How does the body perform under the duress of catastrophe? Thinking from both the stage and the audience, this session will address how the effects of climate change inform our ability to create projections of the future. Alexander Giesche, a resident theater director at Schauspielhaus Zurich, will explore a line of his work that has forced him to reconcile the desire for hope with the limitations of the anthropocene. Together with dancer and choreographer Tanja Saban, they will discuss the potentials for embodied practice to be a source of action.

Alexander Giesche, born in Munich, creates images that can be viewed like poems. At the heart of his work lies a preoccupation with digital and modern technologies and the ways people can relate to them. When Giesche works in a theater space, he is not so much interested in telling a story in the conventional sense. Instead, he often creates landscapes and atmospheres, poetic situations that put the audience in a different rhythm, and visual worlds that make everyday things appear different, strange, and beautiful. He invents situations in which the boundary between actor and spectator is dissolved and the simple fact of being together in a room at a certain moment becomes an art event in itself. After studying Applied Theater Studies in Giessen and completing a Master of Theater at DasArts Amsterdam, he worked mainly in the independent scene and was invited to various international performance festivals. From 2012 to 2014 he was Artist in Residence at Theater Bremen. From 2019, Giesche was the in-house director at Schauspielhaus Zürich. His visual poem Der Mensch erscheint im Holozän based on Max Frisch, was perceived by the press as the “first major production on climate change.” He returns to the Schauspielhaus Zürich one last time in April 2024 for Moise und die Welt der Vernunft, a world premiere by Tennessee Williams.

Tanja Saban is a dancer, Gaga teacher, and yoga practitioner. Born and raised in Switzerland, she graduated from SEAD training program in 2007. She is a recipient of the conveyor scholarship from the Tanzquartier in Vienna, where she started her career as a freelance dancer and teacher. She collaborates with choreographers and artists of other disciplines on projects as well as creating her own work in Austria, Spain, Switzerland, Israel and New York City.