‘and then the doors opened again’ workshop: as spectators, what do we crave for now?

On April 8, 2020, in the middle of the first Covid-19 wave in Europe, artist David Weber-Krebs invited his colleagues around the world to participate in a collective act of imagination. He asked them via email to imagine the future of theatre from that specific moment when theatres were closed and it was not clear how, when, and even if they would open again. The answers were compiled in the book and then the doors opened again, which was published in September 2020 by Onomatopee.

Since then, the book has been used as a tool to generate further speculations and reflections about spectatorship in pandemic times and beyond. David Weber-Krebs and dramaturg Simone Basani have worked in different cities (Brussels, Skopje, Rotterdam), through walks around a theatre, conversations, online and offline workshops. In Summer 2021 they had a series of conversations with spectators of different ages, cultures and professions, in Rēzekne and Riga. All these encounters have been documented, their traces collected in the archive of and then the doors opened again. For Homo Novus 2022, David and Simone want to unfold the archive with a group of local artists and intellectuals as a starting point to explore the question: as spectators, what do we crave for now?