Those were the days oder wie man eine Axt archiviert
[Those were the days or how to archive an axe] artscenico
Good stories never die!
Amidst the fast-paced world of art and culture, we scarcely have time to pay tribute to what has been lost, forgotten or overlooked. In 2024, Rolf Dennemann, a highly influential independent theatre practitioner from the Ruhr region, passed away. The 35-year history of the artscenico label, which he founded and directed, and his artistic career have since been preserved in the archives of the Fritz-Hüser Institute for Literature and Culture of the Dortmund world of labour.
In our theatre performance, we enter spaces that allow us to look back: “Those were the days!”
We open grey archive boxes and extract from them half-forgotten, partly unpublished theatre stories that are waiting to be (re)discovered. We ask whether independent theatre work should be archived at all, and how on earth one would go about archiving an axe. What stories lie hidden in the archive boxes? How can we bring the material from the shelves back into living contexts of work and art? An evening about remembering and preserving!
Further information at artscenico.de
