Boslab is a talent development place for starting directors, choreographers, performers, mimers, storytellers and collectives that want to create performances on and with the location. Boslab is not a programming festival, it facilitates new work and offers space for research, experiment and guidance in the field of location theater. The performances are a mix of theater, mime, dance, performance, spoken word, storytelling and music.
Boslab started in 2010 as a side program. In 2018 we made the leap to a location theater festival. Since then, the ten-day Boslab Theater Festival has existed in its current form, with multiple routes and performances. There are shows made especially for this festival and sometimes also recreations of previous work. The Boslab Theater Festival has grown in recent years in quality, visibility, visitor numbers and appreciation from the public and press. It offers diverse, interdisciplinary performances and can count on overwhelming interest from new theater makers.
Boslab looks for various forms of theater created from their own live experiences and personal desire. For a festival that wants to be both artistically and socially relevant, we actively seek connections with theater makers from diverse social, cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Diversity is there in hybrid theater styles, disciplines, themes and text, music and image choices. Boslab strives for diversity as an intrinsic element: differences that enrich each other with a new or different perspective.
Boslab chooses theater makers with great diversity in their work who inspire and challenge each other. The artistic team supports and guides the search for its own voice in relation to the increasingly complex world and the desire to make that voice heard to a wide audience at special locations in nature. Boslab is looking for makers who are open to the signals of the times, but do not allow themselves to be carried away by the issues of today. Who want to develop new work and dare to take risks, both artistically and substantively. People who link commitment to a search for relevant forms of contemporary theater, with a curious look at the past and at an unknown horizon.
(Read more below the photo series)
In the forest, nature is the playing arena: on the edge of a city, where man with his urge to expand is always present in the background. Nature, especially now, has an ecological and social meaning. The climate crisis and endangered nature are perhaps the greatest challenges of our time.
In addition to location/space, Boslab chooses to focus on the rich arsenal of physical performance styles, theater and cultural history, music and visual arts. Sources from the rich (international) past serve as inspiration for the development of contemporary theater that relates substantively, critically and full of imagination to the times in which we live. Boslab wants to be an arena of autonomous art for theater makers who seek connections with all disciplines, generations and social, cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Under the motto ‘everything should be allowed’.