Call for the Fast Forward Festival Forum 2025
at Staatsschauspiel Dresden
from 13 – 16 November 2025
We're looking for:
7 students or graduates from the degree programmes theatre directing, dramaturgy / play writing or acting & 3 theatre professionals from the work fields theatre directing, education and theatre management / production, who are proposed by ETC Member Theatres.
You can download the full call for participation as a PDF here.
- THE PROJECT
Since 2024, the Fast Forward Festival Forum is part of the ETC’s NEXT GENERATION PROGRAMME together with the European Theatre Academy in Avignon and with the platform Transmission that is part of the Festival TNB at the National Theatre of Brittany in Rennes, France.
The core idea of the Fast Forward Festival Forum is to form a 4-day working group of students, respectively young graduates and theatre professionals who map and discuss on eye level the current and future issues of the theatre sector. Furthermore, the group will watch the performances shown at Fast Forward festival and meet their artistic teams in order to discuss and learn more about the artistic, structural and cultural backgrounds in the different European countries. Every year Forum’s group shall be formed by and together with 10 ETC member theatres.
The National Theater of Brittany in Rennes, France, and the National Theater of Greece in Athens, which both include professional theater education under their roofs, will propose two of the ten possible participants.
- THE FESTIVAL
Fast Forward is a European festival for young stage directors at Staatsschauspiel Dresden in Germany, presenting every year in Novembe,r within four days 7-8 performances from all over Europe by artists who are still at the beginning of their careers as directors.
The festival shows the diversity of contemporary theatre, provides the next generation a platform and offers the audience a place for discoveries. An international jury awards one of the invited productions a festival prize, the winner of which is invited to create a new production at the Staatsschauspiel Dresden.
There is also an audience prize and the award of a young jury. Fast Forward was founded in 2011 at the Staatstheater Braunschweig and takes place at the Staatsschauspiel Dresden since 2017.
For the last editions, please visit: www.fastforw.art/en/
- What the Forum, together with the ETC is going to look for: objectives & philosophy(ies)
Forming a temporary community that sheds light on a multi-voiced next European theatre generation by gathering a group of people in which each single perspective is understood as an expertise, can be seen as a starting point to focus on necessary changes.
Being aware of the different objectives and interests existing side by side in the field and
shaping not only individual perspectives but in particular different experiences of different generations and identities, of different cultures and countries, of different professional structures, of intended national or international work frames, the Forum refrains from prescribing a specific topic to the group.
By gathering a ‚temporary community, it rather aims to develop an open and dynamic tool in order to map the needs and issues of young theatre artists, to inspire the professionals to give their expertise and possibly at the same time to re-invent it in dialogue with the next generation: In order to contemplate together models of new partnerships and collaborations with institutions and producers.
The challenges to becoming a theatre professional in the theatre industry is a central issue in the academies and for the next generation, but also for the institutions.
Being convinced that the future needs teamwork and that the theatre sector needs international networks for the arts – and to an even bigger extent for the societies we’re living in – we’re looking for those who are also looking for new tools to achieve this to participate in the Forum.
- We would like to offffer you the following to fifind out if this is the right project for you:
The following questionnaire could bring your interests and objectives together with those of the young generation. If you do find at least two questions that would interest you to work on or if you have more to add on the list, the Forum is probably just the right project for you:
- What do you want to learn?
- What do you not want to repeat anymore?
- Are there things you’re missing in your every day practice?
- Do you sometimes dream of going back to an academy and take some time to study again?
- What are you lacking time for?
- Where are you having encounters with young artists?
- Where are you looking for them?
- What would you imagine of how the next generation could alter you?
- What kind of practices do you want to share?
- How internationally can you imagine to work yourself ?
- What kind of audiences are you looking for?
- What are you dreaming of ?
- Discovering what we haven’t discover yet: How to pass back the ball to the ETC network?
How to feedback and share the experiences and inspirations that may become worth to feed into a broader discussion, into a broader network?
How to build an ongoing and diverse laboratory for artistic and social practice?
How to profit in a sustainable way from these exchanges together and individually?
How to meet, inspire and empower makers and audiences to continue the dialogue, to handle complicated situations and to inspire changes that so many are looking for?
This is at least one of the questions for the upcoming Forum’s group. We know what we’re looking for but not yet how to achieve this: So ideas are welcome!
- Organisational details & how to express your interest to take part
You’re asked to suggest either a young artist (student or graduate) or a theatre professional – be it from inside, be it from outside your institution – to be send to the Forum.
It should be somebody in who’s perspective, experience and feedback you’re interested in and with whom you will start or continuing a dialogue.
The person should come from one of the fields listed above.
You’re welcome to send us if possible two proposlas: for a young artist and for a professional, provided that you agree that only one can be picked.
Please send a CV of this person with a short motivation why you propose this person to the Forum by 30 May 2025 at the latest to:
📧 charlotte.orti@staatsschauspiel-dresden.de
A first online meeting for the whole group shall take place in June 2025.
The Forum covers travels, accommodation, per diems and the theatre tickets for all participants.
It is not foreseen to pay a fee for any of the participants. In case a fee would be asked f.e. for a theatre professional who works as a freelancer we would have to check with the member theatre how to facilitate this together.
Travels, accommodation, per diems, tickets and all logistics will be organised by Fast Forward.
- Arrival for all participants: Wednesday, 12 November
- Departure for all participants: Monday, 17 November
- The Forum starts: 13 November at 10:00 and will have a 4 days fully packed schedule.
You have questions? Please don’t hesitate to get in touch:
📧 charlotte.orti@staatsschauspiel-dresden.de
2024 Edition
The 2024 Fast Forward Festival Forum (14 - 17 November 2024) is part of the European Theatre Convention (ETC)’s European Theatre: BREAK THE MOULD programme, which is co-funded by the European Union.
The Fast Forward Festival Forum offers ETC member theatres a special chance to meet Europe’s next generation of theatre-makers.
For four days of the festival, the Forum forms a working group made up of students, young artists and experienced theatre professionals, who discuss as equals current and prospective questions about working in theatre in Europe. They watch the festival productions together and meet their teams to find out more about the motivations, backgrounds, working and production methods in various different European countries. At the end, the participants explore what possibilities they see for continuing their “temporary” European theatre laboratory beyond the framework of the festival.
► The participants for this year’s Forum brought together from a total of 11 ETC Member Theatres.
What’s the goal?
Being part of a diverse and productive network is an important resource in the cultural sector: as a professional and as a social anchor. How can we learn to initiate and maintain sustainable partnerships? Facilitating quality in artistic creation, forging new alliances, a heightened awareness for the situation we’re living in and acknowledging the issues that are important to the next generation are all aspects of the cornerstones of fostering emerging artists today. What does it take to really promote young talent, not just paying lip service to it, but making a sustainable commitment to help the theatre sector to move forward into the future? Learning about each other’s needs and benefitting from each other’s perspectives and capabilities in view of the pending changes all around us is a vital dialogue. We need structures and spaces for this to happen – the Fast Forward Festival Forum can be one of those spaces. The potential of theatre to reach out to communities and to enable social accessibility and inclusion across cultural barriers and differences lies in its artistic ingenuity; by sharing experiences, creating visibility, facing catastrophes and inspiring utopias that we probably no longer dare to dream of in our everyday lives.
Theatre is a social art form. Wherever it takes place, it creates a community or a “temporary” society. It’s a privilege and our mission to help that make sparks.
Participating ETC Member Theatres:
- Dailes Theatre in Riga, Latvia
- Montenegrin National Theatre in Podgorica, Montenegro
- National Theatre of Brittany in Rennes, France
- National Theatre of Greece in Athens, Greece
- National Theatre of Kosovo in Prishtina, Kosovo
- National Theatre „Ivan Vazov“ in Sofia, Bulgaria
- Ravenna Teatro in Italy
- Slovene National Theatre Nova Gorica, Slovenia
- Théâtre de Liège in Belgium
- The Toneelmakerij in Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Dresden State Theatre, Germany
ETC Scholars
Meet the ETC scholars of Staatsschauspiel Dresden's Fast Forward Forum, supported by our Next Theatre Generation programme!
The cohort brought together students, young artists, and experienced theatre professionals to engage in current and prospective questions about working in theatre in Europe:
- Viesturs Kairišs (Artistic Director of Dailes Theatre Riga, Freelance Film, Theatre and Opera Director, Manager and Teacher of the New Actor‘s Studio at Dailes Theatre)
- Maša Pelko (Freelance Theatre Director, Playwright and Dramaturge, Slovenia)
- Simon Vandenbulke (Dramaturge, Théâtre de Liège)
- Amélie Gratias (Drama School of the National Theatre of Brittany)
- Konstantinos Glykantzis (Drama School of the National Theatre of Greece)
- Marianna Murgia (Malagola/Ravenna Teatro, Vocal and Sound Creation Practices)
- Qendresa Spahiu (University of Prishtina, Faculty of Arts, Profile Theatre Directing)
- Hana Rastoder (University of Montenegro, Faculty of Dramatic Arts, Programme Theatre Directing)
- Rafael Bizhev (Krastyo Sarafov National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts)
- Lily Sykes (Freelance Theatre Director working in Germany and the UK and Resident Director at the Staatsschauspiel Dresden)
Sebastian Hoppe
