We are accustomed to living in very different realities, to adapting ourselves to these realities and to making them useful to ourselves. From childhood on, we have learned to differentiate between television images and our own everyday lives, to differentiate between computer simulations and decisions necessary for our survival, to differentiate between art and nature. However, sometimes we have our doubts: Which story is true and which is false? Which public relations strategies, manipulations and suggestions will make us believe one version more than the other, to trust this image more than another image, to follow this emotion or that emotion? The two Gulf Wars, the events of September 11 and their massive political and military interpretations have intensified these doubts many times over, and once again placed the always virulent questions concerning political propaganda - and in their wake, the questions concerning the small personal lies in our lives - on the agenda.

Vaudeville entertainers always led us to believe the unbelievable. Artists of every epoch played with reality. René Magritte's painting "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" is simply more exciting than the routine of real life. Nowadays, our day-to-day lives, our environment, political and social lives are for the most part staged or seen as being staged: Social engineers, media consultants, political strategists, "embedded journalists" and human relations experts construct media realms of magic, miracles and sensuality for us. "Performance" is everywhere: Is art already superfluous? Is there a possible alternative?

Since the first SPIELART festival in 1995, SPIELART has explored and presented works from contemporary theater artists searching for an answer. The themes had to do with the game with normality, small everyday poetry, obsessive passions, nonconformist counterimages, alternative images, characters sliding along the edge of insanity, and also the big, ancient questions in theater, the questions involving love, power and death. The language and theatrical forms were individual, playful, absurd, hallucinative, or taken from everyday language. But the themes always also had to do with reality - "real" actors (1999), or the audience as a part of the performance (2001).

For some time now, during discussions with the audience about theater we have heard more and more frequently the request that theater should deal intensively with the issue of time once again. The demand for a (re-) politicization of the theater is on the agenda. Many theatermakers and theoreticians are demanding a different, realistic view of our society. Numerous authors, directors and actors are facing the challenge of making theater a utopian place again. This year SPIELART is focusing on the question of what is "real" or "fake" as an answer to the demand for a political theater (once again): A dramatic composition that is merely political or critical of society in terms of its contents and does not search for new, suitable forms for theater ignores the demands of art. It does not just have to do with enlightened contents, it also has to do with thinking differently, with conceiving, writing texts, using images and performing like before.

SSPIELART 2003 presents artists who rediscover "the realness" in their contents and materials. As scouts or even searchers for the truth, they pose questions about realities again; they do their own research on the material of reality. They develop forms of artistic presentation, which replaces "performing" theater with the documentary style of presentation, opening up new horizons of experience and discourse and questioning the ostensible evidence of our "reality of the news" - immediate, playful, with hidden irony and a fine sense of what poetry can be nowadays. They find and invent documents, biographies, theories, film footage or simply just stories. They show us how realities are produced, manufactured, defended, pushed, destroyed or simply remembered - in Poland and in the Netherlands (two countries this year's festival is focusing on), in the U.S., Russia and Argentina, in Great Britain and Belgium, and of course in Austria and Germany (including Munich).

It still is an open question whether these artists in turn will deceive us, the audience, and whether they will play hide-and-seek with us, lure us into insidious traps ...

Search with us for the big truths and the small lies. Venture with us into the realities and unrealities of the theater. We look forward to seeing you at the performances, at the symposium and as guests in the festival center.

At any rate, you can be sure of one thing: This IS a theater festival.

Tilmann Broszat
Gottfried Hattinger