Exhibitors:
approximately 400 exhibitors in the fields of artist and event agencies, technical systems and service providers involved in the culture and event industry, community facilities, associations and trade press in two exhibition halls
Special feature:
– about 200 live performances in the fields of performing arts, music & street theatre on 5 stages
– presentation of the FREIBURGER LEITER trade audience award
Visitors: approximately 4,900 trade visitors from Germany and abroad
An impression of Pantomimes in the Trade Fair
Trygve Wakenshaw
Born in New Zealand and living in Prague, Trygve Wakenshaw trained at the prestigious Paris clown school Ecole Philippe Gaulier, whose famous alumni include Emma Thompson and Sacha Baron Cohen.
Wakenshaw’s unique style combines pantomime, physical comedy and a good dose of shenanigans – he is crazy, daring and uniquely eccentric. This celebrated and award-winning clown presents his talent in his piece ‘Nautilus’, which continues to be a bestseller on stages and at festivals worldwide. In a duet with Australian comedian Barnie Duncan, he presents ‘Mad Office’, in which nonsensical everyday office life is turned into a hilarious celebration of the banal by bizarre slapstick.
Trygve Wakenshaw has just presented his latest work, ‘Only Bones’, at the London International Mime Festival.
Amazing juggler and absurdist Matthias Romir is hosting us through the evening. Passionately self-taught, he is well-known for his narrative juggling style somewhere between clowning and object theatre, his wacky characters and his profound and bizarre stories full of black humour. In his role as the odd character ‘Scary Clown’ he presents a collection of strange ideas while admitting big emotions and even bigger shoes. With two left hands and a wrong foot he trips and tumbles through the event, quite by the by suspending the laws of gravity and logic. The art of failing is thought through to its conclusion, and that’s not just very funny but also what has been called the “most beautiful turning of life into poetry.”
In his wonderfully comic way, Boris Bronski plays stories of the normal everyday life of the archetype human being. He moves through a world between dream and reality where comedy, tragedy and craziness are never far apart. He sees the world through the eyes of an odd bird that from its elevated perspective passionately mocks humanity while at the same time singing a loving paean to it.
The answers to life seem hidden in some metaphysical way in the lightness of his disrespectfully burlesque masked characters and their playful twists and turns. Using simple props, impressive physical precision, slapstick and a lot of music, he creates a world that seems very familiar to his audience and makes them laugh and ponder as they recognise it. A gem of clownish masque on the boards of the world that signify life.