Continuing the work of Small Size – Performing Arts for Early Years, Mapping is an artistic research project focused on creating a sensory-based relationship with very young children, from 0 to 6 years, through performing arts. In particular, it explores the idea of “children-spectators of today and not only of tomorrow”.
Children, especially the youngest ones, are “new subjects of the world”, they are still discovering it, as much as they are discovering themselves. They have not established specific classification criteria yet, but they perceive what is aesthetic at any level of representation.
By observing them, we can detect the signs, the aesthetic moments experienced by the children in contact with artistic proposals, when they are “extremely sensitive”, that means in harmony with what they perceive.
The very young children’s aesthetic moments reveal themselves through long silences, wide eyes, imperceptible sounds, sudden excitement, surprise, unexpected laughter, and stances that display the total involvement of their senses.
A process full of open questions to start to map the aesthetic dimension of very young children, trying to detect the tracks, the many aesthetic moments, that children reveal during the artistic relationship and the underlying reasons.
Not a Manifesto on the how-to of theatre, dance or music for early years, nor a Charter offering the ultimate set of rules to create the “perfect” show, either, but a Map that helps us to orient ourselves between the “significant elements of the sensitive relationship” between the young child and the artist (the Contact, the Proposal, the Reaction and the Balance), when we intersect them with the fundamentals of the performing arts (Sound, Word, Image and Movement).
The project is created within the framework of the Creative Europe program.
PLAYON! – New Storytelling with Immersive Technologies
PLAYON!, a cooperation project announced by the European Commission under their Culture Funding Stream Creative Europe, will run from 2019 – 2023. Kolibri Theatre is proud to be one of the members of this network and looking forward to this unique international cooperation.
PLAYON! was initiated by 9 theatres with experience in the use of digital technologies and a university with high digital expertise. 8 universities from the creative digital sector are associated partners in order to facilitate access to technical knowledge. Kolibri Theatre is pleased to have found a regional partner in the Scenography Department of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, which will accompany the project with its digital expertise.
Digital technology is causing major changes in society. Contemporary theatre must understand the process of digital change and work to incorporate digital technology into its concepts. PLAYON! is dedicated to the theme “Concrete Utopias in the Digital Age” and designed to understand, test and apply immersive technology in order to shift classical storytelling into interactive narrative formats.
Across 4 years the partners’ aim is:
- to develop new forms of storytelling, building on narrative structures used in the creative game sector
- to merge these new forms with a variety of immersive technologies
- to use this new format to extend theatre towards the public urban space with relevant stories and the involvement of young adults as co-creators.
Our involvement and that of our European partners will develop across three phases. In each of them we will work on one of the above objectives, investigating the relationships between content and technology; the learning gained at each stage will then inform the next phase.
Supported by the experts of the Scenography Department of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts and our European colleagues we will be developing 3 international co-productions (in total 27 productions will be created within PLAYON!). After 4 years we aim to have established new and advancing relationships between artistic practice, professional training and industrial sectors both nationally and across Europe.
Partner institutions:
VAT Theatre Estonia (project coordinator) www.vatteater.ee
Akademie für Theater und Digitalität, Germany www.theater.digital
Elsinor Centro di produzione teatrale, Italy www.elsinor.net
Landestheater Linz, Austria www.landestheater-linz.at
Pilot Theatre, UK www.pilot-theatre.com
Kolibri Színház, Hungary www.kolibriszinhaz.hu
Teatr Ludowy, Poland www.ludowy.pl
Teatro O Bando, Portugal www.obando.pt
Theater Dortmund, Germany www.theaterdo.de
University of York / Digital Creativity Lab, UK www.digitalcreativity.ac.uk
Teatret Vårt, Norway www.teatretvart.no
PLAYON! is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.
ASSITEJ International (Association Internationale du Théâtre pour l’Enfance et la Jeunesse) proposes to unite theatres, organizations and individuals throughout the world dedicated to theatre for children and young people. The Association is dedicated to artistic, humanitarian, and educational efforts and no decision, action or statement of the Association shall be based on nationality, political conviction, cultural identity, ethnicity, or religion. Members of the Association are national centers, representative of theatre for children and young people in their own countries.
ASSITEJ Hungarian Center was established in 1971. The present structure, with Kolibri Theatre representing the Centre, has been existing since 2000. The core organization includes the president, János Novák (general manager of Kolibri Theater for Children and Youth) and six members in the executive committee (Judit Cziráki – dramaturge; Andrea Székely – director, college professor; József Kaposi – university teacher, director; István Sándor L. – critic; György Vidovszky – director; Csaba Szögi – choreographer). Members of ASSITEJ Hungarian Centre include professional and amateur theatres and companies from all over Hungary.
One of the main activities of ASSITEJ Hungarian Centre is the organization of the Biennale of National and International Theatres for Children and Youth every second year.
Biennale of National and International Theatres for Children and Youth 2022
Biennale of National and International Theatres for Children and Youth 2018
Biennale of National and International Theatres for Children and Youth 2016
Biennale of National and International Theatres for Children and Youth 2014
Biennale of National and International Theatres for Children and Youth 2012
European societies today encounter severe frictions which are related to the growing diversification of their population: Right-wing parties gain strength in elections and succeed to highlight their topics in the political discourse.
It becomes evident that visions of solidarity and humanity can´t be taken for granted, but have to be (re)gained again and again, especially by the coming generation to shape the face of our common continent. In this spirit “EUfiction” intends to create a space where groups of young participants with diverse backgrounds work artistically on their mutual future.
Theatre for young audiences as a central agent of cultural education contributes to enable the coming generation to develop their own visions as future citizens. Yet the work with heterogeneous groups imposes very specific challenges to artistic practice, which is only emerging recently. “EUfiction” aims at delivering a pool of artistic methods for professionals to integrate the concept of diversity into the creative programmes, the staff and the audience likewise.
Five groups are working together between 2019-2022.
Theatre Kohlenpott (Herne) – La Baracca (Bologna)
Helios Theater (Hamm) – Kolibri Theatre (Budapest)
KJT (Dortmund) – La Transplanisphere (Paris)
Consol Theater (Gelsenkirchen) – 20 Stories High (Liverpool)
Junges Schauspielhaus (Bochum) – Theater Rotterdam (Rotterdam)
