Theater HORA
A free republic
Swiss Grand Award for Theatre / Hans Reinhart Ring 2016
Theater HORA in Zurich is one of the few professional theatres in Switzerland run and staffed by people with disabilities to have achieved fame far beyond the country’s borders. Theatre educator Michael Elber founded Theater HORA after an initial project in 1989. In 2003 it became part of the Stiftung Züriwerk as the first and, to date, only professional culture workshop in Switzerland for artists with learning difficulties. The name is a reference to the first theatre project based on Michael Ende’s novel “Momo”, which features the figure of Master Hora. Since 2009, Theater HORA has also offered an accredited drama training for people with learning difficulties. The second main area of its artistic work lies in the creation of stage productions, both on its own and in collaboration with outside theatre practitioners. Theater HORA has received awards including the ZFV Social and Culture Prize in 1998 and the Paul Schiller Foundation Recognition Award in 2015. The production “Disabled Theater” by the French choreographer Jérôme Bel was performed at the 2013 Berlin Theatertreffen, where Julia Häusermann received the Alfred Kerr Acting Prize and the piece also won a Swiss Dance Award. “Disabled Theater” has gone on to be a huge success, notching up 160 performances at countless major venues and festivals on the global contemporary theatre scene from New York to Macau.
Theater HORA aims to support and promote the artistic and creative development of people with learning difficulties and present the exceptional abilities of these highly individual performers to a wide audience. The underlying philosophy is that people with learning difficulties have capabilities and strengths that enable them, through art, to make an important contribution to society and culture. Theater HORA thus challenges organisations for the disabled and society at large to rethink their attitudes. In addition to stage works such as the hit “Disabled Theater” and the “Beatrice Egli” trilogy (“Human Resources”, “Mars Attacks!” and “Normalität. Ein Musical”) – to name but the most recent of over 50 theatre projects – the radical, three-year experiment “Freie Republik HORA”, in which the ensemble bring their own topics to the stage without a script, author or director, has proved a sensation. HORA’s ‘republic’ also includes a promotional organisation, the “OKKUPATION!” festival which was staged every two years from 2007 to 2013, workshops and the Hora’Band, which most recently appeared with the Zurich group Jaccard/Schelling Drift in “Bad Advice”.
“In a career now spanning almost 25 years, Theater HORA has written a chapter of theatre history marked by great and glorious change. What began in 1993 as a Zurich-based culture workshop for people with learning difficulties or physical disabilities is today a free republic. It stands for a radical aesthetic that lets nothing and no-one stand in its way. Theatre HORA makes professional theatre with people who do not conform to social constructions of normality, and these artists hold an extraordinary, living mirror up to society. Tireless in its artistic endeavours, Theater HORA today stands for the anarchy of life, the joyful acceptance of failure and the rich diversity of existence.”
Kaa Linder, jury member
