“It is no coincidence that many other theatres and performance collectives aside from She She Pop are also currently focusing their work on community and ecstasy. Because the longer the growing isolation and social anonymity are taken for granted, the harder we will be hit by the consequences in form of radicalization, hatred and agitation. Just how democratizing intoxication can be, was already evident in the ancient forerunner of theatre: the mystery play, whose content was of a cultic-religious nature and at whose heart lay collective ecstasy. An ecstasy that was rooted in the communal experience of these games, which often lasted for days.”
The Pioneer, Pia von Wersebe, 20.10.2023

“”High” started out as a socio-critical search for a “we”, as an attempt to become intoxicated together with the audience – and ended up as an ironic exercise in meditation with observations on resistance, overcoming shame and participatory fun and games.”
Berliner Zeitung, Ulrich Seidler, 14.10.23

“No, there are no drugs involved here, even if Papatheodorou describes her cookies as having an “effect”. They are to be eaten together at a designated time, so that everyone absorbs the traces and imprints, and possibly sweat and skin flakes of another. Ecstasy is therefore not actually the goal, but rather the experience of collectivity.”
Nachtkritik, Michael Wolf, 13.10.2023

“She She Pop has named the evening “High” with the declared aim of putting us all into a collective state of intoxication here and now, ecstasy under supervision, so to say, or as they call it, “a shared high” (…) Blockages need to be released, resistance eliminated and distracting thoughts banished. (…) The members of She She Pop are not deterred by any of this, they simply perform away any reservations and stick to their guns: stop individualism, bring on the collective ecstasy. Together we are stronger, or at least higher.”
Berliner Morgenpost, Katrin Pauly, 13.10.2023

“It’s okay to think of rituals when watching the show, but we’re not performing any that already exist. (…) As always, we use ourselves as examples and offer ourselves as carriers of strategies that can lead to a high. (…) In this protected theatrical space, there is always the chance to try something out (…), to slip briefly into a different situation, into a different social system, into a social situation. You can’t start a big revolution without first having practiced or tried it out.”
Lisa Lucassen in conversation with Oliver Krantz, rbb kultur radio, 11.10.2023

“Taking objects as their point of departure, She She Pop soon explore a utopian space through a rather impressive projection of photographs onto several layers of gauze. The performers crawl through a kind of tunnel, sometimes ending up in a destroyed house after the catastrophe of Chernobyl, then they are back in front of a block of houses in former East Berlin – today’s Berlin-Mitte (…) Along the way, the performers try to continue the dialog about the many unanswered questions surrounding property or participation using constantly new rules. First breathe, then speak. Or touch. The rules have to be renegotiated over and over again, as utopia remains utterly elusive, and so the picture transforms into an increasingly incomprehensible collage of the future.”
Annette Stiekele, Hamburger Abendblatt, 19.01.24

“The drawers have become walls, which doesn’t sound very optimistic, but doesn’t spread gloom either. (…) But the beauty of She She Pop’s narrative experimental theatre is that ideological exaggerations always just serve as an initiation for their dismantling. And on this evening they achieve this dismantling with only a few wonderfully playful tricks. Whenever the dialogue reaches a dead end, they give themselves new rules for expressing themselves (…). And slowly their self-reflection slips into a dreamlike journey through time, back to that turning point in history when everything still seemed possible. A gauze curtain falls and a wall of dense undergrowth is projected onto it. The former border region of the Berlin Wall has become a social divide. But slowly the camera zooms closer and closer into the green until a black hole opens up, through which the performers simply slip backstage, into another space-time. The stage becomes a magical floating place between yesterday and today, between concrete slab and mahogany interior – and the performers climb around in it, as in their most daring utopias. Suddenly, everything seems possible here, including joining forces with two other colleagues from Seoul and Siberia via video. And for the length of one performance the world is a better place.”
Doris Meierhenrich, Berliner Zeitung, 08.12.2022

“After ten years, She She Pop once again open the drawers at Berlin’s HAU in which they autobiographically sought to engage in a dialogue between East and West. Among the books from the past, which they divide into what can go and what should stay, they also discover old utopias. Which are still worth something to us today, in the midst of a war and an increasingly visible climate catastrophe, after all the debates on identity politics and a growing awareness that our white Central European perspective of prosperity is perhaps in itself more a problem than a solution?”
Georg Kasch, Nachtkritik, 08.12.2022

“Visions of the future from the past. In general, much here revolves around the future, visions, utopias. (…) The protagonists undertake a journey through time, which takes them both into the past and into the future. It is a journey on which the women repeatedly change planes. The planes of time and perception. And over and over again, they come up against barriers, walls.
Antje Bonhage, rbb-online, 07.12.2022

“Oratorio gives no answers – but many suggestions – as to how to progress and the choruses offer a guide to collective self-empowerment. So, that’s a good start!”
Andrej Holm, Nachtkritik, 13.05.19

All in all, “Oratorio” is a triumph of experimental performance: it democratises the space of the theatre to tap into a pressing public discourse, it blows up the concept of passive entertainment by highlighting our collective complicity in capitalistic property relations, and it delivers an inspiring show of solidarity in the process. But, aware of its own formal limitations, it ends on a self-critical, yet optimistic note. Question: what use is all of this? Answer: it’s a rehearsal for what’s to come. As the evening comes to a close and my neighbour and I return to our divergent economic realities, I feel that we both leave the theatre with a heightened sensibility for the nuances of property relations. And that’s a testament to a powerful, political performance. Bertie would approve.
Nicholas Potter, Theatertreffen-Blog 2019, 12.05.19

“It’s both the right place – here, in this city up for sale – and the right time to venture an experiment like this with the audience. The right topics – money, property privileges, power, values, community, expectations of theatre audiences – are brought up. The right questions are asked in light of the current situation of housing shortages, exploding rents, temporary employment contracts and exclusionary, right-shifting social structures. And this is the right way to ask them: humorously, not smugly and not with a disapproving undertone. In short: this is the right way to make theatre (collective, equal, de-hierarchised).”
Dilan Zuhal Capan, Theatertreffen-Blog 2019, 11.05.19

The production is at its strongest when it involves the audience, who speak and react to the texts on display in interaction with the performers. For example, when all the heirs are asked to say on stage what they will inherit and to add up the total sum of their inheritances. The time-honoured rule “Never talk about money” is rendered null and void, and the viewer becomes voyeur. When a man states that he is going to inherit a house with a garden in Sachsenhausen, a murmur goes through the audience: these Frankfurters know what his property is worth. “Oratorio” appeals to the moral responsibility of property-owners, but the production also reveals the contradictions of individual apartment owners, and so avoids one-sided moralising. By using the audience as a chorus, it shows that the distribution of property is not just a private matter, but a social one.”
Grete Götze, Frankfurter Rundschau, 03.09.2018

In “Oratorio” no political positions are stated; instead, the different actors illustrate different economic starting points. (…) In fact, this has an important role in the performance: for it is up to each individual to take part in the actions of the chorus and to alternate with the performers in texts projected and so, to out oneself. There is also something liturgical about this (…) from the protected space of the theatre (…), as indicated in the production’s subheading, what emerges is a meditation in which polyphonic groups and chants, the chorus of delegates as representatives of the social region, a chorus of heirs, but also individual voices are raised and bring up questions on the subject of property – well known ones, sometimes moralising, but always worth considering.
Badische Zeitung, 25.05. 2018

In general, “Oratorio” is highly entertaining from the very first second … not only because there are a few clever ideas that affect everyone on stage and in the gallery. But because nowadays one rarely experiences anyone, in cheerful severity, really trying to take Bertolt Brecht’s Lehrstücke as a model for form, word and music. Lehrstücke, because everyone can learn something, and because there is basically no audience. Which is why all those who took part in the three Frankfurt performances had no small part in the success of the choir.”
Eva-Maria Magel, FAZ, 03.09.2018

Reviews of the Premiere in Berlin, February 2018

“The surprise comes right at the beginning. Actually nothing at all has really happened yet on the dark, empty stage of HAU2. Just a text on the screen giving brief instructions. But they are so rousing that for a good ten fifteen minutes the audience is put in a mood that is otherwise familiar only from cabaret or carnival. Just let someone say that the supporters of the post-dramatic are theory-damaged, empathy-hating theatre sceptics.”
Doris Meierhenrich, Berliner Zeitung, 12.02.2018

Reviews of the Showing in Sofia, November 2017

„To claim that such a theatrical work leads to some sort of surprise or discovery, it would be inconsistent with its aims. It is not so much about the discovery of profound social contradictions, rather then targeting the ability of the theater to act on an individual, biographical level raising resemblance questions, which are otherwise mostly left in the hands of the media. In this way, the theater tries to preserve its freedom, distinguishing itself. So, in the general chorus of theatrical practices from the recent decades, She She Pop is certainly part it.“
Violeta Detcheva, “Kultura” magazine, 01.12.2017

“Oratorio”, at least for me, provoked on many levels feeling for awakening, for clarity, for uncompromisingness and truth. But most of all, it has proven the ever-growing need to articulate from the stage even the simplest and most obvious things that are actually the most difficult to define.”
Elena Angelova, portal “Kultura”, 01.12.2017

Reviews of the showing in Hannover, June 2017

“.. many things suggest  that “Oratorio” – after She She Pop’s success story “Testament” about inheritance – will be a similarly fine, self-deprecating show.”
Mounia Meiborg, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 15.06.2017

“That’s how Brecht would have liked it …”
Stefan Gohlisch, Neue Presse, 11.06.17

“… fundamental social questions, which could be thought-provoking. Nevertheless, the evening was not lacking in humour … ”
Kreiszeitung, 15.06.17