The 2024 Prize of the International Theatre Institute - Center Germany (ITI) will be awarded to the KULA Compagnie. This was decided by the ITI members on the basis of a shortlist proposed by the jury, consisting of Nora Hertlein-Hull, Lucien Strauch, Mascha Pörzgen and Yvonne Griesel.
The Jury's statement said:
"The KULA Compagnie exemplifies a transnational, multilingual theatre that brings together artistic practice of diverse aesthetics and humanitarian commitment. In changing collaborations with artists from different countries, playful and politically controversial laboratory formats are created, often as rewrites of canonical texts from a contemporary perspective."
KULA is derived from the "Kula exchange system" of the inhabitants of various islands in New Guinea. Objects are exchanged whose value cannot be measured economically, but are of essential social and cultural meaning. Over time, "Kula objects" are charged with the history of their transmission and thus carry a message of peace and understanding.
The idea for the company first emerged in 2014 in an acting lab that dealt with the question of how to work collectively and learn from each other outside of the usual contexts of a production. The founding members of the association, which was established in 2017, are Eva-Maria van Acker, Julie Paucker, Max Bauer, Martin Gruber, Eric Nikodym and Robert Schuster. In the meantime, various artistic projects have grown out of the idea of 'accepting' and 'passing on' and have traveled through various countries: KULA - nach Europa (2016), die Vögel (2018), or Journals of Exile (2023), among others. On May 17, the new production "DIBBUK - zwischen (zwei) Welten", directed by Robert Schuster, premiered at the Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen and on May 25, 2024, "Underground Birds" will be shown at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin.
The ITI Prize is endowed with €3,000 and will be presented at euro-scene Leipzig in November 2024.