Performance: 5pm & 8pm; book launch: 6.30pm
Ticket price: €12; buffet dinner: €5
Ticket sale: Het Veem Theater
Language: English

On Sunday 1 July If I Can’t Dance and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam present Keren Cytter’s performance Show Real Drama at Het Veem Theater in Amsterdam. Show Real Drama is a performance with Susie Meyer and Fabian Stumm, about two young actors and their attempts to make a showreel that will help them find work. Their personal life and their professional life on stage collide as they are confronted with the scenes from their showreel. The performance will be presented twice, at 5pm and at 8pm. In between the performances, at 6.30pm and accompanied by a buffet dinner, If I Can’t Dance launches the new publication D.I.E NOW – The True Story of John Webber and His Endless Struggle with the Table of Content, a monograph on the first performance by Keren Cytter commissioned by If I Can’t Dance.

Show Real Drama
Show Real Drama is written and directed by Keren Cytter and based on the life of two of her actors, Susie Meyer and Fabian Stumm. Following their graduation from the University of Acting in Salzburg, Meyer and Stumm find themselves unemployed and isolated from the entertainment business. After countless failed attempts to find a job, they decide to write and direct scenes to make their own showreels. In Show Real Drama, the pair presents these portfolio videos and recounts the experiences they had while filming. Meyer and Stumm shift from classical drama to existential embarrassment and from elegant dance to violent movement, as they show off their range of skills and struggle to articulate their presence as performers. Through the repetitions of text and gestures, and in between improvised and choreographed moments, a fractured and empathic story unfolds.

Publication: D.I.E NOW – The True Story of John Webber (…)
On the occasion of the performance of Show Real Drama, If I Can’t Dance presents D.I.E NOW – The True Story of John Webber and His Endless Struggle with the Table of Content, a monographic publication that concentrates on one performance by Keren Cytter that was developed as a commission for If I Can’t Dance’s edition on Masquerade (2008-2010). The publication focuses both on the development of this performance and on the working process within D.I.E NOW, the dance company that was established as a result of Cytter’s collaboration with the performers. Catherine Wood contributes with an essay that situates the performance in the context of the history of international dance; Keren Cytter presents a selection of gestures from the choreography of the performances; and performers Andrew Kerton and Dafna Maimon contribute with short essays that offer an insight into the different stages of the performance on tour. The True Story of John Webber and His Endless Struggle with the Table of Content was presented in an international tour that traveled to Tate Modern (2009, London), Performa festival (2009, NYC), Hebbel am Ufer (2010, Berlin), the Van Abbemuseum (2010, Eindhoven) and Tramway (2010, Glasgow).

Partners
The presentation of Show Real Drama in Amsterdam is realised through the collaboration of If I Can’t Dance, the Stedelijk Museum, A.P.E (art projects era), and Het Veem Theater, and is financially supported by the Goethe Institut Amsterdam.

Show Real Drama
Director: Keren Cytter
Performers: Susie Meyer and Fabian Stumm
Director of Photography: Keren Cytter and Mia Meyer
Producer: A.P.E (Maaike Gouwenberg)
Technical support: Het Veem Theater

D.I.E NOW – The True Story of John Webber (…)
Editors: Frederique Bergholtz and Maaike Gouwenberg
Texts: Catherine Wood, Keren Cytter, Andrew Kerton, Dafna Maimon
Design: Maureen Mooren
English language editor: Janice McNab
Coordination: Tanja Baudoin
Publisher: Sternberg Press, Berlin, 2012
ISBN: 978-3-943365-25-2