Continuing the exploration of globalized natural resources as content for theatrical performances, post theater moves from fish to coffee. In order to deal with one of the most popular drinks in the world, post theater invites six choreographers to work with a problematic piece of historic pop culture: Almost all German kids had to learn a rather xenophobic cannon in school, "C A F F E E“.

C − A − F − F − E - E:
Do not drink so much coffee!
The Turkish drink is not for children,
It weakens the nerves,
Makes you pale and sick.
Don’t be a “muslim-man”,
Who cannot refrain from it.

Generations of music teachers loved the song for its witty arrangements of letters as musical notes (C A F F E E) and its pedagogical agenda, not worrying too much about its offensive xenophobia. In times of migration and multi-ethnic urban societies, the song cannot be sung any more. The project “C A F F E E” takes the song as a point of departure for a research on the migration of the coffee itself. The truly universal drink has a history that leads from Ethiopia to Jemen, from there through the Arab to the Ottoman world, through Venice and Vienna to Europe and due to 19th century imperialism to all over the world. Coffee has always been marked as the exotic “other”. It has been used for a great range of projections and imaginations − medical as well as spiritual, fantastic or scientific. But it has always been a social drink. In different eras, different groups of people would drink it for different occasions and, increasingly, at special venues − the cafes − places named after the drink itself. Coffee played a special role as drink of revolutionaries, artists − and women.
post theater has been awarded with the Bremer Autoren- und Produzentenpreis 2010 − an award for interdisciplinary performing arts projects that “challenge the idea and concept of the author in the performing arts”. Bremen is the number one port for coffee in Germany.

The 7th Bremen Authors’- and Producers’ Award of the Schwankhalle (Bremen, Germany) goes to the project CAFFEE by post theater. The award consists of 15.000 EUR and a production of the concept in 2011.

The jury’s statement (excerpt):
" The project CAFFEE by post theater (Max Schumacher and Hiroko Tanahashi) is a convincing example that it is possible to reach outstanding intellectual depth and broadening the concept of authorship in a playful way - without relying on the strategies of hermetic conceptualism.
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post theater deserves the Bremen Authors’- and Producers’ Award of the Schwankhalle 2010 for another reason as well. They have proven in earlier projects a successful way how to develop interdisciplinary thinking, perspectives, work and production methods coherently out of the intended content.” …
The full statement is on www.schwankhalle.de