TOOLS is a digital theater lab and festival that is being created in collaboration between the Institute for Artistic Research Berlin (!KF), the digital streaming platform SPECTYOU and the audiovisual online service Die Digitale Bühne as well as Theater Rampe Stuttgart.

TOOLS is a hybrid format. The three-day festival program can be streamed completely digitally on spectyou.com and the performances of the hybrid festival day (Oct. 16) can additionally be experienced analog and live at Theater Rampe in Stuttgart.

TOOLS presents groundbreaking existing works of digital theater, as well as premieres, tryouts, and interactive experiments that have been created at the intersection of analog and digital theater, and whose methods and narrative approaches respond to current developments and innovations in the artistic and technical fields. Together with artists and audiences, we go in search of digital-analog hybrid formats and new narratives for a theater in pandemic and post-pandemic times.

TOOLS presents extraordinary and innovative further developments of net theater: a series of selected digital projects, available on demand, and live streams of hybrid plays, such as from the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden. Four new projects are being developed especially for the festival in a digital theater lab and will premiere at TOOLS.

With the panel „New Spaces – Perspectives on a Hybrid Theater“ we explore the question of how new technical possibilities change dramaturgies, production methods and viewing habits in the theater. The streamed productions will be available online after their premiere until Oct. 24.