists have been visiting each other.
In addition, the expansion also resulted in another venue, the Theaterhaus Mitte. Overall, the festival took on a second mainstay, as more productions from the off-scene were now guesting in addition to student productions. The festival was also increasingly expanded to include a supporting program with exhibitions and installations. In the productions shown in the evening, Neuropolis was open to all forms of speech, figure or object theater.
This combination reached its preliminary climax in 2005, when Neuropolis also acted as a project tutorial at the Humboldt University and presented over a hundred artists for a week and a half. The festival was still organized by the students, with the stages providing advice, for example in press and public relations work.
European theater and media festival
After 2005 there was a turning point in the development of the festival. Due to the withdrawal of theater studies from the Humboldt University, which has increasingly been replaced by media studies there since 2003 , there was a partial new conception that treats the supporting program on an equal footing with the performances. In addition, France has also been accepted as a partner country.
The last festival took place in 2006.