Dear teachers, theater-goers and friends,
In a strange way, the Corona pandemic has put wind in our sails, we have lots of news to share with you before you go off on your well-earned summer holidays.
iTalk, the play we produced for senior students in 2021, has been nominated for the Jugend-kulturservice Ikarus Award. We are honoured to have been nominated and very excited. And speaking of Ikarus, we are in the process of co-producing a new play for senior students with the Flying Fox Theater. This new play is called Icarus- F**ked Up and is another self-devised play revolving around a young man with mental health issues. The play will have its premiere in December.
For grades 5 and 6 we also have a new play in the making called We Should Be In School. This is a Platypus production with two Australian artists, writer Phillip Kavanagh and director Matthew Wells, who have specially come to Berlin to create this play about climate change together with the actors Florian Korty and Ona Nurkkala. The premiere will be on the 14th of September at 5 p.m. in Tak-Theater at Moritzplatz in Kreuzberg.
We also have developed the new digital game-format Theatrix to prepare the students for their visit to the theater. The preparation for the plays will be accessible through a link. This means the students can prepare on their own phones or electronic devices in an interactive, playful way. Theatrix will be launched in September.
During the pandemic, theatermakers like us were supported in “going digital”. Together with the Landesbühnen Sachsen, we developed Berlin@Play, a participative theater-game-walk with mixed realities. Participants walk around the area in Kreuzberg near to the Jewish Museum with a tablet in their hands and earphones on their heads. You can do the tour either in English or German. Creating Berlin@Play was very challenging, we learnt a lot in the process. Exploring new possibilities is exciting. You can play this game in July and August. For information visit
https://www.games.platypus-theater.de
We have formed the club Platypus Works e.V. in order to give a platform to the many workshops and theater in education projects we are conducting and to be eligible for donations and support from foundations.
Change is the only constant and we are going to have a change in leadership as from January 2023. Anja and I will be handing over our Baby to the younger generation. We founded our theater 37 years ago. The baton will be passed on to a young Australian-German theater-maker team, Rachel Pattison and Richard Krutzsch, who have a lot of experience in producing and performing theater for young people. Anja and I will still be seen on stage. We’re very happy to have found successors and are excited that Platypus will live on.
