Category Independent Production Houses 2024

FELD Theater for Young Audiences

Drei Performer*innen in Bewegung. Auf ihre Körper wird Text projiziert.
© Philipp Weinrich

This year, the FELD Theatre for Young Audiences in Berlin-Schöneberg is being honoured in the ‘Independent production houses’ category. The award is endowed with €100,000.

Jury statement

The FELD Theater für junges Publikum in the Berlin district of Schöneberg is an innovative, inclusive and intergenerational production venue for artistic encounters and developments that impresses through its artistic and structural change in action. Since it opened in December 2018, the FELD has become an outstanding venue for young audiences that is rapidly developing and evolving, proving that even a small venue with a small team can achieve great things. Its explorative and participatory way of working, which includes close cooperation with daycare centers, schools and social actors, promotes political thinking and self-empowerment for young people as well as age-open approaches. In in-house productions and co-productions with a wide range of aesthetics, renowned artists and groups from the independent scene, who often stage productions for young audiences here for the first time, deal intensively with topics relevant to everyday life such as the environment, climate, sustainability and the future. In doing so, the theater opens up to the neighborhood while also being internationally networked through its collaborations. The jury would particularly like to highlight the theater’s focus on inclusion and the deaf community, something that is very consistently anchored both in terms of personnel and programming, such as through bilingual productions with integrated German sign language. Despite its young history, and with a keen eye for long-term processes, the FELD contributes significantly to progress and research in children’s and youth theater and gives hope for sustainable results in the form of significant knowledge production. For all this, it well deserves the 2024 Theaterpreis des Bundes in the Independent Production Houses category. 

Introducing