Hendrik Quast & Maika Knoblich

When they collaborate, Hendrik Quast and Maika Knoblich create „theatrical problems“ from which they develop happenings and actions that are specific to situations and locations. Their stringent dramaturgic approach is characterized by its relation to real time, and it often leads to unique and exclusive multi-hour durational formats. Professional expertise emerges from a close cooperation with experts that can be tested on stage in action as well as commentary. Techniques of design and craftsmanship are embedded in theatrical space and time; their objective is a theatrification of growth processes so that the view on familiar natural perspectives is provoked on a border between naturalism and artificiality. In their work they integrate regional communities such as clubs and amateur ensembles that join together in rural rituals based on common activities. These “strategies of the rural/ rural strategies” are translated into the theater context and directed on stage via the utopian idea of a common goal such as, for example, the replanting of a German oak tree in “Ur-Forst” (2014).

Their works, which are closely connected to production venues, have been presented at the Sophiensæle Berlin („Trauer tragen“ 2013, „Der Ur-Forst“ 2014, „Mohrle“ 2014), the Künstlerhaus Mousonturm („1. Frankfurter Tulpenschau“ 2013, „Schwanheim EVAKUIEREN, 2014), the Theater Skogen in Göteborg and the Festival a/d Werf („Heide“ 2012) and the Festival Impulse („Der Ur-Forst“ 2015).. Their performance work also served as the point of departure for the radio play „Trauer tragen“ (2012) and „Mohrle“ (2015) at the WDR in Cologne. Both began working together during their studies at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen. Afterwards, Maika Knoblich completed the MA program at DasArts Amsterdam.