AECFest 2025 | INTERVIEW WITH FRITZ COMPANY

1. Please introduce yourselves and share a bit about how Fritz Company first started.

Our collaboration began in Istanbul in 2013 with the project Yuvaya Dönmek, Babam için – Back Home, to my Father, created for the Istanbul Municipal Theatre. From that first encounter, a shared journey took shape, which over the years has led us to develop both pedagogical and artistic work, weaving together experiences with artists from diverse cultural backgrounds. In 2020, during the pandemic-induced pause, we took the time to reflect on the meaning of our artistic practice. It was at that moment that we decided to give our project a more defined structure by founding the Bigi Paoletti FRITZ Company. 

2. Your latest work That’s All Folks!, to be presented in Shanghai as part of the Asia-Europe Festival Cultural Festival 2025, is both transdisciplinary and cross-cultural, putting together theatre, dance and performers from various corners of the globe. Could you share more about the process of developing this piece and how these various dimensions contributed to what you’ll be presenting in September? 

That’s All Folks! was conceived as an ideal continuation of our previous work, Un Discreto Protagonista, and represents the second chapter of a trilogy that brings dance, science, and myth into dialogue. While Un Discreto Protagonista focused on the origins of the universe — on the physical and astronomical processes that gave rise to it and were later translated into myth — this new creation shifts the attention to the arrival of humankind in the history of the cosmos, or more precisely, to the relationship between humans and the universe. 

For this research, we brought together artists with diverse backgrounds, coming from distant worlds and cultures, to nurture a creative process that could explore multiple perspectives. The intention was to shape a shared space, a common ground where different “stories” could resonate together and generate new visions. 

We sought a stage language that would emerge from a living relationship with the themes we were exploring, allowing both individual and collective imaginaries to come to the surface. Following an initial phase of theoretical and dramaturgical research, we began building an open structure — one that, enriched by the various contributions of dance, music, light, sound, and scenography, gradually took shape over time. 

3. Along your careers, you’ve had many notable collaborators and supporters such as Pina Bausch Zentrum and Dimitris Papaioannou, among many others. How have these partnerships shaped your artistic approach and the role that collaboration plays in your creative process?  

We believe that encountering the places where the creative process takes shape significantly influences both the work itself and the experience of the entire team. In saying this, we also affirm that our choices regarding where to work and rehearse are deeply connected to the nature of the research we are undertaking. These residencies are also the outcome of a long journey developed over time — in Wuppertal with Pina Bausch, in France, Italy, or with Dimitris Papaioannou. It is inevitable that these experiences, now deeply internalised, shape our approach to creation. 

Some encounters, for instance, with Dimitris and Pina in Damiano’s career, and the one with José Sanchis Sinisterra for Alessandra, have been among the most meaningful. It isn’t easy to describe precisely how these figures have influenced us, and often we discover it only during the creative process, when we recognise what remains in us of their example. 

We believe that what matters most is to stay sincere in the research — not to deny our influences, but to leave ample space for the unconscious to guide the imagination, sensations, and studies, and to allow ideas to find their own path.