Chorstück

As part of the “Berlin bleibt! #4” Festival

She She Pop conducted interviews with neighbors about living and working at Mehringplatz. In the context of “Berlin bleibt! #4 – Treffpunkt Mehringplatz” they develop a performative game in which residents and passers-by spontaneously and playfully encounter each other in different formations. Who says what about Mehringplatz, in which statements do we find ourselves?

Credits

Concept: She She Pop – in collaboration with Stella Konstantinou and HAU to connect
Text: The text is based on interviews conducted by She She Pop with residents, passers-by and business people at Mehringplatz in spring 2022.

Production and dramaturgical advice: Alisa Tretau. PR, Communication: ehrliche arbeit – freies Kulturbüro. Freelance Communication Support: Tina Ebert. Financial Administration: Aminata Oelßner. Company Management: Elke Weber.

A performance by She She Pop in Co-production with HAU Hebbel am Ufer supported by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media within the program NEUSTART KULTUR and funded by the City of Berlin – Department for Culture and Europe.

A project within “Berlin bleibt #4 – Treffpunkt Mehringplatz”, a festival by HAU Hebbel am Ufer. Funded as part of the Alliance of International Production Houses by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. Supported by: Gewobag.

Dates


past dates:
July 01, 2022, Mehringplatz, Berlin

Shame, Shame, Shame!

Birthday Gala

Foto: Doro Tuch
Foto: Doro Tuch
Foto: Doro Tuch
Foto: Doro Tuch
Foto: Doro Tuch
Foto: Doro Tuch
Foto: Doro Tuch
Foto: Doro Tuch
For more than just a few people, celebrating birthdays is tainted with shame. The situation of being the centre of attention and being celebrated is unpleasant for many. Finding a moment of liberation from social norms by sharing shame is the goal of many She She Pop performances – and is also the impulse behind their birthday party.
In 2018, She She Pop celebrate their 25th anniversary as a feminist artist collective. In cooperation with the HAU Hebbel am Ufer, their base station. For the birthday, She She Pop have invited their fathers onto the stage for the very last performance of Testament and will be exploring questions of ownership in Berlin together with choir and audience in their current production Oratorio. Last but not least, we look forward to the book launch of “Sich fremd werden” – the first book by and with She She Pop. In a big gala the collective is celebrating their first and longest relationship, namely that to the audience.
Over the past 25 years audiences have been steadfastly beside She She Pop. Whether in the scenario of a table dance show, in the glaringly lit circle of chairs at an encounter group, in the studio arrangement of a game show, during a ‘blind date’ by candlelight: there has been lots of opportunity to construct and reveal expectations, to recognize and reverse power relations. Above all there has been plenty of opportunity for shame, indeed on both sides. The birthday will provide an opportunity to tell the story of this variable, even dramatic relationship. She She Pop call on everyone who has suspiciously been eyeing them over the years or even just discovered them, who has played games or danced with them, who went after them with blunt objects, wore their costumes, who has turned red in shame with them or has cried alone in the dark auditorium.
In a big gala She She Pop, along with their longtime musicians Vicki Schmatolla, Max Knoth and Santiago Blaum, invite other comrades, lost and refound companions to join them on stage and on the dance floor. But above all they invite their spectators to join them in a dance. Champagne will be drunk from shoes and euphoric anthems will be sung. Get ready! Put on your shaggy wig, woman, if you don’t I ain’t comin’ back! Oh, shame, shame, shame, sha-ay-ame, shame on you! If you can’t dance, too!  

Credits

By and with: She She Pop and numerous guests. Music: Santiago Blaum, Max Knoth, Vicki Schmatolla etc. Sets: Jan Brokof. Costumes: Lea Søvsø. Videodesign: Benjamin Krieg. Lightdesign, Lights: Micha Lentner, Klaus Dust. Sounddesign: Manuel Horstmann. Technical Director: Sven Nichterlein. Production: Anne Brammen, Johanna J. Thomas. Communication, PR: ehrliche arbeit – freies Kulturbüro. freelance communication support: Tina Ebert. Assistence Birthday: Kaja Jakstat, Laia Ribera, Alisa Tretau. Trainee: Lorena Biemann. Financial Administration: Aminata Oelßner. Company Management: Elke Weber.

Supported by Hauptstadtkulturfonds and the City of Berlin – Department for Culture and Europe.

Dates


past dates:
October 06, 2018, HAU2, Berlin

Some of Us

A "Lehrstück" by She She Pop and the Schauspiel Stuttgart

Foto: Julian Marbach
Foto: Julian Marbach
Foto: Julian Marbach
Foto: Julian Marbach
Foto: Julian Marbach
Foto: Julian Marbach
Foto: Julian Marbach
For “Some of Us”, She She Pop entered the apparatus of the Württembergische State Theater. Highly specialized theater makers from Stuttgart (actors, technicians, designers, administrators, etc.) left their familiar work habitats to take to the stage for a performance of their own “Lehrstück”. The scenic formats, questioning techniques, exceptions and rules are borrowed from Brecht and newly combined to form a utopian image: a working collective, who – artfully in disagreement – nevertheless comes to a kind of understanding. What kind of theater do we need in the future and how can we help to shape it?

Credits

Concept: She She Pop
Artistic CollaborationFanny Frohnmeyer
Set: Natascha von Steiger
Music: Miles Perkin, Hannah Plaß
Video: Tobias Dusche
Dramaturgy: Anna Haas

With: M. Agacdograyan, V. Bähr, S. Bark, F. Benack, L. Bochow, A. Budenz, D. Buirel, B. Burgstaller, S. Clever, K. Dörr, H. Eichhorn, J.Freiburg, M. Glemser, P. Grill, A. Haas, F. Halmburger, L. Herweh, G. Hintermaier, I. Hoeckel, K. Hoffmann, M. Johannsen, S. Käshammer, C. Kaever, J. Koch, L. Lucassen, M. Matzke, M. Meguid, P. Neal, R. Ohm, I. Papatheodorou, A. Petras, H. Plaß, H. Rex, H. Roos-Erdle, F. Rummel, A. Safaei-Rad, S. Safranek, H.-W. Schmidt, E. Schnatmann, S. Schnitzer, A. Schuler, T. Smolnik, V. Spatz, C. Staudt, N. von Steiger, M. Stiller, Y. Stock, D. Strobel, B. Stumpf, M. Ulrich, A. Vajzovic, V. von Waldow

Funded by the Doppelpass Fund of the German Federal Cultural Foundation.

Trailer

Dates


past dates:
May 14-25, 2015, Schauspiel Stuttgart, Stuttgart
February 26, 2015, Zweite Präsentation, 17:30 Uhr, Eintritt frei, Stuttgart
September 27, 2014, Erste Präsentation, 17:30 Uhr, Eintritt frei, Stuttgart

Press

Reviews of the premiere, May 2015

The fact that resorting to Brechtian approaches in this very funny, never boring 120-minute production doesn’t feel outdated at all is one of the many surprises of this evening. Asking questions, very simple questions, repeating these questions, demanding explanations and changes and thus blurring the boundaries between illusion and reality – this comes across very fresh on stage, never half-baked or overly theoretical. The actors as well as the alleged invisible workers come across very well on stage. The collective consisting of independent theater makers, the ensemble and the theater’s employees did all of the work in creating this evening examining the working conditions of theater.
Dorothee Schöpfer, Stuttgarter-Zeitung, 14.05.2015

They visited Schauspiel Stuttgart over and over for more than a year in order to artistically survey this behemoth: meetings, interviews, workshops as well as negotiations determining who would be paid what if they are not one of the actors who appear on stage. The performance group documented the process in a collection of loose sheets of paper that they provided to the audience as a program. (…) Documents reflect the various stages of the development process: from the funding application to Germany’s Federal Cultural Foundation to concept statements to emails with the participants. The audience learns that one or another participant actually wanted to leave the project and that the attempt to bring theater employees from the workshops on stage lead to large organizational entanglements – because life backstage also means a life with a working time account, overtime and deficit hours. The fact that technicians and artisans also end up standing on stage at the end of the day speaks of the success of She She Pop’s persuasive efforts but is most of all a boon for the production.
Kristin Becker, Theater Heute 07/2015

Ende

Foto: Benjamin Krieg
Foto: Benjamin Krieg
Foto: Benjamin Krieg
Foto: Benjamin Krieg
Foto: Benjamin Krieg
Foto: Benjamin Krieg
Foto: Benjamin Krieg
Foto: Benjamin Krieg
What is that, where does it belong? This key question posed by every cleaning lady there ever was also precedes the creation of the world. As God begins to give names to creatures and things and ascribes to each his place, order and peace gradually emerge from the chaos: the beginning of the end.
The performance Ende unfolds along the lines of the biblical story of genesis. She She Pop assume the pre-described roles of God, man, Eve, the animals, the plants and the cherubim. The stage is the paradise in which the performers experiment with bringing things to an end, cleaning up, stopping, interrupting, cut, silence, conclusion. One of them will relieve herself of all (self-)images, which the reigning order (to which she belongs) have formed of her sex. She wants to destroy ‘the female image’ based on her own. Will her sex continue to exist at all, if she ceases to represent it?
One of the performers will stifle all perspectives that present themselves, all opportunities for action in a staggering act of self-constraint and force himself into a state of vegetative abandon. A third performer searches for the final order of all things, the perfect pattern – only to then close the doors behind herself for ever.
She She Pop converge on the precipice of the end, that precious moment containing the possibility of something else: a new book, a different partner, a new model of society, a better drink. The heavenly hosts will accompany the action with a very personal swan song from Meat Loaf’s album ‘Bat Out of Hell’.

Credits

Concept: She She Pop.
With: Sebastian Bark, Fanni Halmburger, Lisa Lucassen, Mieke Matzke, Ilia Papatheodorou.

Stage and Costumes: Sandra Fox. Choreography: Minako Seki. Music: She She Pop and Max Knoth. Lightdesign: Benjamin Schälke. Dramaturgical advice: Nina Tecklenburg. Artistic advice: Veronika Steininger. Production/ PR: ehrliche arbeit – freelance office for culture. Financial Administration: Aminata Oelßner. Company Management: Elke Weber.

A Coproduction of She She Pop, HAU Hebbel am Ufer and Forum Freies Theater Düsseldorf.

premiere, October 2013, Berlin

Funded by the City of Berlin and the Fonds Darstellende Künste e.V.

Documentation

Dates


past dates:
September 12–13, 2015, Schwankhalle, Bremen
January 23–25, 2014, FFT, Düsseldorf
October 10/11/12/13, 2013, HAU, Berlin
October 8, 2013, HAU, Berlin

Press

On Sunday, the nationally celebrated theater group She She Pop invigorated Schwankhalle Bremen with their virtuously independent theatrical craftspersonship. An allusion-rich piece of discursive theater, where everything is full of significance and rather funny. Sven Garbade, Weser-Kurier, 14.09.2015

“Ende” – is the title of this fantastic new piece by She She Pop, now running at the co-producing venue FFT after premiering in Berlin. The story of creation – seven days, light and darkness – is what three women and a man use to hold their production together. They search of the end of the beginning. This is sometimes witty, self-deprecating, sometimes ironic and laconic, very inventive and always to the point. The way, in which they play with theatrical means, perform them and simultaneously allow them to take effect, is great art. Femininity is a hard currency. Only no one has the time to find out, who profits from it”, says Papatheodorou. Meanwhile, Lisa Lucassen slaves away at Meat Loaf’s album “Bat Out of Hell”. Music, which she heard once too often sitting in front of her brother’s record player. She sings the seven songs one after another and then checks them off a list. “It’s not always nice”, she says. But it is highly entertaining the way she interprets the oozing pathos of these heaven and hell songs with no more than a ukulele. And then there is God aka Mieke Matzke, who attempts to recreate some form of order out of the chaos, the “primordial soup” of duct tape, paper, coat hangers, trash bags, apples and water crates spread across the stage. A touching and deeply human struggle.
Marion Troja, Westdeutsche Zeitung, 25.01.2014

Reviews of the premiere 2013

…That is what this intelligent piece of art is about: It does not celebrate the act of creation, the allegedly genuine and positive challenge of man. It is about the moment after. What happens when something is brought to the world – but will not disappear from it anymore? One thinks of the concept of money or the invention of plastic. Creations that will probably never find an ending. To create something, She She Pop say, is not only an achievement. It is also a responsibility. An idea one should think about more often. Not only in art.
Andrea Heinz, DIE ZEIT, 17.10.2013

…a subtle composition of everyday life and existential moments, the biografical and the fundamental, earnest and wit, humor and pessimism…
Elisabeth Nehring, Deutschlandradio, 08.10.2013

And thus, we come to the She She Pop charm of the evening: the flying splice of the four performers between private person and the performer personality, between ego trip and parlor game.
Sophie Diesselhorst, nachtkritik.de, 08.10.2013

The Rite of Spring

as performed by She She Pop and their mothers
Foto: Doro Tuch
Foto: Doro Tuch
Foto: Doro Tuch
Foto: Doro Tuch
Foto: Doro Tuch
Foto: Doro Tuch
Foto: Doro Tuch

Together with their own mothers, She She Pop are staging their version of The Rite Of Spring based on Igor Stravinsky’s “Le Sacre du Printemps“. The performance focuses on the subject of female sacrifice in the family and in society. In the piece, She She Pop consciously superimpose the religious sphere of ritual human sacrifice from “Le Sacre du Printemps” with the ethical question of personal self-denial between women and men, as well as between mothers and daughters. This superimposition immediately generates reluctance: to sacrifice oneself as a woman for others is today no more than one item on an embarrassingly outdated normative agenda. The overriding importance of self-empowerment and personal freedom has placed an obscure light on all acts of sacrifice and devotion. The archaic rite of spring however stands for the certainty that every community demands sacrifices, is even only really created and confirmed by collective sacrifice.
By superimposing these two spheres, She She Pop touches on a subject that silently stands between the generations. As in Stravinsky’s original piece, The Rite Of Spring unfolds as a ritual: the encounter between She She Pop, their mothers and the audience will be staged in full ceremony. However, unlike the community assembled by Stravinsky to celebrate the spring sacrifice, She She Pop and the mothers are by no means agreed about the procedure, quite the contrary. Doubts began surfacing right at the start. But so did the resolution to attempt this together.

Credits

Concept: She She Pop. By and with: Cornelia and Sebastian Bark, Heike and Johanna Freiburg, Fanni Halmburger, Lisa Lucassen, Mieke Matzke, Irene and Ilia Papatheodorou, Heidi and Berit Stumpf, Nina Tecklenburg.

Director of Photography & Video Installation: Benjamin Krieg & She She Pop. Set: Sandra Fox & She She Pop. Costumes: Lea Søvsø. Musical Collaboration: Damian Rebgetz. Choreographic Collaboration: Jill Emerson. Dramaturical Advice: Ruschka Steininger. Light Design and Technical Direction: Sven Nichterlein. Sound: Florian Fischer. Video Assistant: Anna Zett. Surtitles: Panthea (Anna Kasten).Coordination and Support: Fanny Frohnmeyer, Kaja Jakstat, Ruschka Steininger. Technical Tour Support: Florian Fischer, Manuel Horstmann, Andreas Kröher, Michael Lentner, Sven Nichterlein, Torsten Schwarzbach. Production/PR: ehrliche arbeit – freelance office for culture. Freelance Communication Support: Tina Ebert. Financial Administration: Aminata Oelßner. Company Management: Elke Weber.

A She She Pop Production. In Co-Production with HAU Hebbel am Ufer, FFT Düsseldorf, Mousonturm Frankfurt, Kaserne Basel, brut Vienna, German Language Theater Festival of Prague/Archa Theater Prag, Kyoto Experiment and Théâtre de la Ville/Festival d’Automne à Paris.

premiere, April 2014, HAU, Berlin

Residency funded by Art Center Kyoto, Kyoto Experiment and the Goethe Institute.

Funded by the City of Berlin  – Department for Cultural Affairs and the Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin.

Trailer

Dates


past dates:
June 5/6, 2018, Zona K, Milano
May 11, 2018, International Theatre Festival Reflex, Sfântu Gheorghe, Rumänien
December 15, 2017, Kurtheater Baden, Baden, Schweiz
November 9, 2016, Posthof, Linz
October 1/2, 2016, Salihara International Performing Arts Festival, Jakarta
June 25/26, 2016, HAU, Berlin
November 25/27/28, 2015, HAU, Berlin
November 1, 2015, Internationales Theaterfestival Havanna 2015 im Trianón Theater, Havanna, Cuba
October 31, 2015, Internationales Theaterfestival Havanna 2015 im Trianón Theater, Havanna, Cuba
October 23–24, 2015, Teatro UNAM, Mexiko City, Mexiko
October 16–17, 2015, Hellerau, Dresden
September 4–5, 2015, Festival Short Theatre, Rom, Italien
June 8–9, 2015, The Israel Festival, Jerusalem, Israel
June 18–19, 2015, Festival delle Colline Torinesi, Turin, Italien
April 24–25, 2015, FFT, Düsseldorf
March 19–22, 2015, HAU 1, Berlin
January 15–17, 2015, Kampnagel, Hamburg
December 4–6, 2014, brut, Wien, Österreich
November 26–27, 2014, Archa Theater, Prag, Tschechien
November 16–18, 2014, Kammertheater, Stuttgart
October 4–5, 2014, Théâtre de la Ville, Festival dAutomne, Paris, Frankreich
October 20–24, 2014, Kyoto Experiment Festival, Kyoto, Japan
September 11–14, 2014, Théâtre Vidy, Lausanne, Schweiz
June 26–28, 2014, Kaserne, Basel, Schweiz
June 10–12, 2014, HAU, Berlin
April 26–27, 2014, Mousonturm, Frankfurt am Main
April 12–14, 2014, HAU, Berlin
April 10, 2014, HAU, Berlin

Press

THE RITE OF SPRING as performed by She She Pop and their mothers at Short Theatre Festival 2015 Rom

TV report at 3Sat (in German)

From a post-feminist perspective, it may seem like a banal or even obsolete claim to say that that women are not only victims of male violence, which incidentally plays no role here, but also of their own sacrifices. From the very outset, the fact that, on the surface, She She Pop has simply staged a new, highly unusual interpretation of Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre Du Printemps lifts the project out of the private sphere and into the abstract. Music, even when it is as programmatic as in Stravinsky’s case, eludes the context of linguistic meaning. (…) But the fact that The Rite of Spring is not staged family therapy should not be levelled at it as a criticism. On the contrary, it expresses in a highly precise way – by equally ranking linguistic and non-verbal, technical and musical media – the multilayered female identity along the spectrum of autonomy and sacrifice (or, for those that find that too melodramatic: the renunciation of chances for personal growth). The Rite of Spring is much more than a therapeutic group session. This is fortunate, and also aesthetically pleasing.
Bettina Schulte, Badische Zeitung, 28.06.2014

Of course, there is a temptation to compare The Rite of Spring with Testament. The most noticeable difference is the more direct – and therefore more dramatically rewarding – style of Testament, a play about their fathers. But that is precisely the strength of this play about their mothers: it is at its most eloquent when things remain up in the air. When what is not going to be said is said. But without words. Women and their bodies might seem like a hackneyed subject. But dance is a form of expression from bygone times, when things were either criticised or never criticised. When Mother sabotaged every family get-together with her bad mood. When unsaid expectations hung in the air. With this play, in which the four mothers are not present on stage themselves, but are projected on screens in video recordings instead, the audience has to fill in the gaps with its own ideas. And once again, She She Pop manages to steer clear of clichés; to be radical without over-simplifying. The Rite of Spring is not a tribunal but, well, a declaration of love. At the end we are not confronted with death, as in Stravinsky’s version, but with reconciliation.
Regula Frevler, Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), 15.06.2014

There is still much talk on stage, even if much less than in Testament. The collective has put its private material through the shredder of indirect speech to conceal any exact correlations –only to wheel out all the contradictions: children averse to cuddling, mothers whose love is smothering, the childish desire for closeness, smashed doors, conversation breakdowns, competition, distance that is won and endured at great effort – and the guilty paradox that your own artistic feminist work may have been made possible by your mother sacrificing her own interests. “We don’t want to talk about the presence of these women being at least as important as their absence. Or that we want to be close without talking to them.” So the bodies gain centre stage instead: the genesis of the intensive – and tense – relationship between mother and child is, after all, the physical connection, and, in the case of mothers and daughters, identification is added into the mix. She She Pop plays visually on these childish identifications: the daughters on stage imitate the screen mothers’ improvised dances, and video portraits of the children are superimposed onto those of the mothers, merging into each other and showing astonishing resemblances. Sebastian Bark regresses to a babe in arms at his mother’s breast – a horrifying image. And the mothers join in, huddling like medicine women in their blankets and capes, sometimes miming the part of devouring monsters, without vanity and with a sense of humour. And sometimes with the strange, jerky and touching – albeit completely un-esoteric – ritual with which She She Pop celebrates Stravinsky, complete with a flashing crown with the word “Victim”, lint removers and vacuum cleaners. Utopia as a cautious meeting place for mothers and children – with as much frankness as possible, and as much distance as necessary.
Eva Behrendt, Theater Heute, June 2014

After its world premiere in Berlin, “The Rite of Spring” as performed by She She Pop and their mothers now has come to Frankfurt for no more than two completely sold-out performances at the Frankfurter Mousonturm – we can only hope that the piece will be shown there again in the near future. Not that mothers and children of all ages are presented with a pseudo-artistic systemic family constellation. No – “The Rite of Spring” may at first appear to be as much, but it was not quite as simple and easy for She She Pop, when they put their own fathers on stage in the celebrated production “Testament” four years ago: discussing love and the contracts between the generations against the backdrop of Shakespeare’s “Lear”. The group, who has been working together for 15 years, have not simply produced a cover version for their mothers, but continued their train of thought. Among other things, they reflect that it may be easier to perform with fathers, rather than discover things about mothers. Reservations, limitations and difficulties are laid bare: the fact that mothers and children often use to same words to speak about completely different things. What does it mean when a mother wishes her daughter were “emancipated”? What should a daughter think of a mother, who has been married for 45 years, but has no idea about the family finances? What does “sacrifice” mean for the mother generation, born during the war, and what do mothers and the children understand by suffering, dignity, appreciation and freedom? She She Pop have found a new, clever way to negotiate the issues of mother-child relationships and self-images. The audience faces four brightly patterned screens on which the four mothers of Sebastian Bark, Johanna Freiburg, Ilia Papatheodorou and Berit Stumpf soon appear in images and on film. Right from the start, we therefore have here mother images in a dual sense – images that both performers and spectators must deal with. And right from the beginning, She She Pop also resort to an equally dual theme. The subject of “sacrifice” by women and mothers, which plays such a major role in feminist literature, is interwoven with Stravinsky’s “Sacre du printemps”. After an initial prolog, the music is played in its full length with a few short breaks. This gives the evening its structure and is accompanied by dance, song and clapping. More often than not, the archaic stamping appears a satire of “Dance Yourself Free”, of esoteric workshops and family therapy sessions. But the deliberate rhythms and the simple steps also lend the evening a level of abstraction that allows mothers and performers much freedom.
Eva-Maria Magel, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), 28.04.2014

Reviews of the premiere in April 2014

Dance the Mother! A great show about everything but … guilt and the mistakes that parents make. … so it’s absolutely logical and conceptually stringent that the encounter between mothers and daughters is relocated to the physical realm after the enlightening “preamble”: unlike in the case of the fathers in “Lear”, the backdrop here, with the mothers, is not a play, but a ballet composition from 1913 – with a fairly crude plot from today’s point of view. In Igor Stravinsky’s “Le Sacre du Printemps”, i.e. the “Rite of Spring”, a virgin is sacrificed to appeal the god of spring. The Chosen is forced to ritually dance herself to death. She She Pop have superimposed mundane issues of denial onto the religious story of sacrifice: who sacrifices what in a relationship between man and woman, between mother and child? Of course, right from the start the term “sacrifice” is the evening’s highly productive bone of contention, for as we all know taking a step back and relinquishing is not a very en vogue thing to do in today’s society of personal fulfillment. And although the number of sacrificial acts performed in the past seem obvious at first – three of the four mothers sacrificed their careers for their marriages and their children – over the course of this evening of small gestures and reading between the lines, the coordinates shift and reveal a higher degree of complexity: by giving something up, the mothers also of course developed their own projections onto and expectations of their children, which in turn have produced other, but similarly tough daughterly sacrifices. In the second part, She She Pop mainly turn all of this into dance– not of course into perfectly structured choreography and extended legs, but rather expression and communication – beyond the merely verbal. That this sometimes appears a bit awkward is in no way accidental, but rather – on the contrary – an integral part of this brilliant show’s agenda of honesty.A great show about everything but guilt and the mistakes that parents make.
Christine Wahl, Spiegel online, April 11, 2014

Look, Mother … A play with imagination and reflection, identification and rejection, subjugation, projection and alienation. … both generations are initially suspicious of speaking about sacrifice, about denial and devotion. Personal freedom and female self-empowerment was just as popular among the mothers in their own time. And yet nevertheless, one of them sacrificed her career in order to have a family, the other gave up her own future as an artist out of love for her husband. These biographical slivers, which include stories of emancipation and success, have nothing confessional about them. The performance by She She Pop and their mothers finds a good artistic form in which to embed the personal in a much wider, more extensive context and produce a narrative that many can identify with out of individual and smaller distinctly different stories.
Katrin Bettina Müller, taz Berlin, April 12, 2014

Mamma Mia Cornelia Bark, Heike Freiburg, Irene Papatheodorou and Heidi Stumpf, the mothers of performers Sebastian Bark, Johanna Freiburg, Ilia Papatheodorou and Berit Stumpf, are four very impressive ladies, who fortunately do not lean towards false harmony, in spite of whatever motherly love they may be feeling. Assemblages and recorded rehearsal conversations about setting boundaries, mutual expectations, staking claims, as well as about just how private this piece should be, can be heard from off-stage: “I really don’t want to tell just anyone everything.” The rehearsal process is deliberately used to bring life-long mother-child conflicts to a new level, but profits from the curious, as well as careful way that the three daughters and one son treat their mothers – while taking them much too seriously to conceal any differences. The form that She She Pop has found to do all this makes the piece seem neither contrived nor embarrassingly indiscrete, but rather enlightening. Unlike in the case of the fathers in “Testament”, the mothers are not live on stage. They appear on four large screens, from which they observe, comment on, wonder about their children’s performance and show their pleasure at their reactions. No more or less than what they have been doing since the birth of their offspring. That the children are now in charge is part of the game, which the mothers agreed to – at least for the length of the rehearsal period. The exploration of these mother-daughter and mother-son relationships structures the general issue of who sacrificed what for whom and thus also what the price of old gender roles is. Three of the four mothers gave up their careers for their husbands and children: “Now you have to decide, get married and have children. Of course, this baby didn’t initially fulfill me”, recalls Irene Papatheodorou. She and She She Pop are smart enough to also ask what price must be paid, when self-fulfillment is dictated by society: “I would like to know if there could be a society in which no one is willing to sacrifice anything.”
Peter Laudenbach, Süddeutsche Zeitung, April 14, 2014

Drawers

Foto: Benjamin Krieg
Foto: Benjamin Krieg
Foto: Benjamin Krieg
Foto: Benjamin Krieg
Foto: Benjamin Krieg
Foto: Benjamin Krieg
Foto: Benjamin Krieg
Foto: Benjamin Krieg
Foto: Benjamin Krieg
Foto: Benjamin Krieg
Foto: Nada Žgank / City of Women Ljubljana
Foto: Nada Žgank / City of Women Ljubljana
Foto: Nada Žgank / City of Women Ljubljana
Foto: Nada Žgank / City of Women Ljubljana
Foto: Nada Žgank / City of Women Ljubljana
Foto: Nada Žgank / City of Women Ljubljana

In Drawers, She She Pop (all of whom were raised in West Germany) meets several adversaries raised in the East onstage in order to open up each other’s drawers. A collective biography of the last 40 years should emerge from the personal materials of the performers.
Letters, excerpts from journals, and other personal text documents will be roughly chronologically sorted as well as literature, political texts, each performer’s internal image repertoire, and music. Night after night, the material from the lives of the 3 East-born and 3 West-born performers will be recombined, read aloud, and published. Questions about the other side must be answered as best they can. A history of the East-West German division will be told live, backed up by private and/or publically available text sources, and refereed by memories either in harmony with or contrary to the two great mid-twentieth century worldviews.
She She Pop and their Eastern colleagues search for the objective in the private. They avow polyphony, collective narration. Gaps, incommensurabilities, imprecisions, and missing links are a part of their system. Who were we? Who are we? Why have we become who we are?

Credits

Concept: She She Pop.
With: Sebastian Bark, Johanna Freiburg, Barbara Gronau, Annett Gröschner, Fanni Halmburger, Alexandra Lachmann, Katharina Lorenz, Lisa Lucassen, Mieke Matzke, Peggy Mädler, Ilia Papatheodorou, Wenke Seemann, Berit Stumpf and Nina Tecklenburg.

Dramaturgical Advice: Kaja Jakstat. Sets: Sandra Fox. Costumes: Lea Søvsø. Light Design: Sven Nichterlein. Sound Design: Florian Fischer. Video: Sandra Fox and Branka Pavlovic and She She Pop. Surtitles: Panthea (David Maß). Coordination and Support: Fanny Frohnmeyer, Kaja Jakstat, Ruschka Steininger. Technical Tour Support: Florian Fischer, Manuel Horstmann, Andreas Kröher, Michael Lentner, Sven Nichterlein, Torsten Schwarzbach. Production/PR: ehrliche arbeit – freelance office for culture. Freelance Communication Support: Tina Ebert. Financial Administration: Aminata Oelßner. Company Management: Elke Weber.

Thanks to Anja Dürrschmidt and Marion Müller-Roth.

A She She Pop production.

In Co-Production with the Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, Kampnagel Hamburg, FFT Düsseldorf and brut Wien.

premiere, March 2012, HAU, Berlin

Funded by the City of Berlin, the City of Hamburg, the Fonds Darstellende Künste e.V and the Rudolf Augstein Foundation.

Trailer

Schubladen from She She Pop on Vimeo.

Awards

Nominiert für die Ubu Awards in der Kategorie “Beste ausländische Performance” (Italien).

Dates


past dates:
March 27/28, 2020, Theaterhaus Jena, Jena CANCELLED
October 26/27, 2019, HELLERAU, Dresden
October 01, 2019, Festival Stadt der Frauen, Ljubljana
March 12/14, 2019, HAU, Berlin
January 04/05, 2019, Santiago a Mil, Santiago di Chile
October 10, 2018, Sirenos Festival, Vilnius
December 17/18, 2017, HAU, Berlin
October 11/12, 2017, International Theatre Forum "Teart", Minsk
March 31, 2017, Oldenburgisches Staatstheater, Oldenburg
March 4/5, 2017, HAU, Berlin
October 7, 2016, Europäisches Theaterfestival, Temeswar
July 1/2/3, 2016, HAU, Berlin
May 29, 2016, Theaterfestival, Brno
October 3–4, 2015, Ringlockschuppen, Mülheim an der Ruhr
October 1, 2015, Mousonturm, Frankfurt
September 29–30, 2015, Mousonturm, Frankfurt
July 11–12, 2015, Athens Festival, Athen, Griechenland
June 28–30, 2015, HAU, Berlin
April 17–18, 2015, Bo:m Festival 2015, Seoul, Südkorea
March 4–5, 2015, Schauspiel, Leipzig
October 14–17, 2014, Théatre de la Ville, Paris, Frankreich
September 5–6, 2014, Kunstfest, Weimar
May 1, 2014, Tanz und Theater. Internationales Festival / E-WERK, Freiburg
April 30, 2014, Tanz und Theater. Internationales Festival / E-WERK, Freiburg
February 1–2, 2014, Schauspiel, Stuttgart
January 4–7, 2014, HAU 2, Berlin
January 31, 2014, Schauspiel, Stuttgart
November 15, 2013, Archa Theater, Prag, Tschechien
October 29–30, 2013, Schubladen eröffnet das Festival Unidram, Potsdam
October 18–20, 2013, Art Center, Kyoto, Japan
July 5–6, 2013, Impulse Festival, Bochum
May 11–13, 2013, Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brüssel, Belgien
April 17–18, 2013, , Basel, Schweiz
March 15–16, 2013, Hellerau, Hellerau, Dresden
February 7–9, 2013, brut, Wien, Österreich
January 3–5, 2013, HAU, Berlin
November 22–24, 2012, HAU, Berlin
November 15–17, 2012, FFT, Düsseldorf
July 20–22, 2012, Santarcangelo , Festival , Santarcangelo, Italien
March 22–25/28–29, 2012, Kampnagel, Hamburg
March 9-11, 2012, HAU, Berlin
March 8, 2012, HAU, Berlin

Press

… just yell “Off to the Baltic Sea“ and East German women will promptly strip off their clothes and run naked looking for the shoreline. So say their West German counterparts gossiping over a glass of Prosecco. In the East, however, gossip is done over vodka. These are the… mercilessly recognizable stereotypes used by the six women … to judge and denounce one another. This self-irony runs throughout the entire piece… This clever humour … also reveals something that is however often overlooked in daily life. The degree to which our biographies, even those traits that we feel to be entirely individual, are shaped by growing up in a specific environment and how difficult it is… to shed this conditioning.
Matthias Bischoff, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 1.10.2015

East and West are really only then sisters in spirit when the subject turns to Katharina Witt … and lo and behold, East and West roll along on their office chairs, full of verve and devotion, as if the wheels were skates. But other than that? At all other times the Ossi and Wessi women in She She Pop’s “Schubladen” still consider each other quite strange and a little uncanny …. The “Schubladen” perspective on their own (female) socialisation is pretty funny, but not without a caustic sting to it: three Ossi and three Wessi women sit facing one another for two cheerful hours, asking questions, digressing and settling scores…. Memories are rolled in on handcarts, (school)books, records, diaries, friendship books… The talk revolves around West German care packages (if only the damn Westerners would have packed tampons), as well as favourite music (Tanita Tikaram, oh my, whatever happened to her?). It is about the ways that East-German and West-German women remember the fall of the wall – or have no memory of it at all. It is about vodka or prosecco: the latter is only drunken by those Wessi wussies. It is about what was really written in those feminist (West) and socialist (East) books and whether they could be believed. It is about freedom and sex. The temporal distance to the anecdotes, quotes, music titles unearthed here, is in itself the source of much mirth… the matter-of-fact, even dry tone of the six actresses adds to the humour.
Sylvia Staude, Frankfurt Rundschau, 1.10.2015

…Finally making their debut on a Greek Stage after taking Europe by storm the collective, which specialises in works that dissect social rituals and media systems, the group brings personal experience to the force with candor and spontaneity. She She Pop place individual conflict into a historical standpoint, portraying the German reunification as a sort of couples therapy, in an effort to mend a broken relationship.
Vangelis Tsonos, Athens Views, 03.07.2015

In terms of the body, it clearly interests the performers so much that they understand how to deal with it perfectly. ‘My gynecologist says she can recognize women from West Germany instantly in a sauna: they’re shaved everywhere‘, said a member of the East German team, for example. ‘West German women are like this’, ‘East German women are like that’: in both camps, the group of six have a good time making fun of such notions. The West German women question their feeling of superiority that is so firmly anchored that you no longer notice that East German women do not have any “ostalgie” but are also not fascinated by the Western model. (…) The members of She She Pop understand how to find the proper form, as simple as it is penetrating. The East Germany – West Germany debate takes place in front of a giant screen at the back of the stage upon which images of empty meeting rooms are projected. Who can say whether these come from the world of bureaucratic East Germany from the technocratic reunified Germany of today? Fabienne Darge, LE MONDE, 16.10.2014 The texts provoke and and are fun in their subtle hubris and finesse. And: The individual is what counts, for the Ego in this prevailing historic framework takes the place of the sovereign. … it is not about judging the systems but rather about their structure. Very nice!
Magarete Affenzeller, Standard, Vienna, 09.02.2013

Reviews of the premiere in Italy, july 2012

If every summer has its theatrical revelations, then the summer of 2012 had Schubladen, a unique plot by a no less unique company, the Berlin collective She She Pop: … a living family album, which transforms into an articulate collective self-portrait. This rummaging around in memories is refreshingly new, ironic and has a clarity that is almost anthropological.
Renato Palazzi, Il Sole 24 Ore, 26.07.2012

She She Pop surprise the audience with their natural presence on stage and a rare measure of interpretation that presents and practices political theater anno 2000. A wonderful discovery.
Maria Grazia Gregori, L’Unità, 24.07.2012

Back to work with She She Pop, a female collective from Berlin, which was announced with much fanfare. In Schubladen, the most important occurrence in late 20th century European history, the German reunification, becomes a terrain that mirrors individual identities. Everything is revived in the memories of insignificant incidents taken from the lives of the six performers (love affairs, parents, friends, school, …). As they sit on office chairs at three tables, books, records, diaries, etc. serve as props to constantly question each other, give comment, indulge in memories, speak their minds (…) both those from the socialist East, as well as from the capitalist West – in a completely unforgiving way. This creates an inner simultaneity, which is highly interesting in an age of dramaturgical experimentation.
Anna Bandettini, La Repubblica, 22.07.2012

Reviews of the premiere, march 2012

The performers manage to interweave their own personal biographies with the general relationship of West and East Germans. Here, taking one’s pulse doesn’t mean forgetting the rest of the world. Quite a tall order. She She Pop manage this balancing act in a way that is both amusing as well as smart.
taz Hamburg, 24./25. March 2012, Klaus Irler

The Olympic skating program of the Ice Princess Kati “Schubladen” is no simple attempt to review the East-West German past, but rather a string of associated thoughts about what made us what we are. An amusing and profound evening that stays with you long after the show has ended.
Tom Mustoph, taz Berlin – die tageszeitung, 10.03.2012

Shared Images of Femininity There seems to be a kind of consensus concerning Katharina Witt no matter where people come from. Anyhow, when the East and West German women on stage mention the former GDR Olympic medalist, all socio-cultural differences, which so far dominated the evening, seem to vanish into thin air. And the long-legged West woman Nina Tecklenburg revives Witt’s Carmen choreography in grand gestures on her office chair from childhood physical memory. Sitting down. The Rittberger is accomplished with ease in an office chair pirouette. Soon, she is joined by Wenke Seemann from East Germany, whose body seems to be able to recall the pertinent choreographic volte-faces just as spontaneously. And so the two of them whirl more or less synchronized across the stage on their office chairs. Occasionally, they are pushed into the background by the other four irritated co-performers. But rarely for long. For there’s no cure for such avid expressions of enthusiasm. Not with the audience cheering them on… The evening is impressive for its rhythmic timing and the sophisticated symbolism of the costumes chosen for the six ladies. It is easy to glide through the evening on the waves of pretty stories, pleasant music and whitecaps of well-placed punch lines.
Esther Slevogt, Nachtkritik.de, 8.03.2012

A chronicle of East-West German Histories In “Schubladen”, three pairs of women from former East and West Germany interview each other about their childhoods and teenage years. Such a piece, could offer enough enticing incentive to simply reproduce existing clichés of hands-on, hard-drinking, sexually active East German women and consumer chicks from the West. However, here at the Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin, the artist collective She She Pop has produced something completely different. Here two sides of a coin have not simply come together, because they belong together: She She Pop does not linger in the usual German-German tittle-tattle about differences and similarities, but instead explores fundamental ideological and practical everyday differences expressed in language itself … from the point at which music comes into play, this highly nostalgic rummaging in “compartments” (Schubladen) leaves the audience first smiling and then rocking with liberating laughter.
Eberhard Spreng, Deutschlandradio Kultur, 10.03.2012

She She Pop rummages in autobiographical “Compartments” at the HAU in Berlin. Anett Gröschner, a delightfully sarcastic author … stands on the stage of HAU 2 in Berlin and speaks prosaically, sometime slightly bemused about the strange coincidences and impertinences, she faced living in Germany – a whole basket of little, glistening snapshots. She is one of the six protagonists – next to Alexandra Lachmann, Wenke Seemann, Ilia Paptheororou, Johnanna Freiburg and Nina Tecklenburg – of “Schubladen” (Compartments). In this new piece by the performance collective She She Pop, the stage is mainly filled three tables. Two women – one from former East-Germany, one from the former West – sit across from each other at each table. They interview each other about their pasts and rummage around in the biographic compartments and drawers of memory only to discover once again how different or similar memories of childhood and first loves, self-definitions, tastes in music, sexual orientations or their relationships to money feel depending on what part of the country they grew up in. But once the group arrives at a veneration of Heiner Müller, so typical of such circles, and put on a record by the widely accepted band “Ton Steine Scherben”, Germany’s inner unity is restored. Watching six middle-age performers head-banging enthusiastically to Rio Reiser’s “Wir müssen hier raus, wie leben im Zuchthaus…”, while rolling across the stage on their chairs, has its own charm. This German-German summit meeting could have become terribly didactic, but the HAU being what it is, this is no exchange of empty catchphrases, but rather open explorations, with all the embarrassments that diaries (for example) have to offer. When West-German upper-class degeneration clash with East-German question marks (“now be honest, are you parents capitalists?”) and clichés merrily escalate, the situation develops its own idiosyncratic humor. Fortunately the performers are prone to voices their diagnoses with a candid joy for mutual discrimination … In “Schubladen”, She She Pop continue their series of autobiographical research projects, which has by now – after the enormous success of “Testament” together with their fathers – become a genre of its own. The attraction of “Schubladen” is the combination of amusingly or touchingly irritating moments and the unpretentious theatrical concept situated somewhere between traditional pedagogy, monolog, never-ending research project, party and not entirely serious partnership therapy. The self-centered interest in personal identity has a narcissistic streak that is typical for Berlin’s creative class. But She She Pop is smart enough to avoid the pitfalls of vanity, by exhibiting these exercises on self-reflection with nonchalant irony. The tendency to partition life into short anecdotes and the limited degree of new insight gained by the audience is more than compensated for by the cheerfulness that the evening produces.
Peter Laudenbach, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 12.03.2012

Saarbrücker Poetikdozentur

7. Saarbrücker Poetikdozentur für She She Pop
Photo: Benjamin Krieg

Dates


past dates:
June 11, 2018, Schlosskeller, VHS Zentrum Saarbrücken, Saarbrücken
June 18, 2018, Festsaal, Rathaus Saarbrücken, Saarbrücken
May 28, 2018, Mittelfoyer Staatstheater, Saarbrücken

7 Sisters

A group portrait loosely based on Tchekhov

Foto: Benjamin Krieg
Foto: Benjamin Krieg
Foto: Benjamin Krieg
Foto: Benjamin Krieg
Foto: Benjamin Krieg
Foto: Benjamin Krieg
Foto: Benjamin Krieg
40 years of idleness: a generation celebrates its birthday. 7 Sisters is a portrait of women (and men) from a generation of slackers. They are the daughters (and sons) of the feminist movement. They are now at a certain age, in a certain situation. They are emancipated and well educated. The job market has taken them in, challenged them and already shown them their limits.
Now they are having children: a retreat into the private, an obsession with feminity, a narcisstic self-fulfillment trip? These women were never interested in the historical dimension of their existence and their freedom. Nor have they ever had pity with the generation of their mothers, the subjects of the second wave of feminism. Now no one has pity with them. The movement has petered out, emancipation has deteriorated into a private success story. What have these women achieved, who are they? Where do they want to go? And is that still possible?
Four She She Pop performers delve into Chekhov’s drama “Three Sisters” and now mingle with the staff of this satire in order to establish a sisterhood. They wander through Prozorov’s house – the theater itself – in search of the salon: where is the room, the social space where individual worries and sensitivities can be recognized as social circumstances? Where is the room in which the analysis of their living conditions can be condensed into shared demands and concepts?
This piece is about women and their relationship to work. The phantom pains of a generation of postpolitical isolation. A group portrait based loosely on Chekhov.

Credits

Concept: She She Pop. With: Sebastian Bark, Johanna Freiburg, Fanni Halmburger, Lisa Lucassen, Mieke Matzke, Ilia Papatheodorou and Berit Stumpf.

Assistant:Kaja Jakstat. Stage: Sandra Fox. Costumes: Lea Søvsø. Video and Light: Jürgen Salzmann. Sound and Music: Jeff McGrory. Production and PR: ehrliche arbeit – freelance office for culture. Company Management Elke Weber. Assistant Stage: Janna Schaar. Second assistant: Sarah Kuska.

A She She Pop production.

premiere, December 2010, HAU 2, Berlin

In Co-Production with the Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, Kampnagel Hamburg and FFT Düsseldorf. Funded by the City of Berlin, the City of Hamburg and the Fonds Darstellende Künste e.V.

Documentation

Awards

Winner of kulturnews-Award 2011, 2nd prize

Dates


past dates:
December 4/5/6, 2020, Prager Theaterfestival deutscher Sprache,
April 14, 2020, Münchner Kammerspiele, Stream
December 16, 2011, kulturnews-Award 2.Preis für 7 Schwestern,
October 19/21–22, 2011, FFT, Düsseldorf
May 19–21/27–29, 2011, Kampnagel, Hamburg
March 29–30, 2011, Pustervik, Göteborg, Schweden
December 12-14, 2010, HAU 2, Berlin
December 10, 2010, HAU 2, Berlin

Press

„We have been warned repeatedly about Chechov…“ says Sebastian and tries a half-hearted withdrawal – but a that point, he and the rest of the performance group She She Pop are already deep into the grown standstill of the three sisters in the Prosorov house. And into their very own stories with or without children, with work, fear and the problems of aging.
Everybody is hung up on their own, closed into projection screens, monitored by cameras and projected into the audience. Olga, Masha, Irina. Or even Lisa, Berit, Johanna. And Andrej/Sebastian. For the performers of the Hamburg/Berlin group are always both: role and self, inside and outside. And they like to put the audience in the role of the voyeur.
In their recent production 7 Sisters, which after the Berlin premier now stirred the Hamburg audience at Kampnagel factory to prolonged applause, this – projected on seven screens of various sizes forming a towering collage – looks like a mixture of TV confession, doll house and peep hole. There you can see the performers reasoning live – on their „life challenged by little children“, the nonsense of birthdays, the person one used to be, the incongruousness of children and the art world. As always She She Pop take their raw material from their own everyday life, their own lives, their own emancipatory history and cause friction with Chechov. … It is enough to accentuate the circular motions of Chechov’s protagonists. And to deal with one’s own stalemate, the role model one lives by and the difficulty to liberate oneself of it. Until the point where the spectators recognize themselves in this and add yet another layer of meaning into this texture. … not very optimistic, but pretty merciless, very funny … and clever,…
Ruth Bender, Kieler Nachrichten, 21st May, 2011
„She She Pop programmatically turn the private into advanced media theatre. This time, they’ve again dealt with their own lives in an exemplary way. The accusation that this is nobody’s business, is without substance, when and if we, as the audience, realize how much we are affected by what is shown.
taz Berlin – die tageszeitung, December 12th, 2010
“At times, Chekhov’s roles are reflected beautifully in the life and work situations of the performers, such as in the conflict between the “proud-mothers” and the childless fractions in She She Pop.”
Tagesspiegel, December 12th, 2010
“Elementary questions of modern womanhood are being negotiated here: whether to have children or not, to make work the purpose of life or not. Chekhov’s sisters are also in the midst of an existential crisis,… She She Pop’s much acclaimed enthusiatic stage presence turns this performance into great fun. What is most fascinating about the show is the self-referential way of focussing on the actual performers as living examples.”
AVIVA-Berlin Kultur, December 13th, 2010
The performers of She She Pop have reached a certain virtuosity in the art of turning their own lives into raw material for their shows. This time, in the HAU im Berlin, they’ve croseds Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” with their own personal life situations in a ironic and pleasantly unpretentious way…”
Süddeutsche Zeitung, December 22nd, 2010
„She She Pop doesn’t simply engage in a dialogue with Chekhov’s drama: four performers blend in or add themselves to the sisters. They do this using their real names,… and we see: this is a very diverse “sisterhood”. On the one hand, we find ourselves in Chekhov’s house Prosorov, at the same time, we naturally act and reflect from the perspective of today and from a distance… Acting out a role, while being oneself. And presto, a play on the important (and future-oriented) theme of originality in, namely – work… The form She She Pop have given their performance is surprisingly inventive,… Resignation over the purpose of life unites the sisters of old and of today, but the quality of their disillusionment is entirely different. Chekhov’s women asked for social progress in later centuries, She She Pop now look back from the future. The result is no more optimistic…“
rbb Kulturradio, December 11th, 2010

She She P. is the Marquise of O.

Foto: Bettina Stöß
Foto: Bettina Stöß
Foto: Bettina Stöß
Foto: Bettina Stöß
Foto: Bettina Stöß

In Kleist’s Marquise, She She Pop have met their match. Never before or after has the public been so determinedly confronted with personal shame and disgrace: the Marquise announces her inexplicable pregnancy in the local newspaper in order to propose to her unknown, alleged rapist.

What the Marquise has (and which we lack) is a destiny. We watch her speechlessly and full of envy as she wades through low points with her head held high. How does one do that? In a scenic self-experiment, certain members of She She Pop will present the Marquise’s most important strategies and apply them to themselves, in particular: the blind date with the public, the hostile takeover of responsibility, and, last but not least, the initial loss of control due to fainting.

Credits

By and with: Lisa Lucassen and Sebastian Bark.
Dramaturgical Advice: Ilia Papatheodorou. 
Costume & stage design:
 Sandra Fox.
Light Design: Gregor Roth.
Assistant: Sabine Salzmann.

premiere, November 2011, Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin

Documentation

Dates


past dates:
May 22/23, 2013, SESC Festival Palco Giratório, Porto Alegre, Brasilien
November 12/13/18/19/21/30, 2011, Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin
November 11, 2011, Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin

Testament

Belated Preparations for a New Generation based on Lear
Foto: Doro Tuch
Foto: Doro Tuch
Foto: Doro Tuch
Foto: Doro Tuch
Foto: Doro Tuch
Foto: Doro Tuch

“Better thou, hadst not been born than not to have pleased me better.” (King Lear to his daughter).
“Daddy’s working boots have filled their obligation.”(Dolly Parton about her father´s shoes).

She She Pop goes to work on the dramatic canon: In the first scene of Shakespeare’s “King Lear”, the old man makes an attempt to leave his kingdom to his three daughters and thereby to agree on his retirement arrangement – a plan that fails violently. Small wonder, as out of all the barter deals we have ever been involved in, the one between the generations is the most complicated and obscure one. Value and countervalue (i.e. money and love) are always veiled, nobody ever officially agreed on terms of this exchange. This is the case for almost all agreements between generations: they are foul. They never happened. They do not exist. The space that is to be cleared out is brimful with dates and details, jewellery and family trees, legal successions, hereditary diseases, loving vows, home care plans, gas receipts, and a sense of guilt – all of them subjects of public negotiations between daughters and their fathers.
In Testament She She Pop ask their fathers to join them on stage. The theater becomes a hearing room for a utopian process: equilibrium between generations.

Credits

Concept: She She Pop.
With: Sebastian and Joachim Bark, Johanna Freiburg, Fanni and Peter Halmburger, Lisa Lucassen, Mieke und Manfred Matzke, Ilia and Theo Papatheodorou, Berit Stumpf.

Stage:
 She She Pop & Sandra Fox.
Costumes: Lea Søvsø.
Lightdesign: Sven Nichterlein.
Sound: Florian Fischer.
Music: Christopher Uhe.
Dramaturgical Advice: Kaja Jakstat.
Surtitles: KITA (David Maß).
Coordination and Support: Kaja Jakstat, Ruschka Steininger.
Technical Tour Support: Klaus Dust, Florian Fischer, Michael Lentner, Lars Egge Müggenburg, Sven Nichterlein. Production/PR: ehrliche arbeit – freelance office for culture.
Administration: Aminata Oelßner.
Company Management: Elke Weber.A She She Pop production.In Co-Production with the Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, Kampnagel Hamburg and FFT Düsseldorf.
premiere, February 2010, HAU, Berlin
Funded by the City of Berlin, the City of Hamburg and the Fonds Darstellende Künste e.V.

Trailer

Awards

Winner of the “King Lear Arward” 2013 (Toronto, Canada).
Winner of a Dora Award 2013 (Toronto, Canada) as “Outstanding touring production“.
Winner of “Best theatre production in 2012” by “National Theater Association of Korea”.
Winner of the Friedrich-Luft-Preis 2011.
Winner of the Goethe-Institut-Preis at Impulse Festival 2011.
Invited for Theatertreffen Berlin 2011.
Chosen for nachtkritik Theatertreffen 2011.
Winner of the Wild Card of Theaterfestival Favoriten 2010.
Winner of “Best Guest-Performance 2010“ by “Göteborgs-Posten” (Sweden).
Nomination for the UBU Award 2015.

Dates


past dates:
October 1/2, 2018, HAU, Berlin
September 28/29, 2018, HAU, Berlin
December 18-19, 2015, Kammerspiele, München
November 25/26/28/29, 2015, HAU, Berlin
August 28-29, 2015, Kunstfest, Weimar
June 15, 2015, Festival delle Colline Torinesi, Turin, Italien
November 19, 2014, Schauspiel, Stuttgart
October 16-17, 2014, Festiwal Konfrontacje Teatralne / East European Performing Arts Platform, Lublin, Polen
September 9-10, 2014, La Bâtie-Festival de Genève, Genf, Schweiz
July 4-6, 2014, Festival de Almada, Lissabon, Portugal
June 3-7, 2014, Lift, London, England
December 14-15, 2013, Slowacki Theatre, Krakau, Polen
November 19-20, 2013, Le Quartz, Brest, Frankreich
November 14-16, 2013, Théâtre de l´Aire libre, Rennes, Frankreich
June 28-29, 2013, Festival Theaterformen, Hannover
May 18-19, 2013, Festival Perspectives, Saarbrücken
May 15-16, 2013, Le Maillon, Straßburg, Frankreich
April 17-20, 2013, Harbourfront centre, Toronto, Kanada
March 6, 2013, Das Gastspiel von Testament in Seoul im April 2012 wurde durch die "National Theater Association of Korea" als beste Theateraufführung 2012 ausgezeichnet., Seoul, Korea
February 1-3, 2013, On the Boards, Seattle, USA
February 22-23, 2013, Bozar, Brüssel, Belgien
January 31, 2013, On the Boards, Seattle, USA
January 24-26, 2013, PuSH, Vancouver, Kanada
January 19, 2013, Walker, 11:00-13:00, Minneapolis, USA
January 17-19, 2013, Walker, Minneapolis, USA
December 1-3, 2012, Festival d'Automne, Paris, Frankreich
November 28-29, 2012, Festival d'Automne, Paris, Frankreich
November 19-20, 2012, NET-Festival, Moskau, Russland
October 19-20, 2012, 47. Dimitria Festival, Thessaloniki, Griechenland
October 12-13, 2012, Teatro Mayor, Bogotà, Kolumbien
October 5-6, 2012, SESC Santana, São Paulo, Brasilien
July 2-4, 2012, Grec Festival, Barcelona, Spanien
May 9-11, 2012, Le Grand T, Nantes, Frankreich
April 13-14, 2012, Festival Bo:m, Seoul, Korea
March 15-18, 2012, HAU, Berlin,
December 14-15, 2011, TAK Theater, Schaan, Liechtenstein
December 6-7, 2011, Theaterhaus, Stuttgart
December 3-4, 2011, Festival SpielArt, München
November 14-15, 2011, Theaterfestival deutscher Sprache, Prag, Tschechische Republik
November 12-13, 2011, Festival euro-scene, Leipzig
October 28-29, 2011, Festival Politik im Freien Theater, Dresden
October 6-9, 2011, Ulster Bank Theatre Festival, Dublin, Irland
September 7-8, 2011, NO99 Straw Theatre, Tallin, Estland
August 30-31, 2011, STAGE Festival, Helsinki, Finnland
August 18-21, 2011, Theater Spektakel, Zürich, Schweiz
July 2-3, 2011, Festival Impulse, Bochum
June 29-30, 2011, Festival Impulse, Köln
June 23-25, 2011, Kaserne, Basel, Schweiz
June 1-4, 2011, HAU 2, Berlin
May 24-25, 2011, Festival a/d Werf, Utrecht, Niederlande
May 10-12, 2011, Berliner Festspiele, Berlin
April 15-16, 2011, Schwankhalle, Bremen
April 5, 2011, HAU 2, Berlin
February 11, 2011, Testament gewählt beim virtuellen nachtkritik-Theatertreffen,
February 19-20, 2011, Festival des internationalen freien Theaters - Vol 1: Deutschland Yokohama, Yokohama, Japan
January 14/15, 2011, Mousonturm, Frankfurt/Main
December 2-4, 2010, HAU 2, Berlin
November 18-20, 2010, brut, Wien, Österreich
October 28, 2010, Theaterfestival Favoriten, Dortmund
October 9, 2010, Pustervik, Göteborg, Schweden
October 6, 2010, INKONST, Malmö, Schweden
June , 2010, FFT, Düsseldorf
May , 2010, HAU 2, Berlin
May , 2010, Theaterhaus, Stuttgart
March , 2010, Kampnagel, Hamburg
February 25, 2010, HAU, Berlin

Press

Testament was chosen by the “very young” jury of the 2015 Weimar Art Fest as the most heart-rending performance.

… the mutual sharp criticisms voiced and the profound tenderness surfacing in Testament make it simultaneously heartbreaking and heartwarming study of family relationships. Food for thought, for the rest of your life. Kate Basset, The Times Ireland, 05.06.2014

This is a show that feels intensely honest as if it were negotiating the relationships between one generation and another live on stage. We hear the arguments that took place during rehearsal. We sense the disapproval felt about some daughters’ life and work choices. The stage is awash with unspoken resentments, unacknowledged sacrifices and misunderstandings. But it is also awash with love and regret, and, in one of the final scenes, a great litany of forgiveness. It could be sentimental; it could be tricksy. It isn’t. Instead, it searingly exposes the ties that bind, the debts we owe, and the deficits and accumulations of love. Lyn Gardner, The Guardian, 04.06.2014

Intensely uncomfortable, exposing vulnerabilities in their relationships and creatively uncovering the tension of honesty in performance art. The result is an uncompromisingly true and personal production, which punches you with emotion and teaches us what we owe our parents, and how to forgive. Spectacularly inventive and beautifully orchestrated, Testament is not to be missed. Martha Quigley, Plays to see, 04.05.2014

Mix­ing con­tem­po­rary music with pro­jec­tions, a Ger­man ver­sion of the King Lear script, and some danc­ing, She She Pop deliv­ers a ver­i­ta­ble feast for the eyes. Uti­liz­ing the whole stage in inno­v­a­tive ways, She She Pop def­i­nitely deliv­ers a full-blown per­for­mance, break­ing the fourth wall and divulging to the audi­ence their behind the scenes work and process. … the use of mul­ti­me­dia is seam­lessly inte­grated into an already mul­ti­fac­eted play.
Relat­able, charm­ing, hilar­i­ous at times, raw, and blunt, this piece is more than a trans­la­tion and adap­ta­tion of Shake­speare, but rather a work of art, a per­for­mance that incor­po­rates all you could want in a piece of the­atre. … Really, you don’t want to miss this.
SAD MAG, Vancouver, 26. Januar 2013, Emily Ross

In sum, this is a fascinating and disturbing piece — at times almost frightening in its embrace of the cruel contours of geriatrics. In a simple yet brutal scene, we see children methodically undress the fathers, pull on their clothing and then assume the thrones.
…no actor raging through the storm can match the unease this act conveys. The safety net of metaphor evaporates into an uncomfortable confrontation of the vulnerability of age.
Minneapolis Star Tribune, January 18th 2013, Graydon Royce

“Deconstruction” assumes a “reconstruction,” or perhaps even a “rediscovery.” As the text undergoes the deconstruction, it reshapes the play for performance. Think of it as a journey whereby a play is scrutinized, (re-)interpreted, and freshly revealed on stage by a company of artists.
In Germany, such undertakings have been openly embraced, albeit with mixed results. Many shows take pride in being experimental and daring theatrical explorations. An eloquent proof comes from the theatrical collective She She Pop…
Hailing from Berlin, the group has garnered many accolades, along with an inescapable cortege of controversies. Given its stated mission, She She Pop examines the way the canon of classics (Shakespeare being preeminent here) meets our present view of the world…
It is a provocative, engaging, fascinating and highly unorthodox exploration of immediate topics made apparent by their idiosyncratic “reading” (i.e., deconstructed and reconstructed) of Shakespeare’s King Lear. She She Pop’s deconstructed King Lear is, at its core, audacious and relevant…
„Reconstructing King Lear’s Tragic Condition“, commissioned for www.walkerart.org, 14. Januar 2013, Michael Lupu (Senior Dramaturg at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA)

Vor Testament hat She She Pop schon oft Themen wie Gesellschaft und Autorität behandelt, jedoch nie hatte ein Theaterstück den Ausgangspunkt gebildet. Die Gruppe lehnte dies stets ab, denn sie wolle „spontane Situationen schaffen, die die Performer und das Publikum gemeinsam meistern müssen“, erklärt das Kollektiv in einem Interview des Festival d´Automne einstimmig. Doch als eines der Mitglieder 40 wurde, fand She She Pop, dass die Zeit nun reif sei, um die Macht und Verantwortung zu hinterfragen, die Alter und Leistung verleihen. Shakespare, mit seinem König Lear, den erbenden Töchtern und dem unglücklichen Verlauf des Ganzen, hat sich da natürlich aufgedrängt. Doch She She Pop sind ihren Prinzipien treu geblieben: sie selbst zu sein, auf der Bühne, nicht sie als Schauspieler. Den Text als Informationsbasis zu nutzen, ohne ihn zu inszenieren. Einen Dialog mit den Zuschauern anzubahnen, ohne zu schummeln. Und um nicht zu schummeln konnte es im Fall von Testament nur eine Lösung geben: die Väter in das Projekt einzubinden und sie auf die Bühne zu bringen – es gilt schließlich die Frage von Nachfolge und Erbe zu klären. Schwer zu erklären, wie dem Kollektiv diese hervorragende Leistung gelungen ist. Natürlich lachen Sie, wenn Sie sehen, wie Lear in eine mathematische Gleichung verwandelt wird. Jedoch, ohne sich dessen bewusst zu sein, sind Sie hier schon am Kern der Sache: der Diskrepanz zwischen dem Leben eines Mannes, der nach einer Wahrheit sucht, die im Theater nicht zu finden ist und dem seines Kindes, das sich für die Wahrheit des Theaters entschieden hat, die im Leben unauffindbar ist. Es wäre in dieser Banalität sehr hart, um nicht zu sagen unerträglich, wenn es ihm nicht gelänge, ausgerechnet durch die Abwesenheit von Zugeständnissen Brücken zwischen den Generationen zu schlagen und die Dinge neu aufzurollen. Zärtlichkeit eingeschlossen. Um zu erfahren, wie der Umschwung vom Krieg zu einem hoffnungsvollen Frieden geschehen kann, gehen sie ins Theater des Abbesses. Sie sehen dort, am Ende von Testament, wie drei Väter und ihre Kinder ihre Stimmen zusammen erheben, zu einer Litanei des „Ich vergebe dir, …“. Sie werden verstehen, warum.

Brigitte Salino, Le Monde, 30.11.2012

Die deutsche Performance-Gruppe She She Pop präsentiert heute ihr mehrfach ausgezeichnetes Stück Testament in Sao Paolo. Dieses Stück ist paradigmatisch für das in Deutschland praktizierte zeitgenössische Theater, ein überwiegend von Prinzipien der postmodernen Ästhetik geprägtes Theater wie der kollektiven textuellen Schöpfung, einer Verweigerung der szenischen Täuschung und einer komplexen Mischung fiktionaler und realer Elemente…
Folha de Sao Paolo, 06. Oktober 2012, Marcio Aquiles

Brilliant, einfallsreich, streng, voller bemerkenswerter Momente. … Marthaler hätte es nicht besser orchestrieren können.
El Paìs, Madrid, 14.Juli, 2012, Marcos Ordónez

Wenn die erste Vorstellung des diesjährigen Grec den Maßstab für das Festival setzt, dann haben wir Glück. Das Stück Testament der deutschen Kompanie She She She Pop bietet, unter anderen Tugenden, eine schillernde Originalität. … In anderen Worten handelt sich hier um eine Originalität, die von banalen Coups und jeglichen billigen Ansätzen entfernt ist und die sich gern von der vermeintlichen Permissivität der sogenannten neuen Tendenzen schützen möchte.?…
La Vanguardia, Barcelona, 08. Juli 2012, Joan-Anton Benach

…At its tempestuous centre, Testament is about how relationships with our fathers must be renegotiated as we move towards and then beyond that pivotal point when the roles of carer and cared for are swapped – here this changeover takes place during the storm scene in Act III, when to a pumped up soundtrack we see teh daughters divest their fathers of their boots and breeches, and usurp their thrones in cardboard crowns, whooping all the while. We watch as the three men reduced to their underwear, ageing bodies exposed, rally their efforts to reclaim the text from their daughters and their dignity in the face of age; a shaking hand scrolls back through Lear to outline in red pen the pasage which must not be overlooked. It’s a strong and moving image in a production which otherwise eschews the provoking of strong emotions – much as the fair Cordelia might refuse to be manipulated into such declarations.
In bringing their real fathers on stage in Testament, She She Pop is striving to get beyond artifice and illusion to reach something true – but the ultimate gesture is made by their fathers, who are not actors after all, yet are willing to do this for their daughters…
Fíona Ní Chinnèide, www.irishtheatremagazine.ie/Reviews/Ulster-Bank-Dublin-Th., october 14th, 2011

… It’s amusing and heartfelt and honest. …
What made Testament such a joy to behold was how the company managed to be so facetious and light-hearted, entertaining and intelligent about matters of real consequence and still manage to truly affect, enlighten and disturb. They have not forgotten, that underneath theatrical ingenuity must lie a truth that needs expressing, that all the laughs and artifice must honor. It was a theatrical etiquette lesson.“
Caomhan Keane, entertainment.ie/Theatre/feature/She-She-Pop, 13 October 2011.

She She Pop & Their Fathers: Testament. Samuel Beckett Theatre
A brisk introduction, a modest fanfare and the ageing King Lear takes his throne. Eagerly anticipating his retirement plan (an unburden’d crawl towards death), Lear addresses himself to his darker purpose: dividing his kingdom among three daughters, appointing shares to whoever can shout her love the loudest. Watching three genuine fathers, in the springtime of their senescence, take to their own thrones – mismatching armchairs on a lightly suggested livingroom set – you immediately appreciate the playful depth of thought that She She Pop has put into this formally adventurous, slyly affecting piece of reality theatre.
Part text analysis, part self-ananlysis, the German company’s production explores Shakespearean archetypes as enduring models of contemporary psychology. That may sound like a needlessly dry interpretation of four female performers manning a flip chart and video projections while waering Elizabethan ruffs. But the heady pleasure of Testament is that you can have a lot of fun while being smart:if life imitates art, even a karaoke version of Something Stupid can be archly political.
Introducing King Lear as a play about „inheritance and betrayal, old age and decline“, Ilia Papatheodorou risks essentialising the drama fort he sake of a handy schematic (at the risk of sounding unnecessarily reductive, King Lear is about everything). But if that means paring the dramaturgical framework right back, you have to start from somewhere. As Lear himself memorably says, „Aus Nichts kann nichts entspringen“ – „Nothing will come of nothing.”
Indeed, one of the pleasures of the show is seeing the play’s logic expressed in a contemporary German idiom, which is to say an enjoyably deadpan reductio ad absurdum.
When Manfred Matzke, a clear-sighted rationalist who is anti-conflict, interrupts the performance with an economic analysis of Lear’s errors („The answer is given to us by this system of differential equations…“) it isn’t just funny; it recognises the fathers as contributors to the show’s dramaturgy. Even the show’s process becomes an illustration of filial conflict and threatened parental dignity, a poignant illustration of generational succession.
Nowhere is this more quietly unsettling than when the fathers question the ethics of exposing their lives to an audience, or the honesty of their daughters. In this Lear, nobody wants to play the Fool. It leads to an astonishing moment in which one father expresses „shame and embarrassment“ for his daughter’s performance art. „We are now in the storm scene,“ announces Lisa Lucassen, understandably.
Such genuine clashes make the participation of these fathers both brave and moving, a compact that ensures not even a line dance will compromise their dignity. They may not tell you anything new about Shakespeare’s play, but She She Pop’s bold and touching experiment lets the play tell us something new about our lives.
Peter Crawley, THE IRISH TIMES Weekend Review, October 8, 2011.

This piece has been celebrated and for good reasons, as can be stated after the Zurich premiere of „Testament“ by She She Pop and their fathers. It stirred the audience considerably and set a first highlight at the Theaterspektakel.
Claudio Steiger, NZZ, August, 20th, 2011

Theatertreffen 2011
“Rarely do the great questions of life present themselves on stage so spirited and full of feeling , so touching and allusive… Absolutely remarkable.”
Dirk Pilz, NZZ Online. June, 1st, 2011

Interview with She She Pop, Theatertreffen 2011

Lear goes She She Pop

The first time I saw a theatre piece by She She Pop, “Homestory” in 2002, I was plagued by lovesickness. Nothing helped counter these feelings of frustration more than seeing this piece. Seldom had I felt so well understood in all the woes of having to get through the day alone and constantly having to motivate myself to do something, just like the seven ladies in the She She Pop group and the sole male colleague incorporated into their female collective, Sebastian Bark.

I still can recall a scene, which was a wonderful exaggeration of the desire to crawl into a hole and of the search for protection against all the exertions of having to cultivate an image: As of today, announced performer Ilia Papatheodorou, “I don’t want to have anymore, I just want to be.” She decided to assume the existence of a bedspread and subsequently entered into a monologue from beneath the bedcovers about her relief of not having to come up with an identity day after day.

At this point in time She She Pop was not exactly famous for pampering their audiences with sympathetic understanding. Just the opposite. Their tendency to be on the nasty side, torturing the audience a little through intense observation, judgment, and even punishment (such as being forced to put on an ass-shaped mask) played no small role in the reputation of the group, which was formed in the 1990s in the Department of Applied Drama at the University of Geissen.

Their performances were actually a little scary. All that hardball squaring of accounts with the voyeuristic position in which viewers can make themselves comfortable was one of the outstanding qualities of their evening performances of “Live” (as of 1999) and “Bad” (as of 2002).

“The fact that we work in a very confrontational, direct, and discursive way has something to do with our history as a women’s collective,” says Ilia Papatheodorou, who has come to the interview along with Mieke Matzke. It was the experience of the comparing gaze, of being judged and categorised as a woman and female artist in the context of a student project that provided the initial spark for the founding of She She Pop.

“Who is the best dancer, who is the funniest, who is the fattest, who is the most spontaneous – on the stage women are the subject of this voyeuristic gaze to a much greater extent than men. As a way of fighting back, we turned on the lights where the audience sits and returned the gaze.” Particularly because She She Pop maintains a feminist perspective, it is all the more surprising that they have been invited to the Theatertreffen with a piece in which they appear on stage with their fathers and closely examine the contract between generations. Soon after its premiere in February 2010, “Testament – Belated Preparations for a New Generation Based on Lear” was invited for guest performances and to festivals. With increasing frequency the daughters had to call their fathers and schedule joint performances.

Does this success surprise She She Pop? Not really, says Mieke Matzke, because even when the piece was still in its conceptual phase they noticed the inherent power of the material as something many people could identify with. “People came to us from all sides with their father stories.” But “Testament” also has developed into such an impressive work, because it conveys the problems experienced during rehearsals, doubts, and lack of understanding. The discussions during rehearsals between the daughters and fathers, which threatened to end the project, where recorded and are now replayed for the actors through headphones. The way the performers quietly repeat the words, either insisting on their initial point or distancing themselves from it in their observations, constitutes some of the most brilliant scenes of the piece. Thinking becomes audible, visible, palpable.

For the performers, opening themselves to their fathers’ critique of their art was a major challenge. This was especially difficult, because these fathers were not conservative, authoritarian blockheads but rather educated middle class 68ers with high expectations regarding their children’s capacity for emancipation and self-realisation.

As a viewer, one often has the sense that the fathers and daughters are actually much closer than they themselves think. But precisely because their conflicts are not negotiated in a clichee-like but instead detailed and very concrete manner, the honesty of the individual positions is moving.

The comparison of these autobiographical experiences with Shakespeare’s “King Lear” – the story of the old king who can’t get his act together in terms of handing over his power and wealth to his daughters – provides for tension. She She Pop uses this material to address many things that anyone with aging parents must face: Who will help, when they need support? How much of one’s own life is one willing to invest in their care? How do siblings view the division of parental love and their parents’ inheritance?

The calculations (what is an hour of parental love worth in euros?) and sample cases that She She Pop uses to explore these questions are amusing, on the one hand, especially because they are often presented in very dry style. On the other, they reveal the lack of existing language for addressing these questions without one party being hurt.

She She Pop’s longstanding experience in creating simple but complex narrative images comes to their advantage in “Testament“. In the beginning small video cameras are pointed at the fathers’ faces, which are projected within three large picture frames – already establishing a style characteristic of regal representation. It is precisely here, later, where the children don cardboard crowns and put on the shirts of their fathers, who experienced taking them off as an act of humiliation.

At the end, the three picture frames present an almost baroque vanitas motif with tulips and apples, beneath which daughters, fathers, and one son lie on top of each other in layers – a confirmation of their connection above and beyond all discursive issues. It is also an anticipation of the mortality that unites them. This is She She Pop, and this is Shakespeare at its best.

Today, most members of the collective are close to 40 in age. Ilia Papatheodouro brought her baby son to the interview. Rehearsals now need to be coordinated with the care of seven young children. The perplexity and despair of this dual role as mothers and artists fuelled much of the comedy in their “Seven Sisters” performance, which preceded “Testament” and raised feminist issues more explicitly than earlier pieces. “Now that we have our own families and have brought the conflicts with our own partners on board, the experience of fighting over who does what and when with the kids, plays a major role,” says Ilia. And Mieke adds: “While we were rehearsing ‘Seven Sisters’, the discussion came up again: Where do we really stand? Can we really talk about having accomplished something, or achieved our goals? Or why do we get bogged down on so many levels, why are so many concealed?”

She She Pop never wanted to start their own theatre. They felt they were in good hands with their co-production partners, Kampnagel in Hamburg, the Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin, and the FFT Düsseldorf. Important to them in their process was being able to maintain autonomy over their collective and their projects. “Because we held on to our feminist standpoint and the collective, we were often accused of being stuck in the 1970s,” says Mieke Matzke, “but today there is a renewed focus on and political interest in these concepts, also in terms of their utopian potential. Working in a collective also means creating a different kind of obligation to one another, which goes beyond networking.”

Apropos utopia, in “Seven Sisters” three of the small, preschool children appear in a projection as if they had been playing in a back room of the theatre the whole time. At the end they are given the task of developing a utopia. “If someone asks you where you are going, say ‘to Moscow, to Moscow,’ instructs Sebastian Bark, packing them into anoraks and sending them out onto the street in the dark of night.

On the one hand, this is a quote from Chekhov’s “Three Sisters”, to which the production continuously refers in exploring the question of the right way to live. On the other hand, the image of little children on the street at night pointedly conveys the contemporary fear of having no more utopias, of being utterly unable to paint a positive picture of the future. And also the fear of exposing one’s children to terrible uncertainty.

Actually, major drama – but packed into such a small picture, as if this pounding concern needs to be forcibly kept down to size, if we are to keep functioning. And ultimately the art of She She Pop lies in this ability to specifically nail down vague thinking.
Katrin Bettina Müller, Tageszeitung, 29.04.2011

Laudatio zum Friedrich-Luft-Preis
“Besonders bemerkenswert an Testament ist der Mut sich den universellen Themen zu stellen, wie eben Tod, Krankheit, Einsamkeit, Vergänglichkeit und immer wieder steht auch die große alte Dame Zeit auf der Bühne. Mal mehr mal weniger im Vordergrund und doch schon dadurch immer präsent, daß die Akteure so deutlich sichtbar immer Kinder ihrer Zeit sind und bleiben werden”.
Laudatio von Claudia Wiedemer, 05.04.2011

“I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU
For twelve years now, the performance collective SHE SHE POP has transformed issues of (also) personal meaning to them into theater. Their most recent production “Testament” is a particularly well-made and successful example of this.”
Eva Behrendt, Theater heute, 06/ 2010

“Once the first “Lear” scene is read, the beautiful delirium, which She She Pop so expertly know how to work with, sneaks its way onto the stage… The She She Pop fraud is less about lying than about dithering. Dithering between process and product, discussion and text, intimacy and distance… In the personal conversations, the piece surprisingly returns over and over again to precisely those leitmotifs, which propel the old drama forward. “Testament” offers hundreds of such possible misunderstandings.”
Tobi Müller, Frankfurter Rundschau, February 27th, 2010

“courageous, honest and intelligent… a big hit.
Klaus Witzeling, 
Hamburger Abendblatt, March 9th, 2010

Dream Lab

Foto: She She Pop
Foto: She She Pop
Foto: She She Pop
Foto: She She Pop
Foto: She She Pop
Foto: She She Pop

She She Pop have installed a fantastic, walk-through inner world in a tent made of projection screens and invite visitors to come and see what is going on inside their own heads. All kinds of teenage daytime and nighttime dreams, hopes, fears and nightmares come live in the Dream Lab. These dreams are produced live in 15-minute video clips, filmed with several cameras, hand-made special effects and lots of costume changes. Then they are projected onto the outside screens – based on the wishes of the individual dreamer from the audience and with his or her participation. The She She Pop members take on the role of laboratory assistants, improvising based on the road map dictated to them by the spectators’ fantasies. The dreaming spectator is both director of his or her own dream clip, as well as viewer and participant.

Credits

Concept and Performance: She She Pop.
By and with: Johanna Freiburg, Fanni Halmburger, Lisa Lucassen and Ilia Papatheodorou.
Music: Max Knoth, Jeff McGrory.
Video: Bianca Schemel and SSP.
Assistant: Christoph Macha.
Production Management: Elke Weber.

premiere, October 2008, Theaterfabrik, Gera

Dates


past dates:
June 10-12, 2010, HAU 3, Berlin
September 09-10, 2009, FFT Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf
June 19, 2009, Young Star Fest Fundus Theater, Hamburg
October 10, 2008, Theaterfabrik, Gera

Infinite Jest – Footnote 24

Foto: Doro Tuch
Foto: Sandra Fox
Foto: Doro Tuch
Foto: Sandra Fox

The project Infinite Jest initiated by HAU combines performance and literature in form of a theatrical marathon in and around Berlin: a wide range of artists will stage scenes from the novel ‘Infinite Jest’ by David Foster Wallace at various sites in the city.
Infinite Jest involves quasi-endless viewing! For twenty-four hours Berlin will be transformed into the Boston of the future described in the novel. For twenty-four hours, the audience can travel to those peripheral places in Berlin, which are otherwise seldom visited, and gaze at the one-time futurist visionary architecture of the sixties and seventies.
Far after midnight, the tour will reach the Fontanehaus in Reinickendorf. There She She Pop will explore a single footnote in the novel – the filmography of filmmaker James Orin Incandenza. Based on his oeuvre, She She Pop will delve into a midnight crisis of: do we need / do we still have / how risky is and / what really is humor?

In German and English

Credits

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace – 24 Hours through the Utopian West
With: Biancchi/Macras, Gob Squad, Peter Kastenmüller, Jan Klata, Chris Kondek, Anna Sophie Mahler, Richard Maxwell, Mariano Pensotti, Philippe Quesne, She She Pop, Anna Viebrock, Jeremy Wade and the video animation „My best Thing“ by Frances Stark
Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the German Federal Agency for Cultural Education.Infinite Jest – Footnote 24
Concept: She She Pop.
By and with: Fanni Halmburger, Lisa Lucassen, Tobias Dusche, Ilia Papatheodorou and Sebastian Bark.
Stage and Costumes: Sandra Fox.
Sound Design: Max Knoth.
Dramaturgical advice & Production Assistant: Sabine Salzmann.
Assistant: Eva Liparova.
2nd Assistant: Karl Watson, Ruschka Steininger.
Production/PR: ehrliche arbeit – freies Kulturbüro.
Administration: Elke Weber. Thanks to Teresa Albiez and Isa Ott.
A She She Pop production.
In Co-Production with the Hebbel am Ufer Berlin.
Funded by the City of Berlin.
 
premiere, June 2012, HAU, Berlin

Dates


past dates:
June 6/9/13/16/20/23/27, 2012, HAU, Berlin
June 2, 2012, HAU, Berlin

The Relevance Show

Foto: Stefanie Herrmann
Foto: Stefanie Herrmann
Foto: Stefanie Herrmann
Foto: Stefanie Herrmann
Foto: Stefanie Herrmann
Foto: Stefanie Herrmann
Foto: Stefanie Herrmann
Foto: Stefanie Herrmann
Foto: Stefanie Herrmann
Foto: Stefanie Herrmann
Relevance; We think of Nobel Peace Prize winners, World Cups, victims of the Tsunami and the News at Ten. Secretly we think about true love, bitter disappointments and the secrets that we cannot share with anyone. Relevance; We do not think about She She Pop. Who will remember them in battle, during celebrations or in emergencies? Who will shout their slogans? Who dreams of She She Pop?  Nobody. She She Pop are not alone with this problem. A great many interesting individuals search in vain for something relevant to say or do without success.
The Relevance Show will change all that.
The performers with She She Pop become research material by pushing themselves and their audience single-mindedly through the highs, lows and embarrassments inherent in the desire to be relevant. It is fundamental research in the form of a show which is inspired in no small way by the legendary Muppet Show.

Credits

Concept: She She Pop.
Devised and performed by: Sebastian Bark, Johanna Freiburg, Fanni Halmburger, Lisa Lucassen, Mieke Matzke, Ilia Papatheodorou and Berit Stumpf.
Music & Sound design: Max Knoth and Vicki Schmatolla.
Sound: Lars-Egge “Mügge” Müggenburg.
Video design: She She Pop and Bianca Schemel.
Light design: Micha Lentner-Niyorugira.
Costume: She She Pop and Ulrike Willberg.
Costume assistants: Tina Heylen, Ingrid Jenckel and Caroline Verbrugghe.
Stage management: Holger Duwe.
Choreographer: Nir de Volff / TOTAL BRUTAL.
Production manager: Sabine Köhncke and Elke Weber
Production assistant: Liz Rech.

 

A She She Pop production in Co-production with Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin & Kampnagel, Hamburg, FFT Düsseldorf and Theaterhaus Jena.

Premiere: March 28th, 2007, Kampnagel Hamburg

Funded by Basisförderung der Senatsverwaltung für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kultur, Berlin & Kulturbehörde Hamburg & Fonds Darstellende Künste e.V.

 

Trailer

Dates


past dates:
November , 2009, Frascati, Amsterdam, Niederlande
November , 2007, Beim Impulse Festival, Köln, Düsseldorf, Bochum, Mühlheim
June , 2007, HAU, Berlin
June , 2007, FFT, Düsseldorf
May , 2007, Theaterhaus, Jena
March 28, 2007, Kampnagel, Hamburg

Press

“Charming and crafty”
nachtkritik.de Berlin, 22.06.2007, Petra Kohse

“We laughed along incessantly with this intelligent rubbish which contains so many truths”
Die WELT 30.03.2007, Monika Nellissen

“She She Pop lay themselves bare at the risk of failure every evening with charm and courage”
Ballett Tanz Juni 2007, Klaus Witzeling

Rules – Extra Time

Rules – Extra Time is a game where a team lines up to play against itself. It is a set of rules designed to introduce chaos into a structure and structure into chaos. These rules are to be followed. These rules are to be mastered. These rules are to be excelled and to be endlessly expanded. Caught in a vicious circle of hope, breakthrough, crisis and balance, She She Pop try to master their collective strength and organize as a successful team.
Rules – Extra Time is an athletic event consisting of extra times, periodically interrupted by short breaks, interviews with experts and great emotional pep talks. During a time of play, the performers have to cross the pitch again and again transporting and passing different game elements into the end zone to score points. The path across the pitch is obscured and complicated by the complex pass rules of the game elements. In their grand, yet pathetic names and various combinations, these game elements express the vain hope for a universal formula for success. Can the “Bitter Water Of Criticism” (1,5 litres of a poisonously green liquid) be drained without the fragile “Favour Of the Audience” (an airborne plastic bag) sinking to the floor or the “Fire Of Inspiration” (a match) going out? And in the meantime, who carries the “Burden Of Responsibility” (75 kg)? On an endless search for the decisive move, for the brilliant, irresistible combination, the team members of She She Pop try to perfect their skills in a sport with a book of rules that elaborates with each new round. Only one thing is definite: this game can only be won by efficient collaboration. So, She She Pop takes to any old emotional formula and heart-wringing song to put everyone to the common cause. New strategies are being conjured and dismissed, tricks tried, arrangements are made and again the performers rush on. They urge each other on to go beyond their own limits, to finish each other off and to exchange exhausted players. The spectators take part in this process like a sports audience: mocking bad players, cheering a score or calling for new game elements. In the course of the game they will become experts at Rules and the team will try to recruit new players from the audience and renew their strength.
Rules – a curtsy to fate and the mysterious patterns of the game, a desperate homage to the productive collective.

Credits

Concept: She She Pop.
With: Sebastian Bark, Johanna Freiburg, Fanni Halmburger, Lisa Lucassen, Mieke Matzke, Katharina Oberlik and Ilia Papatheodorou.

Funded by the Senatsverwaltung für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kultur, Berlin.

premiere, June 2003, transeuropa Festival Uraufführung der Theaterfassung unter dem Titel „SHE SHE POP: RULES (Mach Dein eigenes Spiel)“:10. Mai 2001, Festival reich und berühmt, Podewil, Berlin, Hildesheim

Trailer

Dates


past dates:
July 1, 2006, PACT Zollverein, Essen
September 18, 2004, Kampnagel, Hamburg
April 3/7, 2004, Kampnagel, Hamburg
June 19, 2003, Kunstverein, Hamburg
June 15, 2003, transeuropa Festival, Hildesheim

Press

She She Pop hat sich in ein Footballteam verwandelt. Die Girl Gang spielt mit den Versatzstücken des Machosports, ein Fall angewandter gender theory.
Peter Laudenbach im Tagesspiegel, 14. Mai 2001

“….while RULES is a very funny crossover of sports, work psychology and gender trouble, it also shows the tragic elements which makes a theatre performance an experience, even a piece of art.
Tom Mustroph in Theater der Zeit, June 2001

“…funny and eloquent, sporting and esthetic, profound and theatrical.”
Hildesheimer Allgemeine Zeitung, June 17th, 2003

What’s Wrong? (It’s okay)

What’s wrong? (it´s okay) is a table revue with party games, taboos and spontaneous synchronized dancing, telling of the beauty and hardships of a community and the price you pay for belonging together. The performance is patterned after group rituals and table games and shows the members of She She Pop at the end of a dinner party as in a “Last Supper”: the table is scattered with traces of food and empty bottles. Nobody wants to leave.
The valiant performers are prepared to prove they can talk about everything and they ask the audience to give them any topic. But something is wrong. There is always someone who does not fit into the small claustrophobic community with its innocent questions, its harmless small talk. An atmosphere of paranoia descends upon the table, as taboos are touched, the victims retreat under the table and every conversation comes to a dead end. Panicked, the performers hunt for their differences, secrets and the things they have in common: those who do not fit in need to be identified quickly. Their identity will be composed of the humiliations inflicted on them by the community: you are what you are ashamed of!
The only rescue is to be faster than the prosecutors: to accept the embarrassment, to admit everything, to confirm the slightest suspicion. To sing a song of revelation, to make a spontaneous confession might be the way to absolution. And then to say: it’s okay!
With this musical table revue She She Pop aims to prove that any conflict can be solved. The group resorts to criminal profiling, improvised choreography and perverted little party games for their uncompromising consolidation. Each performer is prepared to be exposed and humiliated, if only to keep their place at the table. Persistent, brutal and hilariously funny!

Credits

Concept: She She Pop.
By and with: Sebastian Bark, Johanna Freiburg, Fanni Halmburger, Lisa Lucassen, Mieke Matzke, Kathrina Oberlik, Ilia Papathodorou und Berit Stumpf.
Light Design: Marek Lamprecht.
Production Management: Anne Kersting.

premiere, 18th of April 2003, Westwerk, Hamburg

Funded by the Kulturbehörde der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg and the Fonds Darstellende Künste e.V.

Trailer

Dates


past dates:
December 16-17, 2005, Mousonturm, Frankfurt/Main
June , 2005, LOT-Theater, Braunschweig
May , 2005, Open Ohr Festival, Mainz
December , 2004, Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Go Create Resistance, Hamburg
November , 2004, Kaaitheater, Brüssel, Belgien
November 19, 2004, Theaterhaus, Jena
October , 2004, Schwankhalle, Bremen
September , 2003, Podewil, Berlin
May 11, 2003, Deutsches Theater, Göttingen
April 18, 2003, Westwerk, Hamburg

Press

“It is thanks to the intellectual self-cleansing power of irony and an infectious madness that this revue of shame is never anything but an example of professional trash-humour…”
Till Briegleb, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 24. April 2003

“E for encore!”
Denis Krah, Hamburger Morgenpost, 22. April 2003

The World We Live In

Each and every one of us is constantly busy comparing ourselves with ourselves. We keep watch to make sure that we stay as we are. The elements that correspond to our image of ourselves we nurture and enjoy. We go out of our way to avoid everything else as if these parts do not belong in our world and we therefore may not do, have or be them. Naturally, this leads to slip-ups and mistakes but these are also very typically us. We want to (and must) stay as we are. This sense of self should be intensified if and when the opportunity arises as it is common knowledge that the self is a valuable asset but only when it is concise and well formed. However, we also know that the acts of belonging and being authentic can occasionally be stressful and also boring.
She She Pop invites you to embark upon an excursion into a different head. The World We Live In offers a place of asylum that lies beyond the repressive world of ones own identity, a reception camp for refugees fleeing from the land of self conformity. Unlike cosmetic surgery or the massage parlour where one attempts to make peace with ones self, this treatment consists of the socially psychedelic experience of inhabiting another identity. It is a view through different eyes, of a stranger’s shame, of other prides and ambitions, of new hopes, fears and unexpected devotions – namely those of somebody else.
Visitors to The World We Live In give themselves over to a course of self estrangement. It is a world where acquired skills become capabilities, subconscious gestures, small rituals, secret confessions, ingenious excuses and glamorous facades all become useful tools for survival. Following years of work She She Pop have reclaimed and re-appropriated this world. In short: it is the world of a person that we know, the name of whom will soon become apparent.

Credits

Made and performed by: She She Pop and Nir de Volff.
With: Sebastian Bark, Johanna Freiburg, Lisa Lucassen, Mieke Matzke and Nir de Volff
Scenery: Malve Lippmann and SSP.
Costume: Pieter Bax, Lea Søvsø.
Light Design: Micha Lentner-Niyorugira.
Sound: Florian Fischer.
Technical Direction: Holger Duwe.
Production: Jörg Karrenbauer.
Administration: Elke Weber.
Press and Public Relations: Björn Pätz.
Assistants: Christoph Macha, Hilde Tuinstra

A She She Pop production. 

In Co-production with Hebbel-Am-Ufer Berlin and Kampnagel Hamburg.
premiere, March 2009, HAU 3
Funded by the Regierenden Bürgermeister Berlin – Senatskanzlei für Kulturelle Angelegenheiten, the Kulturbehörde der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg and the Konzeptionsförderung des Fonds Darstellende Künste e.V. – from federal funding.

Dates


past dates:
April 17–19/22–24, 2009, Kampnagel, Hamburg
March 25-26, 2009, HAU 3, Berlin
March 23, 2009, HAU 3, Berlin

Press

A holiday from the oppression of the self
I am Mieke. You are Mieke. We are all Mieke. In Berlin’s HAU 3 theatre, during a feature film length performance, we learn about the inner life and workings of the Art figure Mieke Matzke as presented to us by four fellow performers and Mieke Matzke herself.
As with other shows by the Giessen Applied Theatre Studies graduates, who now perform together as the collective She She Pop, the audience members become participants and players.
(…) What or rather who have we taken in during our time with She She Pop? The Mieke of this evening is neurotic, lonely and fragmented. She is a loose bunch of characteristics, a collection of dreamy, daily tasks, lovely quirks and sad rituals.
(…) The final song takes Mieke’s (and our) plight to a new level. “We know our stories, but we don’t know how they relate” Identity requires a central theme. Mieke, however, has entangled herself in her stories: Are the pictures in our heads only holiday snaps or imagined wishes?
(…) ‘Mieke’ becomes for us an imaginary friend like the ones that you have when you are a young child, a friend with which you can test out the relationships between yourself and the outside world.
Nachtkritik / Elena Philipp

She She Pop belong to the group of innovative Theatre Collectives working in Berlin at the moment.
The standard Theatrical separation between the performers and the Public has been cast aside like never before. There is no safety in the darkened rows of seats, only the play space between lit tents and cardboard stools.
In this environment She She Pop and Israeli guest Performer Nir de Volff invite you to a masked ball of sorts. The slipping on of another identity with all of it’s performed frictions and emotionlessness
(…) Occasionally there are flashes of self irritation or a peculiar empathy with what we can see of the strange inner life of Mieke.
Ute Büsing – Info Radio/Culture Show – March, 24th, 2009

Whether the experiment works or not depends, in the end, on the audience
The friendly and determined invitation to put on a new face left me with no choice. Obediently I squatted on a stool and, along with my neighbours left and right, drew my new identity onto a cut out paper mask following the stencil. (…) The stranger’s eyes belong to Mieke Matzke, one of the members of Performance group She She Pop. The theatre becomes a roll play area. In small groups e are divide up and embark upon a journey into the inner world of Mieke.(…) The work of She She Pop consists of participatory organized chaos in which the way out is always clearly signposted. Whether the experiment works or not depends, in the end, on the audience.
Gerd Brendel, DeutschlandRadio Kultur, March, 23rd, 2009

Homeland Museum

The grand building Festspielhaus Hellerau is turned into a colony of small garden plots, and She She Pop create a homeland here. There is baking, handicraft, and in the future everyone who has ever been there will be yearning for this place for the rest of their lives.

Credits

Concept: She She Pop.
With:
 Sebastian Bark, Fanni Halmburger, Lisa Lucassen, Mieke Matzke, Ilia Papatheodorou.
Head of Production:
 Claudia Plöchinger.
With: Hofmann & Lindholm, Berlin Artistgroup Claudia Basrawi, Mario Mentrup, Branca Prlic, Tamer Yigit, Gina D’Orio, Carsten Ludwig & Ulrike Gärtner, Otmar Wagner, Adam Page & Eva Hertzsch, Hans-Werner Kroesinger

Heimatmuseum is part of “Grenzgebiet Heimat – ein Kunst-Sparten-Camp”, curated by norton.commander.productions.

premiere, May 2007, Festspielhaus, Hellerau, Dresden
An event of Europäisches Zentrum der Künste Hellerau, funded by die Kulturstiftung des Freistaates Sachsen.

Dates


past dates:
24May, 2007, Festspielhaus, Dresden

Family Album

In this new piece, She She Pop will confront themselves with the monstrous subject of family. As a way of living, a burdensome inheritance, a pain in the neck, and the last resort from neoliberal loneliness: the family. We constantly need to break free from it, and then we go searching for it again. Group pictures are the medium the nuclear family successfully uses for its propaganda. The performers fearlessly open their personal photo albums as well as those of cultural history. They discover: these pictures do not lie. They unmask us. They invade our inner archives on how the world works. As authors, photographers and family members, She She Pop will put up an aesthetic fight, re-create the scenario, and deny everything.
The audience is invited to join a large family gathering. Pictures are taken, shown, and interpreted. All people present are part of this forced familial community. All of them find themselves surprised at family likeness they find. All of them are seduced and lulled by the sweet sounds of almost forgotten music-making in the home. All of them remember the lyrics faintly. Family Album is a performance in which a family gathering and a photo shoot blend, a hopeful swan song for the neurotic hatchery of our society.

Credits

Concept: She She Pop.
With: Sebastian Bark, Fanni Halmburger, Lisa Lucassen, Ilia Papatheodorou, Berit Stumpf.
Production management: Elke Weber.
Assistant production management: Sarah Bonnert.
Technical direction: Sebastian Rietz.
Music: Vicki Schmatolla and SSP.
Video: Bianca Schemel und SSP.
Assistant costumes: Keren Korman.
Choreographical advice: Nir de Volff.

Coproduced by Hebbel am Ufer Berlin and FFT Düsseldorf.

premiere, March 2008, HAU 2, Berlin
Funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds.

Trailer

Dates


past dates:
June , 2008, FFT, Düsseldorf
March , 2008, HAU 2, Berlin
March 8, 2008, HAU 2, Berlin

For Everyone

This performance quite literally wants to make its performers happy. To get to the bottom of the link between individual consideration of happiness and concrete justice of distribution, the stage is transformed into a casino with its own rules. Here She She Pop goes on a quest for happiness. It’s about the realisation of justice and happiness against the ultra-fatalistic logic of the game, the creation of a system producing joy and happiness for everyone. Four courageous but self-centered and egoistic performers undertake an experiment to deal with this task.
As halfnaked gambling addicts, She She Pop appear night after night in front of God, their croupier, in order to engage themselves and the audience in a fight for material and immaterial values and goods to be won at „God’s tombola“. The gambling bank’s holdings include bank accounts, talents and goods, character traits and personal tragedies. There are technical instruments, pension insurance schemes, professions, diseases, vases, debts, dependents and know-how to share out. Each night the dice decide, each night the lucky fairies from the audience get reallocated. No one can be sure of their luck. Equipped with the prize determined by their stage lot, the performers prepare to cope with the fate they’ve been hit with. Their task is to live: describing themselves as functioning human beings, creating a coherent concept of life, suffering, struggling with their destinies, gambling against the other contestants, challenging God himself.
Can a fair balance be reached? How can respect be shown, how can emotions be balanced out and loss be repaid? How do we evaluate origin and parentage, emotions, debts? The audience get to be smirky witnesses of the game and spectators of the show, as well as lucky fairies assisting the contestants. And as court of last appeal they eventually sit beside God when his wisdom has faded, in order to help justice rule.

Credits

Concept: She She Pop.
With: Johanna Freiburg, Fanni Halmburger, Lisa Lucassen, Mieke Matzke, Katharina Oberlik, Ilia Papatheodorou and Berit Stumpf.
Set Design: SSP und Holger Duwe.
Costume Design: SSP und Ulrike Wilberg.
Sound Design: Jeff McGrory, Max Knoth.
Lighting Design: Micha Lentner-Niyorugira
Choreographical advice: Kerlin Leao Da Silva.
Production management: Kaja Jakstat.

In Co-production with Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin and Kampnagel, Hamburg.

Premiere: 24th of March 2006, Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin

Funded by Senatsverwaltung für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kultur, Berlin and Kulturbehörde der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg.

Dates


past dates:
January , 2008, Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Malersaal, Hamburg
November , 2007, Tafelhalle, Nürnberg
November , 2006, Theaterhaus, Jena
September , 2006, Tanzquartier, Wien
September , 2006, zeitraum Exit, Mannheim
April , 2006, Kampnagel, Hamburg
March , 2006, HAU 2, Berlin
March 24, 2006, HAU 2, Berlin

Press

She She Pop’s ironic and entertaining performance style tolerates no escape into illusion. The witty performers, more or less always themselves, instead collide the clichés of happiness and desire with the difficulties of the real world in a blaze of poignant improvisations.
Klaus Witzeling, Hamburger Abendblatt, April, 15th, 2006

Peer Gynt – 3 Dairy-Maids

English translation following soon.

Credits

Concept: She She Pop.
By and with:
 She She Pop.
With:
 Dirk Cieslak (Lubricat), Martin Clausen (Two Fish), Jo Fabian, Albrecht Hirche, Tilmann Köhler, Arthur Kuggeleyn, Hans-Werner Kroesinger, Annett Kruschke, Constanza Macras (Dorky Park), David Marton, René Pollesch, Theater o.N. (zinnober).

premiere, June 2006, Sophiensäle, Berlin

Funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds.

Dates


past dates:
June 22, 2006, Sophiensäle, Berlin

Campfire

A forced utopian community with She She Pop
Foto: Elvira Klamminger
Foto: Elvira Klamminger
Foto: Elvira Klamminger
Foto: Elvira Klamminger
Foto: Elvira Klamminger
Foto: Elvira Klamminger
Foto: Elvira Klamminger
Foto: Elvira Klamminger
Foto: Elvira Klamminger

She She Pop and their audience find exile in the middle of the city. Through the back door everyone leaves their rooms, apartments, communication networks, drainage systems, contracts, traffic ways, countries, multilateral agreements and private appointments in order to meet up in a timeless scenario: the campfire. Here the city becomes a romantic and threatening backdrop to the formation of a utopian community that could set an example. If everything runs according to plan, in the course of the evening the random crowd of audience and performers will identify with a collective vision of future and responsibility and find themselves in an exhilirating moment of united departure.
But what plans might we have in common? What is the slogan that everybody stands up for? Which political song, which utopia can still go together with our notorious irony? Every preconception of an ideological community – as well as the longing for one – appear in front of our eyes in this atmosphere of twilight. She She Pop’s Campfire is a paradoxical scenario which might just give us our beliefs back and restore the innocence we have lost. In lofty speeches, scenic experiments, musical show numbers and a new strategy of collective envisagement, She She Pop’s performers go on a search for the rousing motif. A political séance in the evening twilight.

Credits

Concept: She She Pop.
With: Sebastian Bark, Fanni Halmburger, Lisa Lucassen, Mieke Matzke, Katharina Oberlik, Ilia Papatheodorou. Featuring: Bettina Grahs.
Sound Design: Max Knoth.
Sound Assistant: Daniel Proßegger.
Set Design: She She Pop and Holger Duwe.
Lighting Design: Micha Lentner-Niyorugira.
Production Management: Steffi Müller.
Assistant Production Management: Eva von Redecker

A commission by Steirischer Herbst 2005 in coproduction with She She Pop.

Premiere: 1st of october 2005, Steirischer Herbst, Dom im Berg, Graz, Austria

Funded by Fonds Darstellende Künste, Theaterhaus Jena, and FFT Düsseldorf.

Dates


past dates:
November , 2005, Festival Politik im Freien Theater, Berlin
October , 2005, Steirischer Herbst, Graz, Österreich
June , 2005, Theaterhaus, Jena
October 1, 2005, Steirischer Herbst, Graz, Österreich

Press

„Dry unpretentiousness (not to be mixed up with irony) and charming anarchic nostalgia. She She Pop interpret performance casually as absurd discourse workshop. … The surprised audience shined with partially serious interaction in the vision.“
Hermann Götz, Theater der Zeit, December 2005

Why Don’t You Dance?

Foto: Stefan Malzkorn
Foto: Stefan Malzkorn

The ballroom is a promise, a place of great anticipations and secret desires and – as desires so often do not suffice – a place of hidden plans, old and new strategies and their spectacular staging.
She She Pop turns the theatre space into a dance floor and shows the ballroom with all its myths as a pitfall of pathetically exaggerated expectations. On the dance floor fantasy and reality diverge dramatically: Every dancer – prom queen, wallflower, gentleman or gate crasher – is caught in a role which has been carefully, artistically designed and rehearsed but whose fate will unfold beyond their individual control that night. The drama of staging oneself takes place before the eyes of all onlookers. In the artificiality and theatricality of the ballroom scenario the performers reveal their desire to interact, their longing for a successful encounter. Here, every eye contact, every innocent invitation to dance becomes loaded with meaning, a meaning that everyone present recognizes and either takes on wholeheartedly or rejects shyly.
The performers of She She Pop are torn between the public on the dance floor where every plot and plan becomes instantly visible and the retreat into a secluded space where they confide to the camera as if to a mirror and try to make the evening a success. Thus, they present the ballroom as a texture of personal stories, excess of significance and the urge for immediate decisions.
The audience move back and forth between the ballroom and a video lounge where the performers confessions to the live camera are projected: they may watch the dancers or invite each other to dance, they may identify with the fantasies of the performers or even try to fulfil them! Whatever they decide to do – either in close encounter on the dance floor or from a reserved view outside in the video lounge – they become participating witnesses of hopeless situations and glorious triumph.

Credits

Concept: She She Pop.
With: Johanna Freiburg, Fanni Halmburger, Lisa Lucassen, Mieke Matzke, Katharina Oberlik, Ilia Papatheodorou, Berit Stumpf and Sebastian Bark.

Light Design: Micha Lentner-Niyorugira, Oliver Petrowitsch.
Sound: Lars-Egge Müggenburg.
Stage: SSP and Holger Duwe. A
ssistant:
 Kaja Jakstat.
Choreography advice: Johnny Lloyd.

In co-production with Kampnagel Hamburg and Hebbel am Ufer Berlin.

Premiere: January 14th, 2004, Kampnagel Hamburg
Funded by the Kulturbehörde der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg and the Fonds Darstellende Künste, e.V. 

Trailer

Dates


past dates:
July 4/5, 2008, Festival Baltoscandal, Rakvere, Estland
April , 2008, Kulturforum, Fürth
December , 2006, Kampnagel, Hamburg
November , 2006, Kampnagel, Hamburg
September , 2006, Mousonturm, Frankfurt/Main
February 23, 2006, Tanzplattform, Stuttgart
December 1-3, 2005, Theaterfestival Spielart, München
May , 2005, Staatstheater Oldenburg, Oldenburg
April 7/8, 2005, Kanonhallen, Kopenhagen, Dänemark
November , 2004, FFT, Düsseldorf
September , 2004, Tanzquartier, Wien, Österreich
June 26/27, 2004, d.a.m.p.f. Festival für Tanz, Medien und Performance, Köln
February 6-8, 2004, HAU, Berlin
January 14, 2004, Kampnagel, Hamburg

Press

Funny, embarrassing, rich in emotion and a great success with the audience.
Hamburger Morgenpost, January16th, 2004

(…) a wonderful work, balancing delicately between performance and social event. She She Pop conceives a charming, highly entertaining and intelligent arrangement (…)
Daniel Schreiber, Theater der Zeit, March, 2004

Homestory

She She Pop use Bert Neumann’s 7 bedroom stage at the Volksbühne’s Prater to explore the weirdness that takes place in the privacy of eveyone’s home. Six women and one man fathom their domestic possibilities between turning themselves into a piece of furniture and an attempt at glamorous, but lonely self-staging.

Credits

Concept: She She Pop.
By and with: Berit Stumpf, Fanni Halmburger, Johanna Freiburg, Katharina Oberlik, Lisa Lucassen, Mieke Matzke, Ilia Papatheodorou, Sebastian Bark.
Sets: Bert Neumann.

Premiere: March 28th, 2002, Prater, Volksbühne Berlin

A Production of the Volksbühne, Berlin (Prater).

Dates


past dates:
July -, 2002, Prater, Berlin

Bad

Bad is yet another one in a series of interactive performances by She She Pop, patterned this time after the sado-masochist pact: between the mistress and her customer moral, social, sexual and political codes are negotiated with utter respect and sobriety. The limits of pain, fear and shame are explored individually to create the perfect scenario for each customer. Because it deals with fantasies and desires this situation is very theatrical itself. The mistress is the artistic protagonist of this “play”, acting it out after the specific desires of the masochist, so that, at the same time she is also the perfect servant: an idea She She Pop has been dreaming of for years! Ever since our show Trust (1998), the work of She She Pop is inspired by the question what is the contribution of the artist in a performance-orientated society and how can it be measured? The stage is therefore always defined as what it is: a stage. And the presence of the audience is not only part of the scenario but a presupposed condition.
The stage is a circle of seats for 60 spectators and six performers. A place granting great intimacy and pitiless public attention at the same time. Everybody is visible. And across the open space in the circle ominous figures from fearful or titillating fantasies advance on the spectators to involve them into their scenarios. In Bad She She Pop faces the task to become personal, to access the individual fantasies of the spectator – either actively or as objects of desire. Everybody wants to be something for someone. Not only the bodies of the performers – which they readily throw into the ring – are at stake here, but also their own hyper-rational, hyper-social condition as females.
Bad is an experiment about strategies of self-empowerment and self-submission in a performative context. As artistic protagonists the performers claim to rule over the imagination of the spectators, and at the same time they want to oblige like perfect servants to the staging of these fantasies. In addition to this, a group of experts discuss the proceedings openly on stage openly. The spectators watch the performers as they balance awkwardly between control and the loss of it. They look on as their neighbours are respectfully introduced to their limits of shame. And they realize that while watching, they are being watched. How far are they prepared to go? The immediate and playful communication with the spectators, the negotiation of performer and spectator fantasies turns into actual dramatic action: “Que sera, sera!”

Credits

Concept: She She Pop
With: Johanna Freiburg, Fanni Halmburger, Lisa Lucassen, Katharina Oberlik, Ilia Papatheodorou, Berit Stumpf and Sebastian Bark.
Lightning Design: Marek Lamprecht, Micha Lentner-Niyorugira.
Sound: Lars-Egge Müggenburg.

Premiere: January 31st, 2002 – Kampnagel Hamburg

Coproduced by Kampnagel Hamburg, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt/Main and Podewil Berlin.

Funded by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds.

Trailer

Dates


past dates:
November 22-27, 2004, Kaaitheater, Brüssel, Belgien
April 15-17, 2004, Tanzquartier, Wien, Österreich
July 2-4, 2003, Theaterhaus Gessnerallee, Zürich, Schweiz
September 2-14und19-21, 2002, Podewil, Berlin
February 14-16, 2002, Mousonturm, Frankfurt/Main
January 31, 2002, Kampnagel, Hamburg

Press

…From the beginning they reverse roles and pleasurably irritate audience expectations and theatre customs …The ones who are naked are not necessarily the exposed.
Karin Liebe, taz Hamburg, February 2nd, 2002

The bad girls from She She Pop know where the fun ends and the art of irritation begins.
Jutta Baier, Frankfurter Rundschau, February 16th, 2002

… riskily and courageously the performers of She She Pop take liberties and by doing that they undermine (beauty-) clichés and sexual mechanisms of power with humour and self-irony and achieve a kind of liberation – not only for themselves…
Klaus Witzeling, Hamburger Abendblatt, February 2nd, 2002

Rules – Mach dein eigenes Spiel!

Credits

By and with: J. Freiburg, L. Lucassen, M. Matzke, K. Oberlik und I. Papatheodorou.
Stage & Video: F. Halmburger.
Music
: S. Bark.
Light: Matti Fischer.

Premiere: May 2001, Podewil Berlin.

A Coproduction with Podewil Berlin, Festival reich & berühmt

Supported by the City of Berlin – Department for Culture and Europe.

Dates


past dates:
May , 2001, Podewil, Berlin

1/10 Reigen

10 directors each stage one scene of Arthur Schnitzler’s Reigen. She She Pop and Showcase Beat Le Mot put on the third scene as a mind-boggling video trick that includes living figures, thinking about truthfulness and the playful intuition of love.

Credits

By and with: C. Jansen, L. Lucassen, I. Papatheodorou, K. Oberlik von She She Pop sowie Nikola Duric’, Thorsten Eibeler, Dariusz Kostyra and Veit Sprenger / Showcase Beat le Mot.

Premiere: February 2001, Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg. A Production of Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg.

Dates


past dates:
February , 2001, Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Hamburg

Feld der Verklärung

Site specific perfomance for the festival Zeitenwende in Gießen, in which one night is turned into a day. In a free space in the middle of the town, She She Pop hold a nocturnal congress on dreams, using texts by Nerval, Hobson and William Boyd. On these Fields of Transfiguration, the cool analysis of sleep research meets a poetic investigation of dream-like conditions.

Credits

By and with: J. Freiburg, C. Jansen, L. Lucassen, K. Oberlik, I. Papatheordorou.
Stage: F. Halmburger.
Music: S. Bark.

Premiere: Juli 2000, Festival Zeitenwende, Gießen.

A Coproduction with the festival Zeitenwende, Gießen.

Dates


past dates:
July , 2000, Festival Zeitenwende, Gießen

Maze 1.0

The Shichifukujin

The stage is a pop-up postcard. On it, the Shichifukujin (Japanese Gods in charge of happiness) appear as a band and try to promise happiness in a way that is as complete and perfect as a musical.

Credits

By and with: K. Oberlik, I. Papatheodorou, L. Lucassen, C. Jansen.
Music: S. Bark & Erobique. Stage: F. Halmburger.

Premiere: Mai 2000, Podewil Berlin.

A Coproduction with the festival reich & berühmt, Podewil Berlin and  EXPO 2000, Hannover.

Supported by Hauptstadtkulturfonds.

Dates


past dates:
May , 2000, Festival reich & berühmt Podewil, Berlin
June , 2000, , Hannover

En Vogue

On a red carpet catwalk, She She Pop offers the performers’ bodies to the comparisons the audience makes. Performers like paper dolls, changing their identities like shirts.

Credits

By and with: J. Freiburg, C. Jansen, L. Lucassen, M. Matzke, K. Oberlik, I. Papatheodorou, A. von Steht.
Music: Marga Glanz.
Costumes:
Ingken Benesch.

Premiere: Juni 1999, Literaturhaus Hamburg.

A Coproduction with Hammoniale and Literaturhaus Hamburg.

Dates


past dates:
June , 1999, Literaturhaus, Hamburg
July , 1999, Praterspektakel Volksbühne, Berlin

Live!

The members of She She Pop compete in the scenario of a game show. All competitions reflect the performers’ situation. How can an individual persist on stage and convince the audience of herself as a woman and/or an artist? What is female success and/or failure made of? Each competitor offers her strategies of self-portrayal to the audience’s vote.

Credits

By and with: J. Freiburg, L. Lucassen, M. Matzke, I. Papatheodorou, B. Stumpf.
Music: S. Bark.
Video: F. Halmburger.
Light: Sven Garbade, Matti Fischer.

Premiere: April 1999 Theater am Neumarkt, Zürich.

A Coproduction with the festival Hope and Glory, Theaterhaus Gessnerallee und Theater am Neumarkt, Zürich.

Dates


past dates:
February , 2003, Neues Cinema Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Hamburg
June , 2002, Staatstheater, Kassel
August , 2001, Mousonturm, Frankfurt/Main
March , 2001, Neues Theater, München
March , 2001, Posthof, Linz, Österreich
July , 2000, Szene, Salzburg, Österreich
January , 2000, FFT, Düsseldorf
April , 1999, Theater am Neumarkt, Zürich

Trust!

It's your money after all

Eight performers, looking for role models in the entertainment industry. In a theatrical table dance-show, they debate their possibilities of becoming a work of art or at least art merchandise. The group negotiates with the audience what will be shown and how much will be payed.

Credits

Concept: She She Pop.
Performance: Johanna Freiburg, Claude Jansen, Lisa Lucassen, Mieke Matzke, Katharina Oberlik, Ilia Papatheodorou, Anja von Steht, Berit Stumpf.

Premiere: April 1998, Kampnagel Hamburg.

A Coproduktion with the festival Junge Hunde, Kampnagel Hamburg and the festival reich &berühmt, Podewil Berlin.

Founded by Kulturbehörde der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg.

Dates


past dates:
September , 1999, Festival Home and Away, Kulturprogramm der EXPO, Hannover
May , 1999, im Rahmen der Woche der Arbeit, Neue Szene, Schauspielhaus, Leipzig
October , 1998, im Rahmen der Retrospektive beim Festival diskurs, Gießen
April , 1998, Festival Junge Hunde, Kampnagel Hamburg, Festival reich und berühmt, Podewil, Berlin

Schlammbeißer´s Travels

A theatrical bus trip through Gießen

A theatrical bus trip through Gießen. “Germany’s most boring town” turns into a backdrop for fantasies and personal stories. Based on interviews with inhabitants of Gießen, in collaboration with several clubs and associations.

Credits

Concept: She She Pop.
By and with: J. Freiburg, C. Jansen, L. Lucassen, M. Matzke, K. Oberlik, I. Papatheodorou, A. von Steht, B. Stumpf.

A Coproduktion with the Festival 12 Stunden, Gießen.

Dates


past dates:
July , 1997, Festival 12 Stunden, Gießen

Things That I Used To Do

I ain't gonna do them no more

Three performers in their every day life in university. There is no reconciliation between imagination and reality. They are confronted with their own lives that look like a soap opera, theatrical images offer them alternative identities.

Credits

Concept: She She Pop.
Performance: Mieke Matzke, Katharina Oberlik, Ilia Papatheodorou.

Premiere: Juli 1996, Institut für Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft, Gießen

Dates: Oktober 1996, Institut für Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft, Gießen Juni 1997, Theater im Löbershof, Stadtteather Gießen Juni 1998, Theater am Halleschen Ufer, Berlin

Dates


past dates:
July , 1996, Institut für Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft, Gießen
October , 1996, Institut für Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft, Gießen
June , 1997, Theater im Löbershof, Gießen
June , 1998, Theater am Halleschen Ufer, Berlin

Here was the space for TITLE

An Evening in Black and White

We have removed the content related to this production from our website. Documentary material was used without our authorization and apparently without proper contextualization. We apologize for any harm that has been caused.

During the development of the material in 1995, we engaged with the biographies of European women who traveled through Africa and used these stories to address the racism contained within them. The artistic engagement at that time was conducted in a manner different from how we would approach our artistic work today. Today, the content should be read as a reproduction and is therefore no longer acceptable in an uncommented and uncontextualized form.

Credits

By and with: J. Freiburg, C. Jansen, L. Lucassen, M. Matzke, K. Oberlik, I. Papatheodorou, A. von Steht, B. Stumpf.

Dates


past dates:
February , 1995, Institut für Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft, Gießen
May , 1995, Theater im Löbershof, Gießen
May , 1996, Festival Junge Hunde, Hamburg

Sesam, Sex und Salmonellen

(1969 - 89)

Four performers create a collective biography of the first 20 years of their lives. They use private and public texts, they use music, and news. The portrait of a generation as a theatrical collage. Documentary theater, displaying its sources and playing with shared experiences.

Credits

Concept: She She Pop.
By and with: B. Stumpf, M. Matzke, I. Papatheodorou, L. Lucassen.
Light: Sven Garbade.
Sound: Anja von Steht.

Dates


past dates:
July , 1993, Institut für Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft, Gießen
April , 1994, Festival X 94 Junge Kunst und Kultur, Berlin