Ten years ago in Drawers, She She Pop members sat across from some of their East German contemporaries. Drawers explored the systemic conditions that forged their identities, showing two strong ideologies and opposing doctrines each with their inner logic. Our self-images, however, have not survived the past ten years and the myths of where we came from already lay in ruins. Can a common future even be built on the baggage of the past, the failed utopias of our parents’ generation and the abuse and injustice of the past 30 years?
Against the backdrop of present times, which are marked by isolation and destruction, She She Pop opens the stage to search for collective visions of the future and what stands in their way. As a mental extension of Drawers, She She Pop has once again invited various guests to share the stage or be connected virtually in their new production, Walls. Together, they travel through time to past moments and possible futures. In doing so, they try to form a community that surpasses linguistic or physical barriers, which are outside the range of solidarity or imagination or even brutally defined by visa requirements. Whereas the stage was still a place of uncomfortable clashes in Drawers, here it is turned into a neoliberal co-working space or dark padded cell used as a think tank. The journey takes the audience along walls that permeate how we perceive shared reality and its emotional impact. She She Pop and guests sift through the rubble of documentary material and combine it with futuristic camera technology to turn the stage into a time capsule. Women travel in it to uninhabitable or deserted scenarios to speculate on or live in other forms of the present and possible futures. Fantasy or the possibility of fiction emerges as a precious commodity. It is a dimension that is difficult to reach and can only be attained together with a special effort of doubt, fear, insolence, humour and clairvoyance.
Idea and concept: She She Pop, By and with (performed in alternating line-up): Sebastian Bark, Natasha Borenko, Johanna Freiburg, Annett Gröschner, Jahye Khoo, Alexandra Lachmann, Katharina Lorenz, Lisa Lucassen, Peggy Mädler, Mieke Matzke, Ilia Papatheodorou, Wenke Seemann, Berit Stumpf.
Dramaturgy: She She Pop, Annett Gröschner, Peggy Mädler, Artistic Advice: Rodrigo Zorzanelli Cavalcanti, Director of Photography Video Installation: Benjamin Krieg, Video Support: Rocío Rodriguez, Sets: Sandra Fox, Costumes: Lea Søvsø, Costumes Assistance: Lili Hillerich, Music: Max Knoth with Maria Schneider, Sound Design: Xavier Perrone, Technical Director and Light Design: Sven Nichterlein, Production: Chiara Galesi, Interns: María Giacaman, Ruth Lindner, Workshop Input: Lavinia Knop-Walling, Rehearsal Interpretation (German/Korean): Eunsoon Jung, Simultaneous English Live Translation: PANTHEA / Anna Johannsen, Audio description: Pingpong Translation & Subtitling / Martina Reuter, Johanna Krins, PR, Communication: ehrliche arbeit – freelance office for culture, Freelance Communication Support: Tina Ebert, Financial Administration: Aminata Oelßner, Company Management: Elke Weber.
Special thanks to the photographers and archivists who have provided photographic material from their artistic works:
Benjamin Krieg with works from his archive.
Credits:
A production by She She Pop in co-production with HAU Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, Kampnagel Hamburg, Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm, FFT Düsseldorf, Schauspiel Leipzig, HELLERAU – EUROPÄISCHES Zentrum der Künste. Supported by Theaterhaus Berlin Mitte.
Funded by the City of Berlin — Department for Culture and Europe, the German Federal Cultural Foundation and by Rudolf Augstein Foundation.
“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
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?
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.
Concept/Idea: She She Pop (The cast changes every show). By and with (old): Sebastian Bark, Dan Belasco Rogers, Santiago Blaum, Johanna Freiburg, Fanni Halmburger, Lisa Lucassen, Mieke Matzke, Ilia Papatheodorou, Tatiana Saphir, Claudia Splitt, Berit Stumpf. By and with (young): Hiyam Biary, Eren M. Güvercin, Jan Nwattu, Şimal Nil Şahin, Nikolas Stäudte, Béla Arnaud Weimar-Dittmar, Zelal Yesilyurt, Sindi Zeneli.
Artistic Advise: Laia Ribera Cañénguez, Rodrigo Zorzanelli Cavalcanti, Stage: Jan Brokof, Costumes: Lea Søvsø, Costumes Assistance: Marie Göhler and Gabi Bartels, Light Design: Andreas Harder, Michael Lentner, Light Design Assistance: Vito Walter, Choreografic Advise: Jill Emerson, Sound: Xavier Perrone, Technical Director: Sven Nichterlein, Production: Valeria Germain, Production Assistence Young: Sarah Mounia Kachiri, PR, Communication: ehrliche arbeit – freies Kulturbüro, Freelance Communikation Support: Tina Ebert, Financial Administration: Aminata Oelßner, Company Management: Elke Weber.
Workshop Input: The Darvish, Jasmine Thomas, Bree Hauschild, Sven Drühl.
Special thanks to: Max Knoth, Stella Konstantinou and Peggy Mädler.
Simultaneous English Live Translation: PANTHEA / Irina Bondas (22.01. and 23.01.2022)
Audio description: Pingpong Translation & Subtitling / Martina Reuter (24.01.2022)
A Production of She She Pop in Co-Production with HAU Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, Kampnagel Hamburg, Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm, FFT Düsseldorf, HELLERAU – Europäisches Zentrum der Künste. Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and by the City of Berlin – Department for Culture and Europe.
“(…) If Dance Me makes one thing clear, it is that achievements are not for eternity. In a theatrical battle, the Berliners of She She Pop playfully tackle these facts. Even if the tempo slackens a little here and there, the one hundred minute performance is entertaining due to a healthy dose of humour. (…)Dancing with oranges between their bodies or enjoying a rave: various exercises are used in each round. In between the exercises, we are playfully provided with information about the different generations. Thus we learn that the young wallow in melancholy with their fondness for singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey, while the rebellious elderly lovingly ruin the song ‘The Wall’ by Pink Floyd. ‘Teacher, leave them kids alone’ is symbolic self-irony and exactly in the spirit of She She Pop. The established ideals of the older generation, who quickly have the audience wrapped around their little fingers with their disarming dances, are constantly undermined. We make progress, but then we fall short again. Apparently they are not sustainable. The new generation will have to reinvent the wheel again. The audience, in front of whom young and old struggle for recognition over the course of the entire performance, is thrilled.”
Moos van den Broek, www.theaterkrant.nl, 31.10.2022
“It is most powerful when the young refuse the concept of generations, when they present themselves as diversity per se. And the elders, who increasingly meet at funerals, now move to join them, gently leaning on them, but also becoming a support for some of the young bodies. But before this tips over into intergenerational sentimentality, here comes the hard truth: the elders can’t win this battle, they’re going to die first. But the success of the younger ones is also fleeting: they will eventually follow. The young man with the tattoo inspires a beautiful thought: to die with the feeling of first love that would be his dream. Who doesn’t share this wish, no matter how old?”
Andreas Berger, Tanznetz, 03.09.2022
“In “Dance Me!” the performance collective She She Pop pits two age groups against each other in the style of a TV show: Five 20-year-olds have to hold their own in various disciplines against an over-50 quintet. However, unlike TV shows such as “Little vs. Big” or “Let’s Dance”, there is nothing to win, only less to lose. Both teams run out of steam as the evening progresses (…). Those who have retained some residual energy at the end – in this case the younger ones – can watch the others die.”
Stefan Arndt, Neue Presse Hannover, 03.09.2022
“The performers themselves belong to the over-50 age group. They have invited colleagues around the age of 20, some even younger. The representatives of both age cohorts compete as two teams in a kind of game show, the prototype of which was developed by She She Pop’s parents’ generation – back when television was gaining colour. Classic elements of boxing are adopted, with blue and red boxing coats to identify the rivals, with gongs that ring in each new round, with luminous displays and a square as the fighting arena. (…) The older performers routinely demonstrate the advantages of early childhood music lessons and manually recreate the songs of their generation on accordion, electric guitar and flute. The younger ones let machines perform, at best turning the knobs. On the other hand, the younger ones’ repertoire of movements is more flexible; they adapt their rehearsed moves more smoothly to the music presented to them by their elders.”
Tom Mustroph, taz, 20.01.2022
“The music is produced live, that is one of the most charming ideas in this overall very charming and also rousing evening, that the (participants) all make music themselves. But also that it is exactly the music that is dear to their hearts (…), the (participants) thereby have very different ideas of music. (…) One notices that there are deep rifts and the evening does not glaze over them (…), it is a mutual declaration of love.”
André Mumot, Deutschlandfunkkultur, 20.01.2022
“The accompanying dance interludes demonstrate a great love of abandon and choreographic commitment, pop culture reminiscences, charming, Macarena song-inspired arm and hip swaying, trance and improvisation. Body strength and weight are danced into the floor, repetitive formations are charted to club sounds, sequences of movements by individual performers translated into group images over and over again. These are beautiful images for tensions in which individual lifestyles meet zeitgeist, socialization and economy.”
Stephanie Drees, Nachtkritik, 19.01.2022
This year, the members of She She Pop will all be about 50. And so, they explore society’s fear of the ‘hag’ – the old woman and witch – in their new production Hexploitation. Naturally, they will be using their ageing bodies for this purpose: to fight against the invisibility and loss of status that women suffer in society when they are no longer of childbearing age. To this day, the term ‘witch’ is used to belittle or reduce women. The witch – an anarchic, heretical woman – stands for sexuality beyond reproduction and subversive behaviour towards power structures and authorities.
In Hexploitation, She She Pop lock themselves and the audience in a mise en scène reminiscent of a low-lit, kitschy film set from which there is no escape. A live camera serves as a magnifying glass and intimate examining tool. With its help, the She She Pop team, in the guise of ageing psycho biddies, explore their own disturbing imperfections and obsessions, go in search of taboos and examine traditional witchcraft. They also discover the camera as a magic box through which they can repeatedly transcend their bodies to create liberating self-portraits, coupled with melodramatic disgust and comical lust, reminiscent of Norma Desmond’s memorable line: ‘Mr DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up!’ (Sunset Boulevard, 1950).
By and with: Sebastian Bark, Johanna Freiburg, Fanni Halmburger, Lisa Lucassen, Mieke Matzke, Ilia Papatheodorou, Berit Stumpf.
Music: Santiago Blaum, Director of Photography & Video Installation: Benjamin Krieg, Sets: Sandra Fox, Costumes: Lea Søvsø, Costumes assistance: Lili Hillerich and Mads Dinesen , Artistic and dramaturgical Advice: Laia Ribera Cañénguez, Sound Design: Manuel Horstmann, Light Design: Michael Lentner, Technical Director: Sven Nichterlein, Video Support: Daniela Garcia del Pomar, Precision Mechanics Camera Control: Thilo Gödel, Embedded Software Engineer – Camera Control Grzegorz Zajac, Interns: Carolin Bodensteiner, Rodrigo Zorzanelli Cavalcanti, Production: Valeria Germain, PR, Communication: ehrliche arbeit–freelance office for culture, Freelance Communication Support: Tina Ebert, Financial Administration: Aminata Oelßner, Company Management: Elke Weber.
Special thanks to: Veronica Dyas (Dublin), Claudia Opitz (Basel), Eva von Redecker (Berlin), Takako Shibata (Tokyo).
A production of She She Pop in Co-production with HAU Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, Kampnagel Hamburg, Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm, FFT Düsseldorf, Residenz Schauspiel Leipzig, HELLERAU – Europäisches Zentrum der Künste, Kaserne Basel and Festival delle Colline Torinesi Turin / TPE – Teatro Piemonte Europa.
Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and by the City of Berlin – Department for Culture and Europe.
www.kulturstiftung-des-bundes.de
“Like fresh teenagers on a self-awareness course, four members of the She She Pop team (Johanna Freiburg, Berit Stumpf, Mieke Matzke, Sebastian Bark at the premiere) sit half-naked on stage, looking at their genitals with mirrors. The time is ripe for them to take a good look at their bodies again, which they do right from the start with a touch of delightful intimacy lacking any embarrassment. (…) (…) All is revealed. The show examines issues of getting thinner or fatter, age spots and wrinkles, spare tyres and period blood. The performers do a self-deprecating survey which, by the end, has become a fantastic She She Pop spectacle (…)
(…) In one of the best scenes, separate body parts are assembled on the video screen. For example, a head becomes a belly or Sebastian Bark crawls out from a women’s pubis like during birth. It’s a show wonderfully self-mocking images about gender, in a cinematic transformation that lands punches and teases every which way. (…)”
Simone Kaempf, nachtkritik, 19.09.2020
“Not only wrinkles and belly fat are shown, but close-ups of a woman’s pubis are projected onto the set and quickly distorted in fast succession. Body parts and faces connect while the history of witch-hunts is discussed or the performers discuss menstruation, the female body in capitalism and bodily self-image. “Is it the spotlights or am I just having a hot flash?” asks Berit Stumpf at one point. The evening, which lasts just seventy minutes, is a post-dramatic tour de force, joyous, funny and feisty. (..)(…) They question and film each other, set challenges, concoct artificial menstrual blood for the man in their team and keep raising the stakes until, in a rapturous finale, the old tropes are abolished. Loyalty to the male gaze, which reduces women who can no longer have children to witches, is renounced. (…) The effect is electrifying, and the audience ends up bewitched, bothered and bewildered.”
André Mumot, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, 19.09.2020
“The fact that this neither seems pornographic or provocative, but just a natural part of intimate research, is down to the group’s tongue-in-cheek performance. Nothing about this show is uptight or exhibitionistic. (…) (…) it is a highly self-deprecating mixture of horror film and witches’ kitchen. (…) It is (…)[the] intimacy, the light-heartedness and the humour that touch you.” Barbara Behrendt, Inforadio RBB Kultur, 19.09.2020 “A body is never just a body, least of all when it is female. And this is why Hexploitation primarily consists of the performers beating their way through the tangle of male-dominated tropes of the Other, as well as myths and manipulations that classify the female body and render it available. Persistent diagnoses of irritability during the menopause, for example, which Mieke Matzke presents in a lecturer’s tone, are countered by the performers’ radically unemotional, cold view of their genital anatomy. (…) Hexploitation (…) takes you by surprise with its completely unashamed radicalism.”
Doris Meierhenrich, Berliner Zeitung, 21.09.2020
“(…) Most of the scenes are performed throughout in an open bathrobe or completely naked. This does not break any aesthetic conventions, but points to the fact that spaces and roles for women over 50 are dwindling, not least in the cultural sector. The menopause is a metaphor for invalidation. And it’s about women’s bare existence. She She Pop celebrate the attempt to break away from this age-old trope of withering femininity in a cool film-studio setting. Here, video artist Benjamin Krieg creates a striking visual layer with his own narrative: he shows close-ups of vulvas, which sometimes take up the entire theatre in a carousel of images, and morphs the faces of the performers into each other, as well as other clever cross-fades (…).”
Patrick Wildermann, Tagesspiegel, 21.09.20
“(…) The show is a potent mixture of witches’ sabbath and a discourse on exploitation, which, as is customary in She She Pop, finds its roots in the group’s radical exhibitionism, but almost immediately spills over into a comprehensive structural analysis that spans decades. In the witches’ cauldron, we find the pathologised woman of around fifty; medical research, which orients its drugs on men’s organisms; an armada of misogynistic poets and thinkers (such as Rainer Maria Rilke and “The Faded One”) alongside many other wicked things, combined with unsparing close-ups of fleshy folds, drooping breasts and the members’ thinning hair. Those who scream “authenticity” here must also scream “ironic twist”, because the much-maligned concept of authenticity is, as always in She She Pop’s work, skilfully undermined in this lecture-performance that combines text, music (Santiago Blaum), video (Benjamin Krieg) and outlandish costumes (Lea Søvsø).”
Dorte Lena Eilers, Theater der Zeit, 1/2021
“(…) She She Pop declares war on the patriarchs of this world and then belt out Lana Del Rey’s “Young and Beautiful”, in which being “young” and “beautiful” happen not to be requirements for a worthwhile life. Now, if not sooner, it is clear that the group understands female issues without falling into heavy-handed activism. Because this is not a moralising show. It considers its subject realistically in the context of culture and pop-culture, initiating a self-healing process with its open display of bodies and self-doubt, of which many fashionably feminist theatre professionals can only dream.”
Anna Fastabend, Theater heute, Oktober 2020
In times of a pandemic, going to the theatre becomes a distant memory that slowly fades away. She She Pop are unable to show “Canon” (which premiered at HAU Hebbel am Ufer in November 2019) in front of an audience. Such an uncontrolled means of transmission from an individual body to the euphoric collective of all those present is a highly questionable act at the moment. But they do vow to carry the torch on. In fragmentary accounts, they will conjure up unforgettable stage moments from memory and narrate a canon – evening for evening anew, together with their audience.
To do this, She She Pop are switching to a medium just as transient as theatre, albeit not as public and thankfully less infectious, at least in these times: individual telephone conversations. Phone tree, helpline or hotline: Telephone Canonisn’t a show, it’s a service. Whoever calls up will get one of the cast of “Canon” on the phone and hear about an essential moment in the performing arts. But the canon is also open for your own tales and entries.
Alle Einträge in den “Telefon-Kanon” vom 14.–16.5.2020 am HAU Hebbel am Ufer Berlin
Jérôme Bel, “The Show Must Go On”, Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Hamburg, 2000
Gob Squad, “Gob Squad’s Kitchen”, Spielort unbekannt, Düsseldorf, 2019
Michael Laub/Remote Control, Titel unbekannt, Sommertheater Festival, Hamburg, 1994
Regie unbekannt, Titel unbekannt, Theater Basel, 1982
I can be your translator, “Das Konzept bin ich”, Ballhaus Ost, Berlin, 2019
Fix&Foxy, “A Doll’s House”, Staatsschauspiel Dresden, 2019
Regie unbekannt, “Frühlings Erwachen”, Theater Bremen, 2020
Sasha Waltz, Titel unbekannt (ein eher installativer Abend, in dem auch Charlotte Engelke vorkam),Radialsystem V, Berlin, ca. 2006
Taylor Mac, “A 24-Decade History of Popular Music”, Haus der Berliner Festspiele, Berlin, 2019
Showcase Beat Le Mot, “Burn Cities Burn”, Kampnagel, Hamburg, 2000
She She Pop, “Trust”, Kampnagel, Hamburg, 1998
René Pollesch, “Ich schau dir in die Augen, gesellschaftlicher Verblendungszusammenhang”, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, 2010
Hochschule für Musik und Theater (HfMT) Hamburg, Titel unbekannt, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, 2018
Meg Stuart, “Projecting [Space[”, Reinbeckhallen, Berlin, 2018
Armin Petras, “Urfaust”, Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin, 2008
Akram Khan, “Giselle”, Spielort unbekannt, Genf, 2019
Johan Simons, “Hamlet”, Spielort unbekannt, Bochum, 2019
Christoph Werner, “Das Geheimnis des Alten Waldes”, Spielort unbekannt, Halle, 2006 oder 2007
Steffi Weismann, “Blenda Lavabo”, KuLe, Berlin, Anfang der 90er-JahreMarcel Marceau, “Vire-sur-Lot”, Spielort unbekannt, Südfrankreich, Anfang der 80er-Jahre Ann Liv Young, “Cinderella”, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, 2011
Johannes Wieland, “Morgendämmerung”, Staatstheater Kassel, 2018
Miss Revolutionary Idol Berserker, “Extreme Voices”, Festival Theaterformen, Braunschweig, 2016
Regie unbekannt, Titel unbekannt, Theater Zerbrochene Fenster, Berlin, 1988
Richard Foreman, “Hotel Fuck”, Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz, Berlin, 1997
René Pollesch, “Heidi Hoh arbeitet hier nicht mehr”, Podewil, Berlin, 2000
Kate McIntosh, “In Many Hands”, Festspielhaus Hellerau, Dresden, 2019
Marcel Broodthaers, “Un Jardin d’Hiver”, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, 2005/2006
American Amateur Opera Group, “Opera Labyrinth”, Salzburg Festival, Salzburg, 2019
Aktör, Titel unbekannt, Schule in Tokalynea, Schweden, 1999
Station House Opera, “Black Works”, ICA, London, 1991
Gob Squad, “Gob Squad’s Kitchen”, Spielort unbekannt, Göteborg, 2008
Keyon Gaskin, “NASHA”, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, Jahr unbekannt Muriel Miranda Gacitúa, “La Mala Semilla”, Ort unbekannt, 2002
“La aparición de Jesús en Copacabana” / Die Erscheinung Jesu in Copacabana, (kein Theater-moment, sondern eine Erfahrung), Ort unbekannt, 1998
Christopher Rüping, “Dionysos Stadt”, Ort unbekannt, 2019
Vegard Vinge, “John Gabriel Borkman”, Volksbühne im Prater, Berlin, 2012
Johann Kresnik, “Macbeth”, Städtische Bühne, Heidelberg, 1988
Tino Sehgal, “Constructed Situations”, Fondation Beyeler, Basel, 2017
Ohne Mich Theater, Titel unbekannt, documenta Kassel, 1987
Signa, “The Dorine Chaikin Institute”, Ballhaus Ost, Berlin, 2007
Benoit Sicat, “Le Jardin de Possible”, Theater an der Parkaue, Berlin, 2007
Fanny & Alexander, “Romeo und Julia”, Eurokaz Festival, Zagreb, 1999
A + P Theater, “Commedia dell’Arte”, Festival der AWO Jugend, irgendwo auf dem Land in Niedersachsen, 1985
Marina Abramović, “Biography”, TAT, Frankfurt/Main, 1993
Gob Squad, “I Love You, Goodbye”, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, 2020
Constanza Macras/Dorkypark, “No Wonder”, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, 2005
Heiner Goebbels, “Stifters Dinge”, Nowy Teatr, Warschau, 2015
Ashley Fure, “The Force of Things”, Summer Courses for New Music, Central Station Art Center, Darmstadt, 2016
Margret Sara Guðjónsdóttir / Angela Schubot, “In the Blind Spot”, Sophiensaele, Berlin, 2014
Olafur Eliasson, “Innen Stadt Außen”, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin, 2010
Federico León, “The Adolescent”, De Kriekelaar, Kunsten Festival Des Arts, Brüssel, 2003
Mette Ingvartsen, “The Artificial Nature Projekt”, PACT Zollverein, Essen, 2012
Florentina Holzinger, “Tanz”, Sophiensaele, Berlin, 2020 Regie unbekannt, “Frei-Boxen”, Deutsches Theater, Berlin, 2019
Judith Wilske, “DU/Die Stadt”, Hamburg, Jahr unbekannt Jürgen Gosch, “Onkel Wanja”, Deutsches Theater, Berlin, Jahr unbekannt
Frank Castorf, “Baumeister Solness“, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, 2017
Franziska Steiof, “So lonely”, Grips Theater, Berlin, 2014
Trixie Munyama, “The Mourning Citizen”, Spielort unbekannt, Namibia, 2017
Gob Squad, “Creation (Pictures for Dorian)”, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, 2020
Regie unbekannt, “Os Sertões”, Teatro Oficina, São Paulo, 2010
Christoph Marthaler, “Schutz vor der Zukunft”, Spielzeit Europa, Heilstätten Beelitz, 2006
René Pollesch, “Heidi Hoh arbeitet hier nicht mehr”, Podewil, Berlin, 2000
Boris Charmatz, “enfant”, Haus der Berliner Festspiele, 2012
Duckie’s Table Top Performance Palais, “C’est Vauxhall!”, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, 2005
Ruth Gutkowski & Carsten Hentrich, “Grimms Märchen Reloaded”, Spielort unbekannt, Hannover, 2007
Gob Squad, “Super Night Shot”, Spielort unbekannt, Aarhus, 2008
Regie unbekannt, “A Swing Jazz Night on Roller Skates”, Theaterdiscounter, Berlin, 2008
The Natural Theatre Company, “The Police”, Spielort unbekannt, Bath, 1986
Ein Grillabend mit Nature Theatre of Oklahoma, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, Jahr unbekannt
She She Pop, “Frühlingsopfer”, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, Jahr unbekannt
Mathilde Monnier / La Ribot, “Gustavia”, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2009
Gob Squad, “Western Society”, Teatro Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, Bogota, 2014
Constanza Macras / Dorkypark, “No Wonder”, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, 2005
Ritva Holmberg, “Kallion Kimallus”, Helsinki City Theatre, Helsinki, 1994
Lubricat / Dirk Cieslak, “Einfache Dienstleistung”, Ballhaus Ost, Berlin, 2006
Pina Bausch, “Kontakthof”, Staatstheater Wuppertal, 1990
William Forsythe, “Impressing the Czar”, Ballett Frankfurt/Main, 1989
Charleroi Danses (Michèle Anne de Mey & Jaco van Dormaen), “Kiss & Cry”, Festival “Colours”,Stuttgart, 2015
Forced Entertainment, “And on the Thousandth Night”, Festspielhaus Hellerau, Dresden, 2019
ongoing project, “Feuerland”, Probebühne Gießen, 2010
Nicolas Charaux, “Der (vor)letzte Panda oder Die Statik”, Burgtheater Wien, 2020
Vegard Vinge, “John Gabriel Borkman”, Volksbühne im Prater, Berlin, 2012
Zirkus, Wenduine (Belgien), 1968 Johann Kresnik, “Woyzeck”, Städtische Bühne, Heidelberg, 1987
Forced Entertainment, “Bloody Mess”, Festival Theaterformen, Schauspiel Hannover, Jahr unbekannt Satoko Ichihara / Q, “Favonia’s Fruitless Fable / The Question of Fairies“, Kyoto Art Center, Kyoto, 2018
Susanne Kennedy, “Die Selbstmordschwestern”, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, 2018
Wim Vandekeybus, “Puur”, Kunglinga Operan, Stockholm, 2018
Jérôme Bel, “Gala”, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, 2015
Gaëlle Bourges, “À mon seul désir”, Festival d’Avignon, 2015
Regie unbekannt, Titel unbekannt, documenta, Athen, 2017
Uniater, “#netzwerke”, Festival Fitut, Tanger, 2015
Peter Stein, “Peer Gynt”, Schaubühne, Berlin, 1972
Christoph Schlingensief, “100 Jahre CDU”, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, 1993
Rimini Protokoll, “Nachlass – Pièces sans personnes”, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin, 2017
Kompanie Kopergietery, “Die Königin ist verschwunden”, Theater Stuttgart, 2018
Falk Richter, “Fear”, Schaubühne, Berlin, 2016
Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol, “Tijuana”, International Dance and Theater Festival, Montreal, 2018
Magic Theatre Company, “Buried Child”, Magic Theatre, San Francisco, 2013
Patricio Estrella, “El Quijote”, Teatro Espada de Madera, Ecuador, ca. 1995
René Pollesch, “Kill your Darlings!”, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, ca. 2014
Boris Nikitin, “Versuch über das Sterben”, Kaserne Basel, 2019
João Gilberto, Konzert, Carnegie Hall, New York, ca. 1999
Jun Tsutsui, “Shakagaike – Der Buddha-Teich”, FFT, Düsseldorf, 2019
Ligna, “Rausch und Zorn”, Kampnagel, Hamburg, 2019
Jan Fabre, “The Sound of One Hand Clapping”, Schauspiel Frankfurt/Main, ca. 1989
Elisabeth Gabriel, “Dunkel lockende Welt”, Landestheater Innsbruck, 2008
Regie unbekannt, “Maria Stuart”, Burgtheater Wien, 2008
Wajdi Mouaqad, “Incendies”, Spielort unbekannt, Avignon, 2005
She She Pop, “Testament”, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, 2008
Einar Schleef, “Salome”, Schillertheater, Berlin, 1998
Zelal Yesilyurt, “Lolita will nicht sterben”, P14, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, 2018
Showcase Beat Le Mot, “Radar Radar nichts ist egal”, Kampnagel, Hamburg, 1998
Regie unbekannt, “Unendlicher Spaß”, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, 2012
Cirque de Barbarie, Titel unbekannt, Spielort unbekannt, Stuttgart, 1991
La Fura dels Baus, Titel unbekannt, Spielort unbekannt, Barcelona, 1997
Jochen Roller, “Art Gigolo”, Podewil, Berlin, 2002 She She Pop, “Besessen”, Sirenos Festival, Vilnius, 2018
Jan Fabre, “Universal Copyrights”, Hebbeltheater, Berlin, 1996
Frank Castorf, “Schmutzige Hände”, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, 1998
Stuffed Puppet Theatre, “Schicklgruber”, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, 2004
Regie unbekannt, Titel unbekannt, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, 2010
Peter Brook, “The Tempest”, Spielort unbekannt, Frankfurt/Main, 1991
Ariane Mnouchkine, “Les Atrides”, Cartoucherie, Paris, 1991
Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller, “Ghost Machine”, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, 2005
Rimini Protokoll, “Situation Rooms”, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, 2019
Hofesh Shechter, “Clowns” (Film), Tanzrauschen, Wuppertal, 2019
Peaches, “Peaches Christ Superstar”, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, 2010
Nina Hahn, “Heimat (Wenn du nicht weißt, woher du kommst, woher willst du dann wissen, wohin du gehst?)”, Schultheater-Aufführung mit geflüchteten Kindern, Heinrich-von-Brentano-Schule, Hochheim, 2016
Leander Haußmann, “Der gute Mensch von Sezuan”, Berliner Ensemble, 2015
Gob Squad, “War and Peace”, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, 2018
Gob Squad, “Revolution Now!”, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, 2014
Carsten Höller, “The Baudouin Experiment”, Kunstenfestival, Brüssel, Jahr unbekannt Kristian Smeds, “The Seagull”, Von Kraahl Theater, Helsinki, 2010 Kristian Smeds, “Tabu”, Spielort unbekannt, Helsinki, 2017
Alfred Kirchner, “Faust”, Schiller Theater Berlin, 1993
L’Amicale de production, “On traversera le pont une fois rendus à la rivière”, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt/Main, 2017
Jürgen Kruse, “Tryin’ Othello”, Deutsches Theater, Berlin, 2003
Christoph Schlingensief, “Die erste sozialistische Butterfahrt der MS Clara Zetkin”, Volksbühne im Prater, Berlin, 1995
Pina Bausch, “Nelken”, Spielort unbekannt, Düsseldorf, 2000
Yeguas del Apocalipsis, “La Conquista de América”, Comisión Chilena de Derechos Humanos, 1989
Ein Moment, Berlin, Oktober 1989 Manuela Infante, “Cristo”, Teatro de Chile, Matucana, 2008
Ulrich Rasche, “Die Bakchen”, Burgtheater Wien, 2019
Gob Squad, “Before Your Very Eyes”, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, 2011
Toshiki Okada, “Super Premium Soft Double Vanilla Rich”, Theater der Welt, Mannheim, 2014
Maura Morales, “Exceso de la Nada”, Schwankhalle, Bremen, 2019
Regie unbekannt, “Lysistrata”, Schauspielhaus Bochum, Ende der 80er-Jahre Lloyd Newson / DV 8, “The Cost of Living”, PACT Zollverein, Essen, 2003
Tamer Yiğit, “Serenade”, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, 2019
Romeo Castellucci, “Hyperion”, Schaubühne, Berlin, 2015
Rimini Protokoll, “Cargo-Sofia”, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, 2006
Fakir Bone, “Intense Body Cabaret”, Angel Pub, Nottingham, ca.1997
Der 11. September im Fernsehen, Podewil, Berlin, 2001
Station House Opera, “Dedesnn nn rrrrrr”, Theater der Welt, Frauenkirche, Dresden, 1996
Franko B, “Aktion 398”, Toynbee Studios, London, 2001
Stephan Kimmig, “Ismene, Schwester von”, Deutsches Theater, Berlin, 2016
Sebastian Mauksch, “Die merkwürdigen Abenteuer der Knaben Edudant und Franzimor”, P14, Volksbühne am-Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, 2007
Philip Glass, “In the Summer House”, Lincoln Center, New York, 1993
Susanne Kennedy, “Women in Trouble”, Volksbühne am-Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, 2018
Regie unbekannt, Titel unbekannt, Mousonturm, Frankfurt/Main, 1996
Rocío Molina, “Caída del Cielo”, Tanzhaus NRW, Düsseldorf, 20919
Alle Einträge in den “Telefon-Kanon” vom 04.06.2020 beim Impulse Festival
„The Real Fiction“, Cuqui Jerez, Theater Festival Impulse, Bochum, 2007
„In My Room“, Shibui Kollektiv, 6-Tage-Festival Stuttgart, 2019
„Sorry“, Monster Truck, Impulse Theater Festival, Köln, 2017
„Der Räuber Hotzenplotz“, Showcase Beat Le Mot, Theater an der Parkaue, Berlin, 2007
„Die glücklose Landung“, Heiner Goebbels, Marstalltheater München, 1994
„Disabled Theatre“, Jerome Bel und Theatre Hora, Ringlokschuppen, Mülheim an der Ruhr, 2013
„Shooting Bourbaki“, Rimini Protokoll, Sophiensaele Berlin, 2002
„Besessen“, She She Pop, Impulse Theater Festival Köln, 2017
„Nachlass“, Rimini Protokoll, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin, 2017
„Das Schicksal ist ein mieser Verräter“ (Film), Josh Boone, 2014
„Testament“, She She Pop, Kunstfest Weimar, 2015
„Textband spielt: Die unsichtbaren Städte von Italo Calvino“, Utopien Werkstatt Stuttgart, 2011
„CONSUMPTION AS A CAUSE OF COMING INTO BEING“, Roland Rauschmeier mit Alex Bailey, Impulse Theater Festival, Ringlokschuppen, Mülheim an der Ruhr, 2018
„Out in Africa / Tief in Afrika“, Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom, Steve Karier, Kunstfest Weimar, 2019
„On the concept of the face regarding the son of god“, Romeo Castellucci, Essen Ruhrtriennale „Live Tonight“, Monster Truck, Theater Festival Impulse, 2007
„Palermo, Palermo“, Pina Bausch, Wuppertal, 1989
„Spitze“, Doris Uhlich, Theater Festival Impulse, 2009
„Evolution“, William Forsythe, Hellerau, Dresden, ca. 2005
„Mausoleum Buffo“, Andcompany & Co. , Theater Festival Impulse, 2007
„Was Wo (Beckett)“, Öhnsörg Theater, Oldenburg, 1995
„Gespenster (nach Ibsen)“, Marcus & Marcus, Impulse Theater Festival, 2015
„99%“, Christoph Stec, Jan-Marco Schmitz vom Spina, Theater Junges Ensemble Solingen, Paderborn, 2013
„John Gabriel Borkmann“, Vegard Vinge, Volksbühne Prater, 2012
„Rusalka“, Stefan Herheim, Théâtre de La Monnaie, Brüssel, 2012
„Das Ende des Armenhauses“, Andrej Woron, Teatr Kreatur, Berlin, 2012
„Fight Club“, God’s Entertainement, Theater Festival Impulse, 2007
„Macbeth“, Johann Kresnik, Städtische Bühne Heidelberg, 1988
„Tanz“, Florentina Holzinger , Sophiensaele, Berlin, 2020
„die Kontorsionistin“, Unbekannt, Zirkus, Wenduine (Belgien), 1968
„Woyzeck“, Johann Kresnik, Städtische Bühne, Heidelberg, 1987
„Die erste sozialistische Butterfahrt der MS Clara Zetkin“, Christoph Schlingensief, Volksbühne im Prater, Berlin, 1995
„La mélancolie des dragons“, Philippe Quesne/ VivariumStudio, Festival d’Avignon im Cloître des Célestins, Avignon, 2008
„Sorry“, Monster Truck und Segun Adefila“, FFT, Düsseldorf, 2016
„Drommen“, De Utvalgte, Theaterformen, Hannover, 2011
„Rauw“, Kabinett K, Kindertheaterfestival, Stuttgart, 2015
„Hypnotiseur aus Italien“, Unbekannt, Wandertheaterfestival, Radebeul, 2005
„Hamlet“, Boris Nikitin, Impulse Festival, Köln, 2017
Alle Einträg in den “Telefon-Kanon” vom 06.06.2020 beim Hangö Teaterträff
Seiji Shimoda New Performance, Kutomo, Turku, 2016
Jérôme Bel The Show Must Go On, Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Hampuri, 2001
FDUV Östra nylands teatergrupp, regi Kim Gustafsson PeterPan, Borgå Folkakademi Praktikums festsal, 2016
Emilia Kokko Genderfuck, 2016
Markus Öhrn Domestic Violence, Impulse Festival, 2019
Kate McIntosh In many hands, Baltic circle, Helsinki, 2019
Vegard Vinge John Gabriel Borkman, Volksbuhne, Berlin, 2012
She She Pop Testament, Helsinki (Festival at tram depot?), 2011
Alvis Hermanis The Long Life, Entre Scenen, 2006
Oblivia Entertainment Island 2, Kiasma, 2009
Salla Hakanpää Pinta, Cirko, Helsinki, 2013
tai 14 Alvis Hermanis Kaspar Hauser, Berlin, 2014
artist unknown title unknown, Sophiensaele, Berlin, 2017
artist unknown Blackbox effect, Uniarts, TeaK, 2017 or 2018
Lundahl & Seitl Symphony of a missing room, Göteborg konsthall, 2010
Esa Leskinen Equus, Kansallisteatteri, Helsinki, 1996
artist unknown El viento entre los álamos, Montevideo, Uruguay, 2008
Esa Kirkkopelto Ruusuruoska, Takomo Helsinki, 2019
Studentteatern Wuthering heights, Helsingfors, 2019
Signa Club Inferno Volksbühne, Berlin, 2013
Joakim Groth Vi är bara människor, Svenska Teatern, Helsingfors, 2019
Akademiska damkören Lyran Låt mig vara, Telakka, 2016
Ryhmäteatteri Eduskunta 2, Esbo teater ÖFA kollektiv & Blaue Frau Harlekin, Mad House,Helsingfors, 2020
en sibirisk grupp/Bertolt Brecht Den goda människan i Sezuan, Helsingfors festspel, nån gång på 1990-talet
artist unknown Glitter, nånstans i Berlin Anna-Mari Karvonen & Blaue Frau Wall to Wall, ett gallerirum i Helsingfors, 2012
artist unknown title unknown Hangö teaterträff för länge sen, föreställningen spelades i ett gammalt tullhus European Theater Collective Finnphone Emigrantica, STOA, Helsingfors, 2014
Pippo Bono Silencio, Bologna, 2004
She She Pop Trust, Kampnagel, Hamburg, 1998
(Students) Weimar – Jakten på zodiaken, Teaterhögskolan, Helsinki, 2018
HGichT title unknown, Düsseldorf, 2011
Dries Vanhoeven Guilty Landscapes, Santarcangelo Festival, 2019
Iggy Malmborg Boner, Baltic Circle Festival, 2014
Katariina Numminen & co Zoo, Helsinki, 2014
Sommarteater på Krapperup Stormen, Skåne, Sweden, 2012
artist unknown Beltane ritual, Edinburgh, 2008
Taylor Mac A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, Haus der Berliner Festspiele, Berlin, 2019
Showcase Beat le Mot Burn Cities Burn, Kampnagel, Hamburg, 2000
artist unknown Mounted Milk, POP UP ART HOUSE, Diana-scenen, Helsingfors, 2013
Raatikko Orient Express, Järvenpäätalo, 1987
Katona József Theater Three sisters, Kansallisteatteri, 1985
Teater Mars Måsen, 1989
Mónica Calle Ensaio para uma Cartografia, Ruhrtriennale, 2019
Teater Mars Apollon i fähuset, Tullhuset, Hangö teaterträff, 2013?
Einar Schleef Salome, Schillertheater, Berlin, 1998
Sarah Vanhee Oblivion, Kunstenfestival, Brussels, 2016
Stan Saanila Bländad, Svenska Teatern, Helsingfors, 2016
Kaaos company, Mustonen, Erno Aaltonen Pond, Madhouse Helsinki, 2017
I can be your Translator, Das Projekt bin ich (The project, that’s me), Sophiensaele, Berlin, 2019
Michael Laub/Remote Control title unknown, Hamburg, 1994
Katariina Numminen Karjalala, STAGE Festival, Helsinki, 2008
Ann Liv Young Cinderella, HAU3 Berlin, 2011
René Pollesch Heidi Hoh arbeitet hier nicht mehr, Podewil, Berlin, 2001
Minna Harjuniemi Deus ex machina, Ylioppilasteatteri, Helsinki, 2003
Complicite, reg. Simon McBurney Mnemonic, Helsingin juhlaviikot, Kansallisteatteri, 2002
Teatteri 1990, reg. Jari Halonen, Kullervo, kontti perunatorilla, 1991
Jorma Uotinen JoJo Espan lava, Helsinki, 1979
Needcompany Caligula – No Beauty for Me There Where Human Life is Rare, Kiasma teatern, Helsingfors, 1999
Gisèle Vienne This is How You will Disappear, Festival an der Werf, Utrecht, 2011
Gnabcollective Hamlet private, Madhouse, 2014
Mammallian Dive Reflex All the sex I’ve ever had, Baltic Circle, 2018
artist unknown Matadoro, Sesc, Tanzbiennale Sao Paolo, Brasil, 2013
Christoph Schlingensief title unknown, Volksbühne am Rosa Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, 1998
artist unknown Garden Of Chicks, Impulse Festival Düsseldorf, Germany, 2019
Alle Einträge in den “Telefon-Kanon” vom 14.06.2020 beim Impulse Festival
Jerk“, Regie: Giselle Vienne, Performance: Jonathan Capdevielle, Impulstanz, 2009
„Breakfast at Tiffany’s“, Regie: Jan Langenheim, Köln, 2017
„25.3km“, Li Jian Jun, Peking, 2014
„Police“, The Natural Theatre Company, Bath, 1986
„Der perfekte Tag“, René Pollesch, Mülheim a.d. Ruhr, Impulse Festival, 2011
„Die Reichsgründer oder der Schmürz“, ?, in einem Kellertheater in Hamburg, 1962
„Fight Club“, God’s Entertainment, Impulse Festival, 2007?
„Alles“, Showcase Beat Le Mot, Ringlockschupen, Mülheim, Impulse Festival, 2013
„K.“, Phillip Preuss, Zoom Performance, Leipzig, 2020
„Cinderella“, Ann Liv Young, HAU3, 2011
„Volksfeind“, Ulrich Greb, Schloßtheater Moers, 2012
„Heidi Hoh arbeitet hier nicht mehr“, René Pollesch, Podewil, 2002
„La mélancholie des dragons“, Phillippe Quesne, Spielartfestival München 2013 (?)
„Die Reichsgründer oder das Schmürz“, Kellertheater Hamburg, 1963
„Räuber Hotzenplotz“, Showcase Beat Le Mot, Theater an der Parkaue, Berlin, 2007
„Orgie“ (?), Jan Fabre, Spielartfestival München 2015
„(Titel?)“, (von?), Kampnagel Hamburg, Februar 2020
(ein Stück über Schostakowitsch im Stuhlkreis mit riesiger Mutter-Puppe), ?, Festival Divadelna, Nitra (Slovakei), ca. 2010
„Pickman’s Model“, ?, Kneipe ‘Oslo’ in Brühl bei Köln, 2010
„A 24-Decade History of Popular Music“, Taylor Mac, Haus der Berliner Festspiele, 2019
„Burn Cities Burn“, Showcase beat le mot, Kampnagel, Hamburg, 2000
„Variations on Closer“, Margret Sara Gudjondottir, Festival Reykjavik, ca. 2013
„Live Tonight“, Monster Truck, Impulse Festival, 2007 (?)
„Der Spalt“, (Regie unbekannt), Schauspiel Essen, 2018
„Mausoleum Buffo“, Andcompany & Co., Impulse Festival, 2009
„Romeo and Juliet“, (Regie unbekannt), The Globe Theatre, London, 2017
Alle Einträge in den “Telefon-Kanon” vom 26. und 27.09.2020 beim Grenzenlos Kultur Festival
“Penthesilea”, Kristo Sagor, Alte Feuerwache, Saarbrücken, 2015
“Back to back”, Theater Australian Food Court, Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, 2011
“Na Paknech, Dlazbe I Trave, (on boards, pavement and grass)”, Straßenfestival (mit Akrobaten), Brno, 2019
“{Titel vergessen}” Michael Laub/Remote Control, Sommertheater Festival auf Kampnagel, Hamburg, 1994 oder 1995
“Oh My“, Henrike Iglesias, Performing Arts Festival in den Sophiensaelen, Berlin, 2019
“Baumeister Solneß”, Volksbühne am Rosa Luxemburg Platz, Berlin, 2018
xxx, xxx, Theaterspektakel, Zürich, 1985
„Testament”, She She Pop, Grenzenlos Kultur Festival, Mainz, 2010
“Cinderella”, Ann Liv Young, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, 2011
“The Show Must go on”, Jérôme Bel, Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg, 2000
„Medea“, Thalheimer, Schauspiel, Frankfurt/Main, ca. 2017
„Das Konzept bin ich“, I can be your Translator, Dortmund, 2018
“Frühlings Erwachen”-Bearbeitung, She She Pop, Impulse Festival, Düsseldorf, 2016
„The Money“, Kaleider, Town Hall, Hull (England), 2019
„Das Schicksal ist ein mieser Verräter“, xxx, Schauspielhaus Hamburg, 2018
Ein Stück von Shakespeare, Peter Zadek, Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Hamburg, späte 1970er
„The Fishing Dance & Other Cosmic Confessions“, Sindri Runudde, No Limits Festival, Berlin, 2019
“Heidi Hoh 2”, René Pollesch, Podewil Berlin, 2002
“Uncanny Valley”, Thomas Melle, Mousonturm FF/M, 2019
“Cinderella”, Ann Liv Young, HAU3 Berlin, 2011
“Palermo, Palermo”, Pina Bausch, Staatstheater Wuppertal, ca. 2001
“Kampf um die Liebe, Meine Damen und Herren”, Kampnagel Hamburg, 2020
“The Dorine Chaikin Institute”, SIGNA, Ballhaus Ost, 2007
“Stimmen im Kopf”, ?, Neuköllner Oper Berlin, ca. 2015 ?
Christoph Schlingensief, Volksbühne am Rosa Luxemburg-Platz Berlin, Mitter der 90er Jahre
“Mea Culpa”, Christoph Schlingensief, Schauspielhaus Hamburg, 2010?
“The Adolescent”, Federico Leon frei nach Dostoyevsky, De Kriekelaar – Kunsten Festival des Arts, Brussels, 2003
“Un hombre que se ahoga”, frei nach “Drei Schwestern”, von Chekov, El Camarin de las Musas, Buenos Aires, 2004
“So lonely”, Franziska Steiof, GRIPS Theater, Berlin, 2014
“Em Karle sei Dande”, Jürgen Hörner, Badisch Bühn, Karlsruhe, 2013
“Pictures of Dorian”, Gob Squad, HAU 2, Berlin, 2020
“Deine Helden, meine Träume (Klassenzimmerstück)”, Karen Köhler, Schauspielhaus Hamburg, Gymnasium Doerpsweg, Hamburg, 2019
xxx von Botho Strauß, xxx, Schaubühne, Berlin, 1985
“La mala semilla” , Muriel Miranda, Teatro el trolley, Santiago de Chile, 2002
“L’Illusion comique (von Corneille)”, Giorgio Strehler, Théâtre national de l’Odéon, Paris, 1984
“Maison mère”, Phia Ménard, Théâtre national de Bretagne (Rennes Frankreich), 2018
?, Lucinda Childs, Berlin (in einem Museum), 70er oder 80er
“John gabriel Borkmann”, Vegard Vinge, Prater Berlin, 2012
“Macbeth”, Johann Kresnik, Heidelberg, 1988
“Das Ende des Armenhauses”, Andrej Woron, TeatrKreatur, 1992
“Die erste sozialistische Butterfahrt der MS Clara Zetkin”, Christoph Schlingensief, Prater Berlin, 1995
Alle Einträg in den “Telefon-Kanon” vom 05.-07.11. 2020 am Theater Rampe, Stuttgart
ed Bayerlein, „die Publikumsbeschimpfung“, Germinal Stager, Denver, USA, 2013
Monster Truck, „who’s there reloaded“, Theater Rampe, Stuttgart, 2016
Oblivia, „Nature Theater of Olivia“, Theater Rampe, Stuttgart, 2017
Reinhardt Gröber, „Weißer Raum“, Theater Vorpommern, Greifswald, 2019
„Made in Germany“, Stuttgart, 2015
„das jähr des magischen Denkens“, Studiotheater, stuttgart, 2016
Rimini Protokoll, “Nachlass”, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin, 2017
Piel de lava, “Petróleo”, Santiago a mil festival, Santiago de Chile Muriel Miranda, “La mala Semila”, Teatro del vacío (Trolley), Santiago de Chile, 2002
Nicolás Lange, “Las Octavas de Simone”, Teatro del Puente, Santiago de Chile, 2017
Marina Abramovic, “The artist ist present”, MoMA, New York, 2010
Las yeguas del Apocalipsis (Pedro Lemebel y Francisco casas), „La conquista de América“, Comisión Chilena de derechos humanos, Santiago de Chile, 1989
Marina Abramovic, “512 Hours”, Serpentine gallery, London, 2014
A.S.A.B., “Maravilla Star”, Bogotá, Kolumbien, 2001
Susann Maria Hempel und Cássio Diniz Santiago, “S.C.H.U.U.L.E.”, Wagenhalle, Stuttgart, 2019
Das Helmi & Cora Frost, “Matrix”, Auawirleben/ Schlagthaus Theater Bern, Bern Gob Squad , “Before your very eyes”, Hau Berlin, 2011
Jerome Bel, “The Show Must Go On”, Schauspielhaus, Hamburg, 2000
Michael Laub/Remote Control, (Titel vergessen), Sommertheater Festival, Hamburg, 1995
I can be your Translator, “Das Konzept bin ich”, Sophiensaele, Berlin, 2018
Christoph Marthaler, “Faust Wurzel aus 1+2”, Festwochen, Wien, 1993
Robert Bergmann, “Onkel Wanja”, kleines Haus, Schauspiel Stuttgart, 2013
Milo Rau, “Familie (o.ä.)”, xx, Frankfurt am Main, 2020 Philip Becker, “Die Schutzsuchenden”, Mössingen, 2010
Regie unbekannt, Titel vergessen (Schlafen in der letzten Reihe), Sparte 4, Saarbrücken, 2015-2017
Ersan Mondtag, Titel vergessen, im Café neben der Spielstättel vom Schauspiel Köln in Mülheim vor der Vorstellung, ca. 2019
Regie ungekannt, “Peter Pan”, Schauspiel Stuttgart, Anfang der 90er
Commedia Köln (Katharina Fillers) , „Tigermilch“, Festival Made in Germany, Stuttgart, 2014
René Pollesch, “Heidi Hoh arbeitet hier nicht mehr”, Podewil Berlin, 2001
Ann Liv Young, „Cinderella“, HAU 3 Berlin, 2011
Oliver Zahn, „Situation mit Doppelgänger“, Theaterformen Braunschweig, 2015
Richard Foreman, „Hotel Fuck“, Schaubühne Berlin, 1996 (?)
„Maria Stuart“, Nationaltheater Mannheim, 2019 (?)
„Evolution“, Nationaltheater Mannheim, 2019
Christoph Schlingensief, („?“), Volksbühne am Rosa Luxemburgplatz, Mitte der 90er Jahre
Peer Mia Rittberger, „Wie ein zarter Schillerfalter“, Zimmertheater Tübingen, 2020
White On White, „Non-Controversial Shit In a Box“, gesehen auf Video, 2010 (?),
„Am Königsweg“, Stadttheater Heidelberg, ca. 2017
Cirque de Barbarie, („?“), Stuttgart, 1991
Taylor Mac, “A 24-Decade Kistory of Popular Music”, Haus der Berliner Festspiele, Berlin, 2019
Tiago Rodrigues, “The Beauty of Killing a Fascist”, Théâtre Vidy, Lausanne, 2020
Showcase Beat le Mot, “Burn Cities Burn”, Kampnagel / Kino Alabama, Hamburg, 2000
Rene Pollesch, ein Titel mit ‘Revolver’ oder ‘Pistole’, Schauspiel Stuttgart / Nord, Stuttgart, 2015
Signa: „The Dorine Chaikine Institute“, Ballhaus Ost, Berlin 2007
Felicia Zeller / Sybille Berg?: „Mein großer Bruder…“, Theater Rampe, 2016 oder 2017
Anais D. Mauptit und Rafael Ossami Saidy?: Intervention im Stadtraum „Beton.Gemütlichkeit“ o.a. , Festival „Die irritierte Stadt“, Stuttgart 2020
Pina Bausch: „Kontakthof“, Staatstheater Wuppertal, 1989
Klaus Gmeiner: „Der Nussknacker“, Salzburger Marionettentheater an der Komischen Oper Berlin?, Berlin in den 80er Jahren
Marina Abramovic:“Biography“, Theater am Turm, Frankfurt/M, 1993
Citizen.KANE: „Achtzehn Einhundertneun – Lichtenhagen“, private WG in Stuttgart, 2012
Fanny & Alexander: „Romeo und Julia“, Eurokaz Festival, Zagreb 1999
Claus Peymann: „Antonius und Cleopatra“, Theater an der Wien bei den „Wiener Festwochen“ in den frühen 90ern
Andreas Liedmann, “Schulden, die ersten 5000 Jahre”, Schauspiel Stuttgart, Stuttgart, 2014
Alain Platel, “Tauberbach”, Schauspiel Stuttgart, Stuttgart, 2015
Prinzip Gonzo, “Momo”, Theater Konstanz Spiegelhalle, Konstanz, 2016
Waljanzin Jelisareu, “Spartakus”, Opernhaus Minsk, Minsk, Weißrussland, 2003
Armin Petras, “Der Sturm”, Schauspiel Stuttgart, Stuttgart, 2016
René Pollesch, “Glauben an die Möglichkeit der völligen Erneuerung der Welt”, Friedrichstadt-Palast, Berlin, 2019 Johann Kresnik, “Macbeth”, Städtische Bühne Heidelberg, Heidelberg, 1988 Giselle Vienne, “Jerk”, Heusteigtheater, Stuttgart, 2010 ?,
“Medea”, Burgtheater, Wien, 2010
Joke Laureyns & Kwint Manshoven von Kabinet K, “Raw”, Sophiensaele, Berlin, 2015
Viktor Bodos, “Der Würgeengel”, Schauspiel Stuttgart, Stuttgart, 2020
Kjell Moberg , Nie Theater, “Museum of memories”, Theater im Pfalzbau, Ludwigshafen, 2018
Benjamin Verdonck, “Kurzstücke/ Waldeinsamkeit”, Kasseturm Kunstfest, Weimar, 2019
Vegard Vinge, “John Gabriel Borkmann”, Prater (Volksbühne), Berlin, 2012
Andrej Woron, “Das Ende des Armenhauses”, Teatr Kreatur, Berlin, 1992
Christoph Schlingensief, “Die 1. sozialistische Butterfahrt der M/S Clara Zetkin”, Prater Garten (Volksbühne), Berlin, 1995
Alvin Ailey, Merce Cuningham Dance Company, “events”, Cour d’honneur du Palais des Papes (festival d’Avignon), Avignon, 1977
Alle Einträg in den “Telefon-Kanon” vom 16.-18.12. 2020 am FFT Düsseldorf
Stemann, “Faust 1&2”, Kammerspiele, München, 2011
I can be your Translator, “Das Konzept bin ich”, Ballhaus Ost, 2018
She She Pop, “Testament”, Hau2, Berlin, 2010
Michael Laub/Remote Control, (Titel vergessen), Sommertheater Festival Kampnagel, Hamburg, 1994
Jerôme Bel, “The Show Must Go on”, Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Hamburg, 2000
Vegart Vinge, “John Gabriel Borgmann”, Prater (Volksbühne), Berlin, 2015
Harald Hemprich, “Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn”, Ludwig Wilhelm-Gymnasium Rastatt, 1993
She She Pop, “Titel unbekannt (mit Vätern)”, FFT, Düsseldorf, 2015
I can be your Translator, “Das Konzept bin ich”, Ort unbekannt, Dortmund, 2018
Michael Laub / Remote Control, (Titel vergessen), Sommerthater Festival, Kampnagel, Hamburg 1994
Yale Sevis, “Mein Körper macht das mit mir”, online, 2020 {eine off-theater-gruppe}, {genet-stück, das im knast spielt}, {ein frei stehendes haus}, Wien, 1984 Ron Vawter, “Roy Cohn / Jack Smith”, Hebbel Theater Berlin, 1990
(Künstler vergessen), “Mikado Remix”, Campo Gent, 2019
Alle Einträg in den “Telefon-Kanon” vom 29.-30.04 und 01.05. 2021 in Kampnagel Hamburg
René Pollesch, “Heidi Hoh arbeitet hier nicht mehr”, Podewil, 2002 ?,
“Naturspektakel”, außerhalb von Hamburg, 2021
Ann Liv Young,”Cinderella”, HAU3 Berlin 2011
She She Pop, “Warum tanzt ihr nicht?”, Kampnagel, Hamburg, 2004
Kabinet k., “Rau”; Theater YES, Stuttgart, 2014
Showcase Beat le Mot, “Burn, Cities, Burn”, Kampnagel Hamburg, 1999
Stefan Pucher, “Quijote. Trip zwischen Welten”, Thalia Theater Hamburg, 2012
Shinson hapkido, “Aufführung”, Hamburg, 2015
Muriel Miranda, “La mala Semila”, Teatro del vacío (Trolley), Santiago, 2002
Rimini Protokoll, “Nachlass”, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin, 2017
Camus, “Die Pest” (als 1 Personen-Stück), ein Theater in Berlin, 2020
Taylor Mac, “A 24-Decade History of Popular Music”, Haus der Berliner Festspiele, 2019
Michael Laub, “Remote Control”, Sommertheater Festival/Kampnagel, Hamburg, 1994
François Michel Pesenti, “Nichts in white satin”, Concordia Bremen, 1993
Unbekannt, “die Kontorsionistin”, Zirkus in Wenduine Belgien, 1968
Florentina Holzinger, “Tanz “, Sophiensälen Berlin, 2020
Unbekannt, “Die Giraffen”, Kleines Fest im großen Garten Hanover, 2018
Enrique Gasa Valga, “Frida Kahlo”, Tiroler Landestheater Innsbruck Österreich, 2019
Theater Rites, “Paradise”, die Kokerei-Zollverein/Ruhrtriennale Essen, 2010
Willy Mertens, “Unbekannt”, Thalia Theater Hamburg, 1957
Jérôme Savary, “Weihnachten an der Front”, Kampnagel Hamburg, 1982
Hans-Peter Lehmann, “Frau ohne Schatten”, Opernhaus Hanover, 1992
Christoph Schlingensief, “Die erste sozialistische Butterfahrt der MS Clara Zetkin”, Prater Spektakel der Volksbühne Berlin, 1995
Johan Kresnik, “Woyzeck”, Städtische Bühne Heidelberg, 1988 ?,
“Faust”, (Goethe), Stadttheater Remscheid, 2014
Signa, „The Dorine Chaikin Institute“, Ballhaus Ost, Berlin, 2007
Fanny & Alexander, „Romeo und Julia“ (1. Akt), Europas Festival, Zagreb, 1999
Franz Erhard Walther, “Teile aus 1. Werksatz”, Thalia Theater und Kunsthalle Hamburg, 2013
Rimini Protokoll, „Nachlass“ Martin Gropius Bau Berlin, 2017
Impro Theater, ” ? “, Buenos Aires ,?
Las yeguas del Apocalipsis La conquista de América Comisión Chilena de derechos humanos, Santiago, 1989
Kiril Serebrennikow, “Nabucco”, Hamburger Staatsoper, Hamburg, 2019
Showcase Beat le Mot, “Radar, Radar, nichts ist egal”; Kampnagel Hamburg, 1999
Rosas, “Rosas danst Rosas”; Kampnagel Hamburg, ? ?, “Kuffer” (mit Christoph Franken), Deutsches Theater/Box, Berlin, 2016 Einar Schleef, “Salome”, Schillertheater, Berlin, 1998
Peter Stein (?), “Antiken-Projekt” (?) Schaubühne Berlin, 1980er Jahre
John Neumeier, “Romeo und Julia”, Staatsoper Hamburg, ca. 2016
Jerôme Bel, “The Show Must Go On”, Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg, 2000
Christoph Schlingensief, „100 Jahre CDU“, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, Mitte der 90er ?,
„?“, HZT, Berlin, 2019 Cirque de Barbarie, „?“, Stuttgart, 1993
Christian Weiße, „Endstation Sehnsucht“, Nationaltheater Mannheim, 2018
Falk Richter, “I am Europe”, Thalia Theater, Hamburg, 2019
(From Frida, Nick & Sally) Station House Opera, “Black Works”, ICA, London, 1991
Ann Liv Young, „Cinderella“, HAU3 Berlin, 2011 ?,
“?”, Deutscher Pavillon Biennale, Venedig, 2017
René Pollesch, „Heidi Hoh arbeitet hier nicht mehr“, Podewil, Berlin, 2001 ?,
“?”, Israelische Theatertage, Kennedy Center, Washington D.C., USA, 2014
Bürgerbühne, „Elbwandeln“, Staatsschauspiel Dresden, 2021
Richard Foreman, „Hotel Fuck“, Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz, Berlin, 1996
Damien Jalet, „Onthalos“, Kampnagel Hamburg, 2019
ShowcaseBeatLeMot, „Piraten“, HAU2 Berlin, 2003
Herbert Fritsch, „Zeppelin“, Schaubühne Berlin, 2018
EIn Konzert von Kante, Schauspiel Hamburg, Nuller-Jahre
Ein Konzert von Einstürzende Neubauten, Schauspiel Hamburg, 90er Jahre
Showcase Beat le Mot, “Burn, Cities, Burn” Kampnagel Hamburg, 1999
She She Pop, „Trust! – Schließlich ist es Ihr Geld!“; Kampnagel, Hamburg, 1998
Meine Damen und Herren, “Gans der Bär”; Kampnagel Hamburg, 2021 (oder 2015?)
Rosana Cade, “Walking Holding”, Kampnagel Hamburg, 2019
Christoph Marthaler, “Murx den Europäer!”, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz Berlin, 2004 ?,
“?”, Fliegende Bauten Hamburg 2010
Rimini Protokoll, “Mein Kampf”, E-Werk Weimar, 2015
Philippe Quesnes/Vivarium Studio, “La mélancolie des dragons”, Festival d’Avignon, 2008
Pina Bausch, „Kontakthof“, Staatstheater Wuppertal, 1989
Zahava Rodrigo, “Mango Shop”, Ballhaus Ost Berlin, 2019 SCHWARZWEISS, ” Meine Damen und Herren”, Kampnagel, 2013
Muriel Miranda, “La mala Semilla”, Teatro del vacío (Trolley), Santiago, 2002
Toten kopf, “Schmetterling vs Mistkäfer “… Kampnagel Bundestheatertage, Hamburg, 2009
Rimini Protokoll, „Nachlass“ , Martin Gropius Bau Berlin, 2017
Marina Abramovic, “512 Hours”, Serpentine Galleries, London, 2013 ?,
“Bis zum äußersten”, München, 1988
Gob Squad, “Before your very eyes”, Hau Berlin, 2011
Peter Brook, “The Storm”, Kampnagel Hamburg, 1991
Steve McNicholas and Luke Cresswell, “Stomp!”, Ambassador’s Theatre, London, 2010
Lawrence Malstaf, “Shrink”, Kampnagel Sommerfestival, 15.08.2008
John Kelley Group, “Pass the Blutwurst, Please”, Mahler Saal, Theater der Welt, Hamburg, 1989
Ismael Ivo Dance Contest (?), ImPuls Tanz Festival, Wien ,ca. 2019
Carsten Ludwig Winterreise (Schubert) ,Festspielhaus Hellerau Dresden, 2000
She She Pop, “Testament”, Mousonturm Frankfurt, 2011 ?,
“Supergute Tage “, Festival Wildwechsel, Weimar, ca. 2015
She She Pop, “Für Alle”, Theaterhaus Jena, ca. 2009
Jerôme Bel , “The Show Must Go On”, Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg, 2000
I Can Be Your Translator, “Das Konzept bin ich”, Ballhaus Ost, Berlin 2019
Michael Laub, “Remote Control”, Sommertheater Festival, Kampnagel Hamburg, 1995
Alle Einträge in den “Telefon-Kanon” vom 03.05. 2021 beim Heidelberger Stückemarkt
(holländische Kompanie), „?“, Ruhrtriennale, auf einem Feld in der Nähe von Essen, 2015
ShowcaseBeatLeMot, „Piraten“, HAU2 Berlin, 2004
Katze und Krieg, „Im Wald“, Freie Produktion, Köln (Wald im Bergischen Land), 2015
Signa, „The Dorine Chaikin Institute“, Ballhaus Ost, 2007
Lizzy Timmers, „Nackt“ (der spezielle Abend mit dem FKK-Publikum!), Theater Jena, 2020
Christoph Schlingensief, „Rocky Dutschke“; Volksbühne Berlin, 1996
Bernard Mikeska, „In Deinem Pelz“, Gefängnis Fauler Pelz, Heidelberg, 2016
Luc Perceval & die Schauspielklasse, „Failed Entertainment“, Akademie für darstellende Kunst Baden Württemberg, Ludwigsburg, 2011
René Pollesch, „Heidi Hoh arbeitet hier nicht mehr“, Podewil Berlin, 2002
Jerôme Bel, „The Show Must Go On“, Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Hamburg, 2000
Punchdrunk, „Sleep No More“, ??, New York, 2014
Peter Radke (als Schauspieler in) Kafkas “Bericht für eine Akademie“, Heidelberger Stückemarkt, Heidelberg, 90er Jahre
Taylor Mac, „A 24-Decade History of Popular Music“, Haus der Berliner Festspiele, 2019
Alfred Kirchner, „Einfach kompliziert“, Akademietheater Wien, 1989
Richard Foreman, „Hotel Fuck“, Schaubühne Berlin, 1996
Frank Castorf, „King Lear“, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin 1992
Eva Lange, „Die Welt im Rücken“ (Thomas Melle), Hessisches Landestheater, Marburg, 2020
(GP – nicht zur Premiere gekommen wegen Lockdown!) Henrike Iglesias, „OH MY“, Sophiensaele, Berlin, 2018
400 h non-stop Theater, Festival Wunder der Prärie, Künstlerhaus zeitraum exit, Mannheim, 2007
Christoph Schlingensief, „100 Jahre CDU“, Volksbühne am Rosa Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, Mitte der 1990er Jahre
I can be your Translator, „Das Konzept bin ich“, Ballhaus Ost, Berlin, 2019 Einar Schleef, “Salome”, Schillertheater, Berlin, 1998
Stephan Kimmig, “Medea“, Burgtheater Wien, an einem Muttertag in den Nuller-Jahren Ulrich Hub, “Die Beleidigten”, Stückemarkt, Heidelberg, 1998 ?,
„?“ (mit Caroline Peters und anderen Stars), Burgtheater Wien, 2018
Marina Abramovic, „Biography“, TAT, Frankfurt am Main, 1993
Kay Voges, „Das goldene Zeitalter“, Gastspiel bei Heidelberger Stückemarkt von Schauspielhaus Dortmund, Heidelberg, 2014
Signa, “Das Halbe Leid“, Schauspielhaus Hamburg, 2017
Rimini Protokoll/Stefan Kaegi, “Black Box. Phantomtheater für 1 Person”, Staatstheater Stuttgart, 2020
??, „Schweijk im 2. Weltkrieg“, Theater Heilbronn, ca. 1978
Michael Laub/Remote Control, ??, Sommertheater Festival, Hamburg, 1994
Alle Einträge in den “Telefon-Kanon” vom 05.05. 2021 beim Heidelberger Stückemarkt
Andrej Woron, „Das Ende des Armenhauses“, Teatr Kreatur Berlin, 1992
Laurent Chétouane, „Woyzeck“, Schauspielhaus Hamburg, 2005
Christoph Schlingensief, „Die erste sozialistische Butterfahrt der MS Klara Zetkin“, Prater Spektakel der Volksbühne, 1995
Merce Cunningham, „Events“, Festival d’Avignon, 1977
Johann Kresnik, „Macbeth“,1988 Florentina Holzinger, „Apollon“, Kampnagel Hamburg, 2018
Ivan Perez, „Exhausting space“, Theater Heidelberg, 2019
? (something about birds), National Theater, Beijing, China, 2018
Oliver Frljić, „Balkan macht frei“, Stückemarkt (Alter Saal), Heidelberg, 2016
Hubert Habig, „Schweinische Lieder“, Jugendtheater, Heidelberg, 1997
Ariane Mnouchkine, (Titel vergessen, über die Roten Khmer), Théatre du Soleil, Paris, ca. 1988
? „Lapin Lapin“, Kammerspiele, München, 1992
Hannah Biedermann, „Entweder Und“, Yes, Stuttgart, 2018
Lena Entezami, „There is no time to kill today“, Kunstuni Graz, Graz, 2017
Bernhard Mikeska, „In deinem Pelz“, Heidelberger Gefängnis, Theater Heidelberg, 2016 ?,
„?“, Schaubühne, Berlin, 1997
„Aida“, Heidelberger Theater, Heidelberg, 2013
Christoph Marthaler, „Murx den Europäer! Murx ihn! Murx ihn! Murx ihn! Murx ihn ab!“, Teatro San Martin, FIBA, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1999
Santiago Blaum, „Nietzsche contra Wagner. Nueva Germania. Opera tropical“, HAU 2, Berlin, 2013
Showcase Beat le Mot, „Radar, Radar, nichts ist egal“; Kampnagel Hamburg, 1999
Gro Swantje Kohlhof, „Hogwarts-Exkursionen“, Münchner Kammerspiele online, 2020
Christoph Schlingensief, „?“, Volksbühne Berlin, 1998
Romeo Castellucci, „Parsifal“, Opernhaus De Munt, Brüssel, Belgien, 2011
Peter Brook, „Le costume“, Theaterhaus Stuttgart, 2001
ShowcaseBeatLeMot, „Piraten“, HAU2, Berlin, 2004?,
„Jenseits von Fukujama“, Nationaltheater Mannheim, 2015
René Pollesch, „Heidi Hoh arbeitet hier nicht mehr“, Podewil, Berlin, 2002
Angela Shubot – Margaret-Sara Goujonsottir, “In the blind Spot”, Berlin, Sophiensaele, 2014
Enrique Pinti, “Mi bello Dragón”, Buenos Aires, Argentina, circa 1984
Meng Jinghui, “Rhinoceros in Love“ von Liao Yimei, Hangzhou Opera House, 2018
Luisa Voegt, “Wo die Barbaren Leben” im Tropenhaus des Botanischen Gartens, Theater Heidelberg, 2017
?, “Ödipus auf Kolonos“, Stadttheater Heidelberg, 2006
Richard Foreman, „Hotel Fuck“, Schaubühne Berlin, 1996
George Tabori, „Bericht an die Akademie“, Stadttheater Heidelberg, Mitte der 1990er
Ruedi Häusermann, „Ume, Marti, ume“, Schlachthaustheater, Bern, April 2021
Ann Liv Young, „Cinderella“, HAU3, Berlin, 2011
Idea and Concept: Tatiana Saphir & She She Pop
With: She She Pop and guests.
Gastperformance Berlin: Antonia Baehr, Jean Chaize, Brigitte Cuvelier, Sean Patten, Daniel Belasco Rogers, Tatiana Saphir, Leicy Esperanza Valenzuela, Zelal Yesilyurt.
Gastperformance Hangö: Per Ehrström, Sinna Virtanen, Salla Loper, Elmer Bäck, Annika Tudeer, Max Bremer.
Gastperformance Impulse: Antonia Baehr, Jean Chaize, Brigitte Cuvelier, Sean Patten, Daniel Belasco Rogers, Tatiana Saphir, Leicy Esperanza Valenzuela, Zelal Yesilyurt.
PR, Communication: ehrliche arbeit – freelance office for culture. Freelance Communication Support: Tina Ebert. Financial Administration: Aminata Oelßner. Company Management: Elke Weber.
Telephone Canon is a production of She She Pop and HAU Hebbel am Ufer Berlin. Part of #HAUonline (May 2020).Funded by the City of Berlin – Department for Culture and Europe.
Telephone Canon is a result of Canon, a production of She She Pop in Co-production with HAU Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, Kampnagel Hamburg, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, FFT Düsseldorf and Münchner Kammerspiele. Funded by the City of Berlin – Department for Culture and Europe and Hauptstadtkulturfonds.
The performance in Hangö is a production of She She Pop, HAU Hebbel am Ufer Berlin and Hangö Teaterträff. Funded by the City of Berlin – Department for Culture and Europe and the Goethe-Institute Finnland.
She She Pop will create a canon of moments from the audience’s perspective – an unlimited list of unmissable moments from the memories of those present. Of all the events we have seen on stage, which ones do we not want to forget? Which ones do we have to talk about? What was so fascinating and sublime, or painful or plausible, liberating or amazing that we need to remember it?
Canon is both a ritual and a revue. And it is a collective historiography, especially for those productions that are outside the dramatic canon, of which nothing seems to remain after their performance except for the memories of those involved in their choreography, performance or happenings.
The list that we will create will represent a ‘Canon from below’ with no censorship whatsoever. May your spirit be blown in any direction. Any suggestion that attests to a charismatic event is valid. Canon will work with every means of transience produced by these art forms themselves. The evening ranges from simple re-telling to an attempted reenactment. How do bodies, gestures, organisms, space, objects, architecture and installations, rhythm, duration, voices, language, sound and music survive? In the memories of those who have experienced them, in their re-enactment. The vagueness and distortion of memory is just as essential here as the joy of the unforgotten moment.
Canon will be developed by She She Pop and other artists: selected guests from the independent arts scene have been invited to participate in this collective ritual of remembering. But audience members who happen to be present at the show are invited to participate too by writing down their own memories of special moments in theatre. Thus, Canon will develop into a new and spontaneous community performance every evening. The relationship between mutual obligation and commitment between stage and audience, as is often found in contemporary theatre forms, is mirrored, celebrated and used in Canon. The community evolves only through the invocation of a common Canon. In the moment of being represented, an acute experience combines with the formation of stories and history, the intention of distortion for one’s own purposes – resulting in the fiction of history. In the theatre, a “memory space” emerges from the recollections of those present and from the collective anticipation of the new.
By and with: Sebastian Bark, Johanna Freiburg, Fanni Halmburger, Lisa Lucassen, Mieke Matzke, Ilia Papatheodorou, Berit Stumpf and guest performance with a changing cast.
Guest performance Berlin with a changing cast: Antonia Baehr, Daniel Belasco Rogers, Jean Chaize, Martin Clausen, Brigitte Cuvelier, Sean Patten, Tatiana Saphir, Leicy Valenzuela, Zelal Yesilyurt.
Guest performance Frankfurt: Irene Klein, Joana Tischkau, Leander Ripchinsky.
Guest performance Munich: Sybille Canonica, Maxwell McCarthy, Lavinia Nowak.
Costumes and props: Lea Søvsø. Light Design: Michael Lentner. Sound Design: Jeff McGrory. Sets: Sandra Fox. Choreographies: remembered and reinterpreted by Constanza Macras. Artistic Advice: Valeria Germain, Alisa Tretau, Laia Ribera. Support Costumes: Jana Donis. Support Choreography: Miki Shoji. Trainee: Magdalena Hofmann, Natasha Borenko. Technical Director: Sven Nichterlein. Production: Anne Brammen. PR, Communication: ehrliche arbeit – freelance office for culture. Freelance Communication Support: Tina Ebert. Financial Administration: Aminata Oelßner. Company Management: Elke Weber.
A production of She She Pop in Co-production with HAU Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, Kampnagel Hamburg, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, FFT Düsseldorf and Münchner Kammerspiele.
Funded by the City of Berlin – Department for Culture and Europe and Hauptstadtkulturfonds.
(…) The canon in Kanon is essentially a show of non-dramatic, non-representational stage works. Moments Christoph Schlingensief, Johann Kresnik, Pina Bausch, William Forsythe (dance features a great deal, adapted with choreographic support by Constanza Macras) are summoned. Forced Entertainment and other British groups are admired, along with Susanne Kennedy’s “Selbstmord-Schwestern” and Milo Rau’s “Die Wiederholung.” Lea Søvsø’s fancy costumes pay homage to pop-like allusions to “patron saints of action art” – from Joseph Beuys to Valie Export and Yves Klein. (…)
The evening has a sentimental charm. She She Pop (in the premiere: Sebastian Bark, Johanna Freiburg and Ilia Papatheodorou) and guests (in the premiere: Brigitte Cuvelier, Sean Patten, Leicy Valenzuela, Zelal Yesilyurt) describe their personal “unforgettable” theatre moments as they happened while the other perfomers in the background try out an emphatically amateurish visualisation of the moment using scant costumes and handicraft utensils. Soon it takes on the atmosphere of Robert Lembke’s “Was bin Ich”, as you secretly puzzle (and congratulate yourself if you quickly recognise one or other of the productions). (…)
In this episode, Ilia Papatheodorou recalls her first encounter with American hardcore performer Ann Liv Young in “Cinderella” in January 2011. (…) Now, eight years later, Papatheodorou re-enacts the situation, scrabbling about in the audience, indulging in moments of Young-like forcefulness. Meanwhile Sean Patten (who usually works for the Gob Squad collective) has to urinate in a bucket. Young actually craps at this point, but they didn’t manage to reproduce with one hundred per cent faithfulness. Papatheodorou reflects on the system of submission in Ann Liv Young’s theatre: “She shoved us under her artistic yoke.” Wonderfully put.
Christian Rakow, Nachtkritik, 27.10.17
It is a family album in which She She Pop and their followers flip through. As cosy as a pub quiz for post-dramatic theatre, which is currently being honoured by theatre academic Hans-Thies with a festival at the HAU. The group’s recognisable focus is on the warm heart of the performative, which, in its exposure of material and construction, makers and the made, often provides more potential for identification than the fluid representational techniques of classical drama.
Janis El-Bira, Berliner Zeitung, 23.11. 2019
The evening gets exciting when the spectators are invited to tell each other their own “goose-bump moments” of theatre. The memories told on stage are almost always about moments when the fourth wall between the audience and the stage disappeared or was blown away – literally, during a performance in Avignon that went down in a thunderstorm, or in the story of Sebastian Bark, who remembers a performance of Jerome Bell’s “The Show Must Go On.” (…) Against national identity, or against a national educational canon. She She Pop (…) focuses (…) on sharing individual memories. On the way home I can’t get the question of my own personal theatre canon out of my head. I have become part of a collective process called “post-dramatic theatre”.
Gerd Brendel, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, 23.11.19
This review of individual experiences is undisputedly entertaining. The evening is – to borrow a word with which Lehmann described the multiple presence of post-dramatic theatre – “colourful.” Patrick Wildermann, Tagesspiegel, 24.11.19 The evening could also be called “Introduction to She She Pop’s methods” because it shows what a experiment in a theatrical arrangement can look like on stage. The focus is not on an overarching directorial concept, but on the process itself. (…) The questions it raises about the ephemeral nature of theatre and the associated difficulty of how to convey this are exciting and topical. In any case, the show makes you curious about some past theatre events. It’s just a pity we’ll never see them (again). Nora Auerbach, Die deutsche Bühne, 25.11.19 This canon is an entertaining retrospective of the past three decades and a revealing evening about theatre history (…)
Das Kulturblog, 25.11.19
It’s a show consisting of declarations of love, made decisively as a collective. (…) in fact, many great things happen over the space of two hours, during which the most successful German-language performer’s collective celebrates the power of the performing arts. Because the (…) actors (…) not only use strange props, but also leave plenty of room for exaggeration, grotesqueness and drama when re-enacting the scenes they remember. And at the bottom of it all is the question: why. (…) It is particularly fortunate for the Frankfurt version that Irene Klein, a dancer who worked with the Frankfurt Ballet for 20 years, is also on stage. Because Constanze Macras (…) has worked with She She Pop on their memories of choreography, including a very funny recollection of a Pina Bausch move. She has also recreated a fast-paced, demanding sequence from “In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated” for non-dancers. And it is funny in a particularly touching way when, between slightly crooked poses, Klein’s body demonstrates that he remembers all these movements – just as we remember our best theatre moments. A delightful collective experience (…).
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 25.01.20
In Canon, She She Pop attempt the impossible: to repeat the live moment of sometimes decades-old productions and to briefly outwit the ephemeral, which is so firmly woven into the DNA of the theater, for the sake of magic. This joint journey through time, space and feelings is a great, blissful declaration of love for the magic of theater.
Christian Lutz, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 10.02.20
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!
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.
“Let it belong to those it is good for.” (B. Brecht)
Property changes consciousness. It divides friends, grants power over others and excludes. Property is taken for granted. But it is not talked about. Yet nothing is as constitutive for our society or our coexistence; nothing has such a divisive effect on our community. With ORATORIO, She She Pop wants to air the secret of property, to drag it out onto a stage.
It is said that Western theatre began with the protagonist Thespis, who stepped out from the choir 2,500 years ago. But you could also say: it was the moment that the stage was privatised. Since then, the individual has been consistently overrated, overburdened and emotionally exploited. ORATORIO would like to shed some light on the context of the bourgeois public, property and democratic empowerment.
Together with each chorus of local delegates and their audience, She She Pop will start a discussion on property and examine their own relationship to ownership, the distribution of goods and its related problems. Inspired by Brecht’s Lehrstücktheorie, they develop rules for a dialogical theatre show and form discordant speaking choruses, which renegotiate with each performance how we deal with property. Who is allowed to speak? Who is present, who is represented? A collective monologue emerges from the diversity of voices, discord, and occasional, momentary harmony.
ORATORIO is a work-in-progress, which premiered in February 2018 at HAU Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin. First showings took place at Theaterformen 2017 in Hanover and sub- sequently also at the Konfrontacje Teatralne Festival in Lublin and the ACT Independent Theatre Festival Sofia. Finally ORATORIO returned from its tour through Europe, during which it gathered momentary impressions of other economic microcosms and evolved into a great polyphonic meditation at each stop along the way.
By and with: Sebastian Bark, Johanna Freiburg, Fanni Halmburger, Lisa Lucassen, Mieke Matzke, Ilia Papatheodorou, Berit Stumpf and the choir of local delegates.
Sets: Sandra Fox. Costumes: Lea Søvsø. Music: Max Knoth. Artistic advice production: Ruschka Steininger. Dramaturgical advice: Peggy Mädler. Artistic advice Tour: Laia Ribera, Alisa Tretau. Technical Director & Lightdesign: Sven Nichterlein. Production: Anne Brammen. Communication: ehrliche arbeit – freies Kulturbüro. Freelance Communication Support: Tina Ebert. Financial Administration: Aminata Oelßner. Company Management: Elke Weber.
A production of She She Pop in Co-production with HAU Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, Festival Theaterformen, Münchner Kammerspiele, Kampnagel Hamburg, Residenz Schauspiel Leipzig, Schauspiel Stuttgart, Kaserne Basel, ACT Independent Theater Festival Sofia, Konfrontacje Teatralne Festival Lublin.
premiere, February 2018, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin
Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and by the City of Berlin – Department for Culture and Europe.
www.kulturstiftung-des-bundes.de
“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
In “The Ocean is Closed” the music ensemble zeitkratzer and the performance collective She She Pop observe each other across the limits of their own categories. They look in fascination at their “exotic” colleagues. Outside eyes and ears are interested in different things, ask the right wrong questions, misunderstand the agreements and breach basic laws.
She She Pop and zeitkratzer play a concert: secret, order and ocean. They celebrate music and play per se.
by and with: Sebastian Bark, Lisa Lucassen, Ilia Papatheodorou by She She Pop, and Biliana Voutchkova (violin), Nora Krahl (violoncello), Elena Kakaliagou (horn), Hilary Jeffery (trombone), Reinhold Friedl (piano), Maurice de Martin (percussion) by zeitkratzer.
Concept: Sebastian Bark, Reinhold Friedl, Lisa Lucassen, Sets: Lena Mody, Sound: Robert Nacken, Light: Andreas Harder, Dramaturgy: Arved Schultze, Production: Michal Libera, Artistic Advice: Fanni Halmburger.
A production von She She Pop and zeitkratzer in Co-produktion with HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Münchner Kammerspiele, Festival Romaeuropa.
premiere, October 2017, HAU, Berlin
Founded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation.
www.kulturstiftung-des-bundes.de
Review of the premiere in Berlin “Male posing versus female power, discipline versus free spirit, virtuosity versus apparent dilettantism: She She Pop riffs on familiar coordinates in an artistic commentary on its own art—with the will to self-humiliation and mischievous counterattacks. In this vein, drummer Maurice de Martin first triumphs with a ludicrously fast drum solo, before finding a strange ‘ball monster’ and its sisters laughing maliciously at the ‘male genius’. (…) There are extremely strong scenes, like the intercessions in the warm-up to a Philip Glass adaptation. (…) Then, shortly before the grand finale, Sebastian Bark picks up the trombone and, in miniature, manifests what this show and stage art is about: he takes a risk in an amateur yet respectable manner, slightly bent over without seeming pathetic, letting himself be instructed by experts before producing heartbreakingly wrong tones that fit well into the disharmonic structure of the rest of the piece. And he makes a memorable comment, before he plays: ‘I do not want to practice. I want to play.’” Christian Rakow, Nachtkritik, 27.10.17 “A two-hour dialogue unfolds, taking place on all available levels: in language and music, argument and dictatorial determination, physical dominance and silent insistence. The play becomes a space of possibility: half-formed sentences that start with ‘if …’ do not finish with ‘then …’ are its foundation. It explores possibilities of creating art, transparency towards the audience, failure and recognition, sensitivities of individual instrumental groups — but also power structures. (…) The tension between each actor and the ensemble is palpable, the friction audible (…). And then there is a yearning for equality, which sometimes turns into one replacing the other. (…) A collective, slowly merging history of beginnings, break-offs and re-starts characterises the evening, which again and again starts over, is interrupted and starts again. It is an experiment in improvised acting, free of purpose, which only slowly frees itself from the mechanisms of recognition, willingness to achieve, the compulsion to perform and entertain, and in this way slowly gropes towards something like community — if not found, then at least suggested. There they sit at the end, peacefully, as an ensemble, and making sounds, having riffed with and stalked each other for two hours, having duelled over the power of the microphone. The sounds are like the ocean, like waves murmuring, the sound of a world at one with itself. Pure acting.” Sascha Krieger, stagescreen.wordpress.com, 31.10.2017 “(…) Loud and pleasurable.” Kathrin Pauly, Berliner Morgenpost, 30.10.2017
People are obsessed with ideas – but also with things. For the Monologue Festival, She She Pop follows the idea of ownership, which has become an eerily important subject in people’s coexistence: if you have nothing, you have to hire yourself out. But even those who own too much, so people say, become obsessed by it. There it is: the community of the possessed.
She She Pop steps forward to elicit a new meaning of “theatre without an audience”. As proposed in Brechtian Lehrstück theory, those on stage try different attitudes and give speeches. In the Possessed monologue, a polyphonic monologue can be heard, whereby the community has its say. A community that is concerned about ownership and the resulting distortions. In speech, it confirms itself, yet establishes that it is at odds with itself.
By She She Pop (Sebastian Bark, Johanna Freiburg, Fanni Halmburger, Lisa Lucassen, Mieke Matzke, Ilia Papatheodorou und Berit Stumpf.) Artistic advice: Ruschka Steininger. PR: ehrliche arbeit – freies Kulturbüro. Freelance Communication Support: Tina Ebert. Financial Administration: Aminata Oelßner. Company Management:Elke Weber.
A production by She She Pop and Theaterdiscounter – Monologue Festival 2016. Funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin.
After its premiere last March in Munich, She She Pop are now showing a new version of their picture album inspired by Wedekind’s Spring Awakening and E.L. James’ erotic novel 50 Shades of Grey with older, younger and very young guests from the Berlin dance, performance and theatre scene. Based on Wedekind’s utopian models of education, the stage here serves as an educational institution and She She Pop and their guests form a faculty within it.
On two large panels onto which cross-fade images are projected, the different actors – old and young, children, women and men – are staged in a series of encounters. Through monstrous or simple presentations, and constantly shifting poses, different generations and genders, real bodies and fantastic figments expose. The experienced elderly stand next to innocent youth, or vice versa: no position is secure and nobody has reliable knowledge.
The experience of sex is constantly changing – it is historical, political, biographical, and conditioned by specific contexts. Even the most private declarations about desire, reproduction, gender specificity, and so on, are ideologies; they are smoke and mirrors, banal, dull or fictitious. Imparting knowledge is a form of penetration, just one kind of lewd sex game among many. Yet despite all these doubt and unease, sex education is still necessary. What is sex? What makes a woman a woman? What makes a man a man? What does a child know? The pan-generational teachers in 50 Grades of Shame rises to this challenge. The performers use their bodies and their accumulated physical shame as visual material.
50 Grades of Shame is concerned with creating, viewing, modifying and reinterpreting imagery: images in the form of ideals and norms, images of collective and individual desire, images as concrete examples, and as pornography, caricature and subversive collage. Together with their guests, She She Pop’s performers are working on a new theatrical format. The aim is to abandon the individual limits of the body, age, gender, shame and hard-won sexual identity in order to merge into new, collective image of bodies, live on camera. Each and every one of us, whether old or young, is naive despite all our experience, and has to teach others. Each and every one of us can imitate, parody and penetrate the other. The result is an ars erotica for the stage – a fusion of modern sex-education picture book and late medieval dance of death.
Concept: She She Pop By and with: Gundars Abolinš, Sebastian Bark, Daniel Belasco Rogers, Knut Berger, Lilli Biedermann, Jean Chaize, Anna Drexler, Jonas Maria Droste, Johanna Freiburg, Fanni Halmburger, Walter Hess, Christian Löber, Lisa Lucassen, Fee Aviv Marschall, Mieke Matzke, Ilia Papatheodorou, Florian Schäfer, Susanne Scholl, Berit Stumpf, Zelal Yesilyurt.
Director of Photography & Video Installation: Benjamin Krieg. Sets: Sandra Fox. Costumes: Lea Søvsø. Music: Santiago Blaum. Artistic advice: Ruschka Steininger. Dramaturgy: Tarun Kade. Sounddesign: Manuel Horstmann. Lights:Michael Lentner. Technical Tour Support: Florian Fischer, Sven Nichterlein. Video Assistance: Phillip Hohenwarter. Surtitles: Anna Kasten (KITA). Production/PR: ehrliche arbeit – freies Kulturbüro. Freelance Communication Support: Tina Ebert. Financial Administration: Aminata Oelßner. Company Management: Elke Weber.
A production by She She Pop and Münchner Kammerspiele in co-production with HAU Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, Kampnagel Hamburg, FFT Düsseldorf, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt a.M. and Kyoto Experiment.
premiere, March 2016, Kammerspiele, München
Funded by the Berlin Senate Chancellery for Cultural Affairs and supported within the framework of the Alliance of International Production Houses by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
Take, for example, this ingenious play 50 Grades Of Shame (…). It is a sharp, provocative reflection – apparently instructive, but in fact determined by real and serious analysis – on sexuality in all its forms, from the youthful discovery of shame and scandal to the individualization of roles within a couple, from male or female erotic urges to the more or less ironic definition of what is allowed and forbidden in the world in which we live.
Renato Palazzi, 24 ORE, 24.06.2017
50 Grades of Shame is a series of images (…) that creates a wild album of possibilities on stage. Naked and clothed body parts are recorded by cameras on two screens and reassembled like a flip book for children to make funny people or to piece together animals. The possibilities are infinite because men and women of different ages and acting styles perform on stage. They all provide the legs, bellies, breasts and busts for the screens. Below, the figure stands on thin legs, wearing a pot belly with huge breasts and on top is a man’s head with a long beard. Then pow! – it all changes again. The breast hovers like a moon over the torso and so on… In the most poetic moments, the corresponding images on the screen meet, then kiss intimately and passionately…
Frankfurter Rundschau, 11.11.2016
With its new production “50 Grades of Shame”, She She Pop turns this time to love, sex and shame. For this purpose, they have brought on board some actors and a real-life teenager. Wedekind’s play “Spring Awakening” and the erotic pulp fiction “Fifty Shades of Grey” serve as their reference points. The show features a mixture of preaching, darkroom, role play and lecture. Some glorious things happen in its course, such as singing brazen praise to one’s own butthole or insolent questions exploring what is still prohibited or allowed in sex nowadays.
Journal Frankfurt, 11.11.2016
Reviews of the premiere in Berlin, October 2016
She She Pop’s leitmotif – the circulation of body parts – is no random gender concept, but rather a precise equation of images with the narratives of agitation, violence and moral projection. They claim more than the simple mere existence of “social gender”, but rather offer a complex series of images for the distressing ways that society and nature are mutually entwined.
Doris Meierheinirch, Berliner Zeitung, 20.10.2016
Reviews of the premiere in Munich, March 2016
The action on stage switches between pulpit sermons, scenes from Wedekind’s drama, chalk-and-talk teaching and role plays. But there are no fixed roles for the actors (featuring Anna Drexler, Walter Hess and 16-year-old Lilli Biedermann, a ‘real teenager’). On large video screens, the bodies of the performers constantly blend into striking new constellations, as if the collective body is a new utopia. This highly entertaining evening garnered much cheering, long applause and an isolated boo…
Die Welt, 4.3.2016
She She Pop’s take on the term ‘shame’ remains ambiguous, and doesn’t have only negative connotations. Above all, the ‘pornographication’ of our society goes hand in hand with an obsession for physical perfection. In 50 Grades of Shame, the cult of the body is thwarted, and the body itself is presented as a construct. On two screens, live video images of individual performers’ heads are mounted onto the bodies of others to form “patchwork people”: Christian Löber strikes the laid-back pose of womanizer Christian Grey from the James novels, but the face belongs to Anna Drexler. Hermaphrodite images merge naked breasts and swinging penises. The head of 77-year-old Walter Hess is morphed onto Berit Stumpf’s naked body. Indeed, the She She Pop performers usher a ‘nudist pleasure’ into the Münchener Kammerspiele. It’s tempting to call it ‘shameless’. But the lack of embarrassment among the audience is thanks to the irony that goes hand in hand with this unsparing, unadorned display of bodies. A shamelessly enjoyable evening.
Christoph Leibold, DeutschlandRadio Kultur, 4.3.2016
Soon clothes sashay across men’s bellies, and male heads are stuck on female bodies with naked breasts. Confusion ensues, a dissolution of gender roles and pseudo-certainties, simple and striking, witty and effective in equal measure. And then points of view are skewed: proportions and body parts are projected into and onto each other, sometimes with monstrous results, such as Walter Hessen’s head growing out of a female body. Or they become bizarrely utopian, as in when Berit Stumpf and Sebastian Bark’s conjoined torsos start to caress each other. At the side of the stage Santiago Blum creates a musical crescendo that is both muffled and shrill – a lustful inferno. Meanwhile, Lilli Biedermann reads from Hänschen Rilow’s masturbation scene in Wedekind’s play, who in turn fervently cites Othello.
Tim Slagman, nachtkritik, 4.3.2016
This collection of curios featuring flip-effect images of bodies is shattering, frightening, amazing and funny. Strange fantasy creatures come to life, such as when two torsos lying on the backs fuse at the waist; or when the projection of two fingers on a larger-than-life hand depict an abdomen. These tableaux vivants – visual explosions of our inner selves – offer insight into what is physically conceivable between heaven and earth, and between bodies, regardless of gender. The breaches and gulfs in our feelings of shame are displayed. And they are heightened by embarrassing, even trashy costume designs (Lea Søvsø). On this insane catwalk of our emotions and fantasies, which is the opposite of Heidi Klum’s calamitous concern with appearances, a wonderful, humorous Dada effect is created that runs counter to the insanity of rigid physical ideals and self-optimisation. The effects of She She Pop’s show continue to linger at home. Standing in front of the mirror, I ask myself, both aghast and cheerful: “Is this me? And if so, why?”
K. Erik Franzen, Frankfurter Rundschau, 7.3.2016
Concept: She She Pop
Artistic Collaboration: Fanny 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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
THE RITE OF SPRING as performed by She She Pop and their mothers at Short Theatre Festival 2015 Rom
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
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
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?
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.
Nominiert für die Ubu Awards in der Kategorie “Beste ausländische Performance” (Italien).
… 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
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
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
Six women open their secret drawers. Three of them grew up in the former Federal Republic of Germany, three of them in the GDR. More than 20 years after the fall of the wall, they now decide it is time to get to know one another better. So they delve into autobiographical material: letters, diaries, their personal inner archives of images and music. She She Pop and their East German colleagues pledge themselves to polyphony, to collective narratives. Gaps, inaccuracies and missing links are part of the system. Who were we? Who are we? Why have we become this way?
Concept and Regie: She She Pop
With: Annett Gröschner, Alexandra Lachmann, Peggy Mädler, Johanna Freiburg, Ilia Papatheodorou, Nina Tecklenburg.
Further Contribution: Lisa Lucassen, Wenke Seemann, Katharina Lorenz, Barbara Gronau, Anja Dürrschmidt et. al.
Sound: Max Knoth, Andreas Narr
Technical Direction: Philipp Adelmann
Dramaturgy: Barbara Gerland
Assistant: Susanne Franzmeyer
Production Deutschlandradio Kultur 2013
Length: 54’30.
She She Pop ask their fathers to the radio studio to once again argue about money, love, heritage, 100 knights and King Lear.
Length: ca. 54’30.
Concept: She She Pop.
Directed by: She She Pop.
Production: Deutschlandradio Kultur 2011.
Lear’s daugthers: Sebastian Bark, Fanni Halmburger, Lisa Lucassen, Ilia Papatheodorou.
King Lear: Jochaim Bark, Peter Halmburger, Theo Papatheodorou.
Music: Max Knoth, Christopher Uhe.
Sound: Andreas Narr, Max Knoth.
Technical direction: Hermann Leppich.
Production assistant: Susanne Franzmeyer.
Editor: Barbara Gerland.
Premiere: September 19th, 2011 at 00:05, Deutschlandradio Kultur.
Winner of Hörspielpreis der Kriegsblinden 2012 Bund der Kriegsblinden Deutschlandradio Kultur
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.
She She Pop at Pustervik Göteborg 29&30 mars 2011 from Kulturguiden.tv on Vimeo.
Winner of kulturnews-Award 2011, 2nd prize
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.
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
“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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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
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.
“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
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.
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) 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!
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.
“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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
English translation following soon.
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.
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.
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.
„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
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.
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.
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
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.
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).
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!”
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.
…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
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.
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.
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.
She She Pop’s first radio play, in collaboration with Hamburg musician Felix Kubin.
In a respectable-sounding information program, paranomal phenomena are discussed. Experiments in telepathy, a pendulum, and other innovative para-scientific techniques are practiced. Some of those who conduct experiments turn into victims of their own theories.
By and with: J. Freiburg, C. Jansen, L. Lucassen, K. Oberlik, B. Stumpf und Felix Kubin.
Broadcast premiere: October 2000, DeutschlandRadio Berlin
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Africa as a myth is the starting point of this performance. On a catwalk, the exotic, the alien is presented as something to wear. The yearning for this “world darkly luring” is shown in its commercial scope: fashion as role-play and Hip Hop as theater.
By and with: J. Freiburg, C. Jansen, L. Lucassen, M. Matzke, K. Oberlik, I. Papatheodorou, A. von Steht, B. Stumpf.
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.
Concept: She She Pop.
By and with: B. Stumpf, M. Matzke, I. Papatheodorou, L. Lucassen.
Light: Sven Garbade.
Sound: Anja von Steht.