Sat

3.6.

18:00 PAF Introducing
Salma Said & Miriam Coretta Schulte

Sat

3.6.

22:00 #6
Das Helmi

Fri

9.6.

20:00
Eva Hintermaier / Simon Kalus

Sat

10.6.

20:00
Eva Hintermaier / Simon Kalus

Sun

11.6.

18:00
Eva Hintermaier / Simon Kalus

Fri

16.6.

18:00 - 17.6. 18:00
Heinrich Horwitz

Sat

17.6.

15:00 - 20:00
Alisa Tretau

Sun

18.6.

15:00 - 20:00
Alisa Tretau

Mon

19.6.

10:00 online
ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS

Thu

22.6.

17:00 - 22 Uhr
PINSKER+BERNHARDT

Fri

23.6.

17:00 - 22 Uhr
PINSKER+BERNHARDT

Fri

23.6.

Sat

24.6.

15:00 - 21 Uhr
PINSKER+BERNHARDT

Sat

24.6.

19:00
Club Real

Sat

24.6.

Sun

25.6.

12:00
Der extrem gemischte Chor

Sun

25.6.

12:00 - 16:30 Uhr
PINSKER+BERNHARDT

Sun

25.6.

Sat

1.7.

22:00 #7
Das Helmi

Mon

3.7.

19:00 Talk #1
Melanie Schmidli + Team

Tue

4.7.

19:00 Talk #2
Melanie Schmidli + Team

Wed

5.7.

19:00 Talk #3
Melanie Schmidli + Team

Thu

6.7.

19:00 Concert
Melanie Schmidli + Team

Sat

8.7.

18:00 Premiere
Brandon LaBelle

Sat

2.9.

22:00 #8
Das Helmi

Sat

7.10.

22:00 #9
Das Helmi

Sat

4.11.

22:00 #10
Das Helmi

Productions

  • © Das Helmi

  • © Ur-Oper #5 | Peter van Heesen

  • © Ur-Oper #5 | Peter van Heesen

  • © Ur-Oper #3 | David Baltzer

  • © Ur-Oper #3 | David Baltzer

  • © Ur-Oper #3 | David Baltzer

  • © Ur-Oper #3 | David Baltzer

  • © Ur-Oper #2 | Katharina Foersch

  • © Ur-Oper #2 | Richard Mattmüller

  • © Ur-Oper #1 | Katharina Foersch

  • © Ur-Oper #1 | Katharina Foersch

  • © Ur-Oper #1 | Katharina Foersch

Die Suche nach der Ur-Oper

Das Helmi

What you can’t talk about because it’s somehow so big and incomprehensible, you can maybe sing about. (Emir Tebatebai) 

We imagine that opera does not yet exist. But we live in a time ripe for opera. And great themes are pressing everywhere and no one can listen anymore. So we go in search of an immediate expression. With the arrangement of As-Ob (and unfortunately the exclusion of opera professionals but the inclusion of a traditionally very diverse crowd of guests and professionals in many fields) we set out in January with the first premiere and the journey will continue throughout the year until there will be the great Ururoper in December. Our attempts are also entertainment and our spectators are creative co-creators. So the Ur-Opera will grow with the creative power of everyone, with every feedback, every criticism and every thought. 

 

Ur-Oper #6 (3.6.) »Chorstück«

The pieces, starting from the choral idea, are united by one theme, the drug, its definition and ritual ingestion into the group. Betrayal is paid. The drug is blood, and thus blood loss, loss of life. The chorus weakens when it is abandoned. There is violence involved. There is no magic inherent in the beginning in this case but force. Force of the group against the individual who has decided to want not only what everyone has, but something beyond that. And this power of the group is in this respect almost a kind of revenge. But, of course, it can all be quite different. Because the choral figure is not fixed, it changes and can also seek to dissolve the boundaries between language and music.
A choral piece about the possible ways in which a long time ago a first figure entered a stage in the ancient and today understood beginning of the theater: a chorus. And how individuals emerged from it. And sang and spoke and played with it.

 

Das Helmi Puppentheater Kollektiv from Berlin has been at Ballhaus Ost since 2006. Helmi combines many artistic languages and directions in its shows, in which the Helmi puppets and a self-written music always take leading roles. 

 
What happened so far #1-#5

Ur-Oper #5 »Junk Press On, Magic Off: It’s Musical Time!«
In the beginning, all was night and in the darkness a cat sat in the street and whined. From the imitation of this song, opera was born: whining, noisy people on gloomy stages, singing to the imaginary moon for love and a cheese sandwich. In search of the original opera, glanz&krawall serve up exclusive morsels of their musical »CATS of BERLIN« about animals, garbage and junky relationships in the patriarchy. Because the genre musical lands absolutely unjustly in the scrap corner. In contrast to opera, it has the potential to shred the social imperative of order, cleanliness and discipline. On a discarded home organ and an armada of children’s instruments, the SCHROTTIS in their purple overalls have been lapping their way into the hearts and through the backyards of Berlin for some years now. Mixed with the meow of a lonely foam animal and a nice concert cover bone of the Ur-Schrottis, the whole thing will give a proper cat-solyanka.

Ur-Oper #4 »I want to believe« is the first mystery Ur-Opera from Helmi Theater. This opera is based on a true incident.
Father and son fight together on the side of the Republicans against the Franco regime in the Spanish Civil War. Both are convinced anarchists, who consider the freedom of man as a high good. The fight against fascism ends in defeat, and the father sees suicide as the only way to redeem himself from this hopelessness. But the 19-year-old son Jean-Luc does not think of giving up and joins the Resistance after the German invasion of France. Jean-Luc is courageous and attentive. He later wrote down his experiences in books, which were very popular in France and also in Spain in the post-war period. He is a sought-after contemporary witness. Respected historians invite him to conferences and congresses. In these meetings he also meets his future wife Lucy and their son Adam is born. Everything goes on in an orderly fashion until the 90s, as it does with all other families. At the same time he publicly emphasizes his political attitude again and again. He was and is an anarchist. A view that is no longer shared or taken seriously by many people in these late capitalist times. But then an event happens that shakes his world view but also confirms it. The grandfather Jean-Luc disappears without a trace for a week. The whole family is worried. And then he suddenly stands before them and reports an encounter of the third kind. On the way home by car, aliens would have taken him in an unknown flying object. They were very friendly, and for six days he traveled with them through space. When they left, they gave him a message that was in total agreement with his conviction. He cannot keep this experience to himself and he writes a text about it. His ancestral publishing house refuses to publish the script. They stamped this “unscientific” work as a fantasy. Also his family distances itself from his reports about the aliens. Especially his son Adam wants to have nothing to do with this matter. He is ashamed of the fact that his father is a “madman”. Only the 14 year old granddaughter Gloria is fully behind him. She wants to believe him because her grandfather is a great and kind person for her.

In Ur-Oper #3 the place of longing “Dreamtopia” comes to fruition. A woman who makes her hair beautiful every morning and finds the right outfit for the day. She rides her electric scooter to work and is very involved in her profession. Versatile are her activities, so she is a veterinarian, fashion designer, project manager, pilot, firefighter, police officer and make-up artist. A person who likes to help others in many areas of life. Whether it’s babysitting, being a good friend who just listens, or being a lifeguard on the beach. A person who works to protect dolphins. To swim, she wears a bikini. To ride, she wears fancy riding boots and a helmet. She explores the mountains with her camper. She climbs the rocks and likes to play tennis in the late afternoon, and now and then she likes to rollerblade. And in the evenings she likes to host parties where her many friends gather around her swimming pool and happily party and dance.

Ur-Oper #2 is a fairy tale: All a boy had was his lucky skin. The naked lucky skin and the desire to breathe, to live. It should go on! Merciless and gloomy: the cold river, the calls in the forest, the blind animals or even the man on the horse. Then again the evening glow, the creatures of darkness and finally the old castle. He who has nothing has nothing to lose and help often comes unexpectedly. Lucky skin never gives up and goes to hell but hell ain’t a bad place to be as a wise guy once said!

Ur-Oper #1 »Ich fühls nicht« is inspired by a comic by Swedish artist Liv Strömquist. Based on Leonardo de Caprio’s emotional burnout, it raises the dramatic question of whether the ability to love has left our midst in the face of endless choices, stress, capitalism, and self-actualization? But what does loving even mean? Isn’t everything that happened and was thought before our time toxic anyway? I don’t feel it sounds wrong and paradoxical in the opera genre, of course. In Italian opera, one rather sings of Ich fühls. But just a moment! We are not in the classical opera genre, but in the unknown world of the original opera. Perhaps the original opera explores the dark space beyond certainties? And is there any subject matter more worthy of opera than the search for love? A group of postwoken dudes with a bunch of homemade puppets, will try to rise to the challenge of somehow doing justice to this cryptic feminist work. They will have to craft many characters, we will follow the comic through time to Socrates and back to the present.

Premiere

  • Jan 19, 2023

Upcoming Dates

  • Jun 03, 2023, 22:00
  • Jul 01, 2023, 22:00
  • Sep 02, 2023, 22:00
  • Oct 07, 2023, 22:00
  • Nov 04, 2023, 22:00
Past Dates
  • Jan 19, 2023
  • Jan 20, 2023
  • Jan 21, 2023
  • Jan 22, 2023
  • Feb 04, 2023
  • Mar 04, 2023
  • Apr 01, 2023
  • May 13, 2023

Tickets

Tickets: 5 Euros
For online tickets, 10% presale fee and 2,- Euro service fee are charged in addition to the basic ticket price by the provider Reservix.

Duration

60 minutes

Language

deutsch

#6 by and with

Christina Berger, Ada Biljan, Florian Hein, Laura Eftychia Papachristos, Anne Kulbatzki, Maximilian Riethmüller, Konrad Walkow; Leitung: Florian Hein

#5 by and with

Dennis Depta, Monika Freinberger, Valerie Oberhof, Kat Papachristou, Marielle Sterra, Kara Schröder & Emir Tebatebai; Kat Papachristou / Tango with Lions, John Carlson and others (Music), SCHROTTI STAR ORCHESTER miez SCHROTTI CAT ORCHESTER (Livemusic), Benjamin Graf (Sound)

#4 by and with

Louise Pons, Jakob Dobers, Emir Tebatebai

#3 by and with

Katharina Försch, Jakob Dobers und Emir Tebatebai

#2 by and with

Emir Tebatebai, Florian Loycke, Brian Morrow

#1 by and with

Emir Tebatebai, Florian Loycke, Brian Morrow, Jakob Dobers, Felix Loycke, Iris Christidi, Kara Schröder, Louise Pons, Nolundi Tschudi

Stage and design

Students of the stage design class of the UdK under the direction of Prof. Janina Audick

Production

Judith König and ehrliche Arbeit

Partner

Theater RambaZamba, Glanz und Krawall, Meine Damen und Herren (Hamburg), Cora/ Peter Frost und Familie, Kinderkilombo Kleinow, Institutet Vitsaniemi (Markus Öhrn) 

Press and PR

Richard Mattmüller

 
A production by Das Helmi in cooperation with Ballhaus Ost and the stage design class of the UdK under the direction of Prof. Janina Audick. Supported by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe.

Ballhaus Ost Mediencooperation: taz