Reveal Your Soul Time
Performance Art
Long Durational Practices

Karin Schuitema: Remains of Lifetime
Amin Pazhavand: To live is to suffer
Iris Tsagri: Would you eat this?
Savalan Ghodsi

AstaroTheatro
Sint Jansstraat 37 Amsterdam

Our Footsteps at Studio/K Amsterdam
Migrants’ narratives as an artistic affirmation of our human dignity and a call for political awareness

Twenty migrants/refugees artists or performers in ten languages. The result of five months of playful improvisational rehearsals, where through self-representation, migrants share stories of their journey and living in the Netherlands facing a long-lasting uncertainty after having crossed many, colonial, borders.

Saturday 8 February
Studio/K
Timorplein 62 Amsterdam

19:00 Oriental Dinner
20:Our Footsteps Theatre Performance
Dinner Reservations: 020 – 692 04 22 // price: €5
Info and Tickets
Info and Tickets (Facebook event)

On the Harmful Effects of Tobacco
A Monologue by Anton Chekhov
Friday 24 January, 20:30. AstaroTheatro 

“It is what it is, it’s all the same to me”, Ivan’s prologue.  Is that ostensible latency the main element of Ivan Ivanovich Nyukhin, the character of the monologue “On the harmful effects of tobacco”?

The plays of Chekhov have definite intensity and the fire of action, but not in an external outline rather than in their internal structure.  Under this ostensible latency and inertia of his characters, is hidden a multifarious and complex activity which is given with original virtuosity and deep knowledge of the psychical temper of every character. Possibly because these characters are mirroring his personal psychical status: the tyrant father, the solitude of his childhood, the loneliness of the boring small town where he grew up. This play is not a comedy either a drama. It is an excellent narrative of an ordinary person, a psychography given in a literary way which reflects the still and depressive life of the delusional society of Tsarist Russia.

The way Ivan is “moving” looks like he lost his orientation in life. There is a force inside him that makes him unmovable. He is giving a lecture on the harmful effects of tobacco though he is smoker himself.  Why?  So many unfulfilled dreams, Don Quixotic ambitions condemned to fail into the dull routine of daily life.

In our interpretation of the play there is something “new”, like the sense of hope that a new born baby is giving.

We welcome you to discover it!

Starring: Roberto Bacchilega
Direction: Vasiliki Koutrouli
Video Teaser: Melanja Palitta / BalansLaB
Picture by Cenk Dövyap 
(Entrance by Donation)

Workshop 
Work in Progress
Creative Process
New Project
New Theatre Performance
Coming Soon
By Our Footsteps Collective
www.ourfootsteps.nl 

Memories of our unique performance just two weeks ago
Our Footsteps
at Museum of Antiquities Leiden

Migrants’ narratives as artistic affirmation of our human dignity and a call for political awareness
A project by AstaroTheatro, IIRE and Stichting Vrolijkheid

More Footsteps coming soon!
www.ourfootsteps.nl
(Pictures above by Simone Both)

a Reflection on Democracy

Friday 13 December, 20:30
AstaroTheatro. Event here

Imperialism, colonial projects, free-market economic policies, union busting, war…all these things, and many more, have been justified and keep on being justified day after day under the name of Democracy.
Democracy, this word that is always lauded, claimed by right-wing parties and by left-wing ones just as well. They all bring it in their name as something worth fighting for, never really mentioning what they mean by it. This word, that in reality means Power to the people is more often simply interpreted as “delegate and stop caring, go vote and then in four, five years let’s see again”.
‘Cause if we are living under the people’s rule, and therefore our own rule, why is it that there is a constant feeling of loss of autonomy and self-determination over our own lives? It comes necessary to reflect on this word, on this form of government that is so rarely practiced in full. To reflect around what Democracy even means in the first place and what we mean when we say we want a democratic system.
Who gets to be included in a democratic system and who is left out? Can a real democracy co-exist with a market-ruled capitalist system? On this evening, we are going to screen a series of interviews with contemporary thinkers, activists and common people on the concept and the implications of democracy, we hope that this will serve as a basis to reflect together on Democracy.

Screening and Open discussion
Free entrance