II. Bergman’s – Playfulness and Control

Prague - June 2005

This edition focused on the fact that everyone in the house was very playful (for example the wife would sometimes surprise the husband by picking him up at the airport in wig and costume), but everyone had their strict limits which had to be respected, like the husband’s collections which spanned across the home were not to be touched...

Produced by Alfred ve dvoře Theater, Šarka Havlíčkova Artistic Director. There was an interactive restaging of this performance a week or so afterward at Alfred ve dvoře.

Artistic team: Monika Černouškova, Howard Lotker, Sodja Lotker, Andrea Miltner, Philipp Schenker, Martin Vasquez, Stanislav Abraham

III. Lipert’s – The Life Cycle

Prague - November 2005

The couple had prior to meeting each other both spent lots of time in Hari Krishna circles, and the style of their home decoration and objects there still had lots of influence from that, so it made sense to use as the dramaturgical framework, the Hindu life cycle of birth / life / death / rebirth, which took place in the rooms of the house associated with them. The audience went through the space and interactively experienced the themes from the family’s point of view - step by step.

Produced by Alfred ve dvoře Theater, Šarka Havlíčkova Artistic Director. There was an interactive restaging of this performance a week or so afterward at Alfred ve dvoře.

Artistic team: Monika Černouškova, Howard Lotker, Sodja Lotker, Andrea Miltner, Philipp Schenker, Martin Vasquez, Tomas Marny Moravek

IV. Caffery’s Pub – What lies under the surface?

Prague - March 2006

We were asked by the owners of the pub in Old Town Square in the heart of historic Prague, to do a version of DoMA / at HoME there – we began as always with the question, who lives here? And realized that this performance would have to be about the employees… The audience members were met in front of the clock tower in Old Town Square, picked up by our fake tour guide company member Monika, then taken into Caffery’s Pub where they mixed with the ordinary patrons… The audience heard what the people working there were thinking through the loud speakers, then eventually video of the cook going a bit mad interrupted the sports matches on TV… The interventions continued, and finished with the audience and bar patrons being invited to send postcards from Prague to someone at home with their real feelings on them!

Produced by Alfred ve dvoře Theater, Šarka Havlíčkova Artistic Director.

Artistic team: Monika Černouškova, Howard Lotker, Sodja Lotker, Daniela Voračková, Philipp Schenker, Martin Vasquez, Tomas Marny Moravek

V. The Past is Present

Bratislava - April 2006

This version took place in an old fashioned, central, residential apartment in Bratislava where there were 4 roommates who didn’t know each other well, and a mix of locals and foreigners currently living there. All the roommates were working in activist internet and radio groups, so they spent most of their working and free time online, so there was a kind of post-apocalyptic, yet simple and practical influence on the space where they lived and worked. So we inserted onto the reality of this contemporary apartment life, a layer of people who could have lived there from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, when the building was built. And we set up some interaction between these two worlds and the audience too..

Touring performance organized by Prague based production network Nova Sit / New Web – to Bratislava as part of Site-Specific Festival – Multiplace

Artistic team: Monika Černouškova, Howard Lotker, Sodja Lotker, Andrea Miltner, Philipp Schenker, Alexander Komlosi

VI. Hanka, Zdenka, Dan and Jan - What Lies Beneath

Prague - December 2007

This edition took place at the home of 4 roommates Hanka, Zdenka, Dan and Jan, all Czechs who were currently in University or had just finished. They were all fascinating and complex people who looked completely ordinary on the outside but were interesting and deep, a mix of people working and planning to work in ecology, biology, activism and fine arts… So throughout the performance in their home we made the contrast between their outer lives and inner lives in surprising and sometimes interactive ways, like instant collage, an installation of a real butchered pig in the closet, people playing with Zdenka’s works of art, lifesize dolls…

Produced by Alfred ve dvoře Theater, Šarka Havlíčkova Artistic Director

Artistic team: Monika Černouškova, Howard Lotker, Sodja Lotker, Jenni Kokkomaki, Philipp Schenker, Martin Vasquez, Tomas Marny Moravek

VII. Times of Change

Jerusalem - February 2008

DoMA / at HoME in Jerusalem in the Shapira family home who lived right across the street from the wailing wall. It was a house where their children had grown up but no longer lived, so there was a lot more space than they needed and they were thinking of selling the place… We activated a relationship between the home’s and family’s past and present through installation, movement pieces, interaction, and even offering the audience the chance to purchase the house!

This was the first DoMA / at HoME workshop in cooperation with The School of Physical Theater First Year Performance students in Jerusalem

Artistic team: Howard Lotker, Sodja Lotker, Reut, Moran, Noa, Nofar, Gal, Shira, Rut and Anna

VIII. What do you Hunger for?

Prague - May 2010

Took place at the apartment, gallery, cooking school, restaurant, artist workshop called Hunger, which was also the home of Michaela (CZ) and Michael (US), she is an artist, art teacher, and translator, he is a former banker in NYC, currently working as a cook and cooking teacher in his Žižkov apartment, and creator of the Hunger concept… The performance looked at the potential (and hunger we have) for self transformation, and the different way we can realize this, it also looked at the different ways men and women typically deal (and / or don’t deal with this)…

Produced by Alfred ve dvoře Theater, Šarka Havlíčkova Artistic Director. There was an interactive restaging of this performance a week or so afterward at Alfred ve dvoře.

Artistic team: Howard Lotker, Sodja Lotker, Cristina Maldonado, Philipp Schenker, Chip Persons

IX. DoMA Na Poříčí

Prague - November 2010

With roommates Caroline, Marek, Markus, and Benjamin: in a central flat in Prague on Na Poříčí street– exploring the conflicts, absurdities and joys of life with constantly changing roommates from different countries, different tastes, different ages groups… Exploring the harmonies and discords in such places interactively in a variety of ways in different locations throughout the flat…

Produced by Alfred ve dvoře Theater, Šarka Havlíčkova Artistic Director..

Artistic team: Dora Bouzková, Monika Černouškova, Howard Lotker, Philipp Schenker, Ioana Popovici

X. The ArteFacts

Bielefeld - October 2011

At the home and artist studio workshop of Pascale Graebener and her young daughter, Mayada in Bielefeld, Germany. The audience was led in small groups to the ground floor, plastic covered apartment walls by men in uniforms, as if they were visitors at an archaeological site. Inside the dig they uncovered the homes contents and inhabitants too, in some rooms they discovered things, in others they were told stories from Pascale and Mayada’s lives…

Part of a specially created, one time festival inspired by our performance, called Art at Home Festival, in Bielefeld Germany, created by Theater Labor’s Artistic Director Siegmar Schröder after seeing our presentation of DoMA/at HoME at Alfred ve dvoře Theater.

Artistic team: Monika Černouškova, Howard Lotker, Sodja Lotker, Philipp Schenker, Christina Maldonado, Jenni Kokkomäki

XI. HoGAR / at HoME Utopia?

Mexico City - August 2012

The performance took place in a new block of high security flats, in the middle of a slum like so many being built all over Mexico in those days. Inside the building were lots of small apartments where upper middle-class families are squished together. The family had a history and present of left wing politics and science and government management. How can we accept that our ideals can never be fulfilled, how can we try to do it even so?

Change / Exchange workshop project - invited by Christina Maldonado in cooperation with Centro Cultural Universitario Tlatelolco and UNAM

Artistic team: Itzel Nathalie Aparicio, Diana Garcia, Susanne Kass Howard Lotker, Diana Lizardi, Alejandro Lugo, Adrian Nuche, Tomáš Prochazka, Christina Maldonado, Maria Fernanda Manzo, Pablo Sierra, Sodja Lotker

XII. Hjemme / at HoME – 8 Beginnings and 48 Ends

Frederiksberg - May 2013

The performance took place in Frederiksberg Norway in a house in the small town (and smaller) suburbs in Froydis and her son Herman’s house. Both Froydis and Herman are very smart and playful people, who were in an incredibly transitional and transformational time of their lives when we met them, he is graduating high school and moving out, she is going to be without her child at home for the first time in 19 years… We worked with these themes and materials site specifically and interactively throughout the whole house, the climax and finale of the show was when the son’s and friends’ Rusbus, a Norwegian tradition of making a end of school party bud with your friends, came to pick the audience up…

Part of a Change / Exchange workshop at Norwegian Theatre Academy invited by Professor Serge von Arx with his first year Scenography Bachelors students…

Artistic team: Howard Lotker, Sodja Lotker, Ann, Mirjam, Coco, Inga, Corentin, Matias, Natal

XIII. Yes, yes, yes I can! DoMA / at HoME Vilnius

Vilnius - August 2014

Invited by Saulė Norkutė, Lithuanian Director and Performer who heard about the performance at a presentation of DoMA / at HoME at Central School of Speech and Drama where she was getting her Masters. She contacted me if I would be interested in working with SOS home in Vilnius, I agreed, and we set about to construct a dramaturgy that would help support the children’s self-esteem, and created a concept where they cocreated and helped to install site specifically, what they liked best about themselves, or what they want to be when they grow up. The performance began with a pretend schoolmaster giving a wacky first day of school speech, after which the audience was taken from room to experience different performances, installations, and interactive events…

Produced by Gintė Pranckūnaitė in cooperation with Lithuanian Theater Institute, and SOS Children's Villages in Vilnius.

Artistic team: Howard Lotker, Saulė Norkutė, Paulina Nešukaitytė, Gintė Pranckūnaitė, SOS Social Worker Skaistė, and 5 Children from the SOS children’s who remain anonymous for privacy reasons

XIV. KoTONA / at HoME Helsinki – A Better Place

Helsinki - August 2016

A Change / Exchange workshop collaboration between local artists and students and our longtime company members from Prague, in a local flat where a recently separated mom Olga and her three daughters, recently returned from living with the Finnish father in India, were currently living. The performance was an exploration of our human need to improve things for ourselves and our family using our mind and talents, while acknowledging that all efforts will ultimately fail because nothing overcomes destruction and death. The performance began in the central hallway of the flat where the pieces of their broken Buddha statue were waiting to be repaired with precious metals in the Japanese Kintsugi tradition. The audience went from room to room experiencing the energy and ideals of all the inhabitants… The final room was the storage room, where lots of photos and documents were displayed and destroyed interactively.

A Change / Exchange project – invited by Jonna Strandberg and Mikael Aaltonen Co-Artistic Directors of URB Festival (at Kiasma gallery) to collaborate with local artists and local family..

Artistic team: Howard Lotker, Cristina Maldonado, Jenni Koistinen, Evelina Villonen, Virpi Nieminen, Johanna Puuperä, Krista Arppo

XV: NaME / at HoME Rebirth of a House

Kaunas - October 2018

a Change / Exchange workshop collaboration between local artists, students, and longtime company members. It was an exploration of an old villa in the historical center of Kaunas, the former capital city of Lithuania, a long-neglected house No. 5 V. Putvinskio Street, was the location and topic for the Theater Festival HOUSE in Kaunas, created by Paulina Nešukaitytė and Renata Bartusevičiūtė, the theme and title of the festival are inspired by our previous collaboration in Vilnius SOS Children’s Village. The house is rich in history: it was home to the Tarabildos family of famous Lithuanian artists, graphic designers, yogis, and free thinkers. Now the house was about to have new inhabitants, the family of Pediatrition and toy collector Tomas Biržietis, Director of P. Mažylis Maternity Hospital, was about to move in, while the house is awaiting renovation, the owners agreed to let the festival take place there.

We were able to do research in the half-ruined home, found evidence from Soviet era reconstructions. We also did research with Dr. Biržietis’ family and toy collection at their current home, and interviewed the only surviving member of the Tarabildos family Ramon, who had lived at that house as a young boy and had not been back since. We were able to have him at the premiere! The performance explored the different layers of past, present, and future of the home through video and sound installation, performance, and interaction in 9 different rooms of the house.

A Change / Exchange project in cooperation with the first edition of the Theater Festival HOUSE, in Kaunas Lithuania. The name and theme of this sites specific festival are inspired by HoME theater’s DoMA / at HoME, the co-founder of this festival Paulina Nešukaitytė, collaborated on HoME in Vilnius.

https://www.namaskurti.lt/en/

Artistic team: Howard Lotker, Daniela Voračková Cristina Maldonado, Paulina Nešukaitytė, Eglė Dambrauskaitė, Andrius Stakelė, Arnis Aleinikovas, Andrius Stakelė