Schauplatz International
Biography
The theatre group SCHAUPLATZ INTERNATIONAL was founded in 1999 by Anna-Lisa Ellend and Albert Liebl in Erlach, Switzerland. Since 2001 the core of the group has consisted of four members (Anna-Lisa Ellend, Albert Liebl, Lars Studer and Martin Bieri), regularly bringing in other artists and working primarily out of Bern and Berlin. The continual investigation of the conditions of constructing the world by Schauplatz International has resulted in them constantly remaining in the borderlands between reality and fiction, where plays and performances emerge that are full of wit, humour and a sense for the tragedy of our own existence. After winning the most important German theatre award for independent groups at the Impulse Festival in 2000, they have made appearances in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Norway and Poland. In Berlin Schauplatz International was artist in residence at Podewil in 2003, and has worked with HAU Hebbel am Ufer and the Sophiensaele as well as Ausland. The Munich Kammerspiele has showed works by Schauplatz International, as has the Schauspiel Essen and the Theater Neumarkt in Zurich. They have created a television play with Cablecom Switzerland, and radio plays with Bavarian Broadcasting and Schweizer Radio. The group has had a presence at numerous important theatre festivals (Impulse, Politik im freien Theater, reich & berühmt, Meteor, auawirleben, Zürcher Theaterspektakel, Internationales Figurentheater Erlangen) and is recently also active in the academic field of artistic research in cooperation with the Bern University of the Arts.