2019          Uni.T / Theater of the University of the Arts Berlin          performance, stage and costume design

A theater evening by the Stage Design Class of the University of the Arts

The stage design class lets the room speak and characters tell their associative stories in a joint experimental theater evening. The project, performed in the UdK’s own theater “UNI.T” designed by Paul Baumgarten invites the audience to experience the space outside of theater conventions. The six-member team, made up of students from the stage design class, remeasures the boundaries of the theater space, lighting it from a wide variety of perspectives and incorporating it as an active co-player or antagonist: the functional architecture of the theater building is reinterpreted as a structure that is able to articulate its own character and possesses the gift of translating its attitude into action and play. What if it had a life of its own? All of its visitors, who arrive and meet by chance, remain strangers, unlike the actors, whose natural home is the stage.

The theme of the project emerged after a whole series of conversations. Inspired by texts by Donna Haraway, Jorge Luis Borges and Franz Kafka, the group explored the ambivalent relationship between humans, nature, animals and technology and the resulting fears. In the twilight of the Anthropocene - the age in which man has become one of the most important factors influencing the biological, geological and atmospheric processes of the earth - man seems deprived of the necessity of his existence. With “Biotopes” we tell stories that are about man, but which show him in his complete dependence on the state of the world. The speculation about the awakening of spaces to human perception and personality is based on the ancient fable system in which animals act as representatives for humans in their conflicts.

By and With Anneke Frank, Lotta Hench, Louise Pons, Mirjam Schaal, Helene Scheite, Alexandra Vassilieva, Hartmut Meyer, Jens Schmidl, Jakob Niedermeier, Sangwha Park, Saskia Mommertz, Jana Haberkern, Iris Christidi, Tatjana Reeh, Iven Fenker, Vanda Hehr, Dorothea Zwetkow, Khalil Riahi, Marion Alessandra Becker, Nip Man Teng, Wieland Lemke, Alissa Artjuchin, Susanna Rydz, Lucjian Busch, Katri Saloniemi, Olivia Schrøder, Louis Caspar Schmitt, Seongji Jang, Yazan Melhem, Nikolaj Gerstenfeldt, Hanna Kovács, Paula Meuthen, Madalena Wallenstein, Kirsten, Kamila Suwalski, Erhard Schwalbe, Jara Nassar, Paula Breuer, Celine Meral, Aybüke Kara, Sara Ubukata

With the support of K.O.existenz Stiftung, Deutscher Bühnenverein, KKWV, Fachschaft Darstellende Künste and the Frauenförderung of UdK Berlin

Premiere 15.01.2019

© Photos DongHa Choe