On the Our Lives Project

This festival is the core element of the entire, biennial project Our Lives, which began with a meeting discussing its direction in terms of content and organisation and with the "Creation Weeks" in the four countries participating in the project preparing for the festival.

The question which was asked not just at our festival in Berlin but for the entire time was: what constitutes our life in Europe? What does living within the EU generally mean? How much influence does my country of origin have on my life? What do we want from each other, how do we want to live together in this form of Europe? Is the life that I lead representative for life in my country?

But there was more: How are we and life supposed to carry on in the EU which at the end of the day is a rather arbitrary construct of 28, or soon 27, states? What kinds of cooperation and togetherness can we discover through our project? We ask these questions by means of our art form, improvisation, which puts the focus on the players themselves, whose artistic evolution is always the aim of our work together.

Events in 14 more countries

Following our Our Lives Festival in Berlin, the project will be continued in 14 European countries. Between April and October 2018, the 28 artists will form 14 duos and spread the idea of our project in all of Europe. It is the artistic decision of each individual duo how they will do that, be it with a show or a reading, a performance or a public workshop - the focus will always be the idea of understanding, of co-operation across national borders and language barriers.

The artistic part of Our Lives ends in November 2018 in Ljubljana, at the "Naked Stage" Festival. The four partner organisations will once again stage the show formats which premiered in Berlin, incorporating the experience of the project into their artistic work.
Our Lives will be accompanied by the camera of our friend and fellow improviser Lee White, who has been living in Berlin for a few years now and who will make a documentary from the very personal perspective of a Canadian looking at the European continent; it will premiere in April 2019. 

We would love for you to keep track of Our Lives: www.ourlives.eu / Facebook