In this musical lecture-performance, a collective of Trobadoras wanders through the archives of May ’68 in Paris, the Prague Spring, and the opposition movements of the GDR. In pursuit of fantastical visions of the future and driven by a desire to reinvent life, they take to the barricades, where they once again raise songs of political resistance. The medieval trobairitz Beatriz de Dia awakens after an 800-year slumber, while the student protests are raging in Paris in the spring of 1968. Hoping for social progress and gender equality, she sets out in search of the dragon Tarasque and the beautiful Melusine. Her journey through southern France leads her into precarious circumstances: As an undocumented migrant, she is forced into illegal labour and prostitution on a construction site, ends up in a psychiatric hospital, and eventually in a bourgeois marriage to a greengrocer. Caught in the contradictions of reality, she misses the May ’68 uprising in Paris in a bitter twist of fate. And yet, the headstrong trobadora clings to the possibility of a different life – an act of defiant affirmation of life. How could the poetry of the streets be told in the GDR? And above all, how can we still sing about it today? In pursuit of fantastical visions of the future and driven by the desire to reinvent life, the Trobadoras take to the barricades built from the wreckage of vegetable shops, giving voice to old and new songs of political resistance. BEATRIZ 1968 is a novel adaptation, an immersive historical spectacle, a forum for questions, a concert, and an occupation all at once. The Music theater collective Hauen und Stechen stands for a poetic, multifaceted and wild theatrical language that marks a political and idiosyncratic position in music theater.

A typical workday at Cyborgs4everything GmbH: Two factory workers are tasked with keeping a machine running. As they work with drills, manual and sexual gestures intertwine, revealing a structural similarity between drilling and penetration. With every drill hole, they penetrate deeper into the mechanics of their internal power plant and encounter what drives them. Pflüger and Weibel use technology as a mirror and ask: What does it mean to be functional and productive, and what role do emotions and human desire play in this? Through movement, sound, and voice, »i feel nothing« examines the fetishization of productivity as a defining concept of capitalist societies. When working with hand-held power tools, the boundaries between productive activity and performative act—between human and machine—blur. The resulting sounds are transformed live into a soundscape. The audience finds itself in a cyborg science-fiction world where technology, power, and their influence on the body and sexuality are renegotiated. Marlen, Eva, Caterina and Julie move between experimental dance, voice, sound, and visual art. They share a queer-feminist perspective, work collectively, and view the body as the starting point and source of their research.

»Thieves From Heaven« explores one of the most powerful myths in Yoruba culture: the story of Àbíkú—the »Spirit Child.« This myth is not only an integral part of Yoruba cosmogony, but it is also closely linked to the history of the pre-colonial West African kingdom of Oyo. The interpretations of the myth and its stories are as diverse as Nigerian society itself. In this project, a young generation of Nigerian dance artists, in collaboration with the Christoph Winkler Company, explores the myth of the spirit children. They reexamine the stories and their numerous interpretations against the backdrop of their own identities and use them as the basis for a choreographically inspired work. Since 1996, Christoph Winkler has created more than 80 dance pieces as a freelance artist and is one of Germany’s most distinguished and versatile choreographers. His work encompasses a wide range of formats and spans themes from the deeply personal to the political. Under the umbrella of the Company Christoph Winkler, he brings together dancers from all over the world to collaborate as temporary collectives on a wide range of themes.

Monika Ertl, daughter of Leni Riefenstahl’s cameraman Hans Ertl, leaves her privileged marriage in Bolivia in the late 1960s and, in 1969, joins the guerrilla movement that Che Guevara had built in the country — radicalizing from an activist into a suspected political assassin. Her fight against the Bolivian dictatorship also leads to a confrontation with the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, who was smuggled into the country by the US intelligence agency CIC and works for the military regime. He, in turn, is being tracked by the French Nazi hunters Serge and Beate Klarsfeld and Régis Debray. For Monika Ertl, the spiral of state violence and counter-violence ends fatally.In »Eine Frage des Widerstands« (A Question of Resistance), four actors from Germany, France, and Bolivia weave together film sequences, interviews with eyewitnesses, archival material, theatrical scenes, and musical compositions into a piece about the life and motives of Monika Ertl. Caught in the tension between resistance, violence, and revolution, they ask: How do you tell a life story this cinematic, this revolutionary? At what point — and why — does a civilian take up arms? Who legitimizes counter-violence? And how would we ourselves act if our democracy were to turn into a dictatorship and begin to disappear people?The production is the third and final part of Felix Meyer-Christian’s ten-year documentary theatre trilogy (2016–2026) on the extraordinary and often little-known life of Monika Ertl. Tracing her story across two continents, Meyer-Christian and COSTA COMPAGNIE filmed in La Paz and Paris, Santa Cruz and Lyon, the Alps and the Andes — interviewing former fighters, eyewitnesses, and historians along the way. This long-term research will culminate in 2027 in a stand-alone documentary film directed by Meyer-Christian, co-produced with ZDF and produced in collaboration with ARTE. Based in Berlin, COSTA COMPAGNIE has been creating documentary works since 2012, combining performative, cinematic and choreographic approaches. Their work takes the form of stage productions, immersive 360° performances, Virtual and Augmented Reality experiences, and films. The company focuses on global political transformations, war and conflict regions, and the people living within them—whose perspectives often remain underrepresented in art, media and politics. As part of their research, the group has worked and filmed in, among other places, eastern Ukraine, Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, the United States, Thailand, Japan, Mozambique and South Sudan. Their work has been presented at, among others, the Impulse Festival, Festival Politik im Freien Theater, Achtung Berlin Film Festival and Film Festival Max Ophüls Preis. POST-SHOW TALKSFollowing the performances on Friday 6, November on Saturday, 7 November, and Sunday, 8 November, there will be a post-show discussion with members of the ensemble and the director.Unfortunately, Dr. Hasserer’s visit on November 7 is cancelled.

»Ex Silens« combines movement, sound, space, and technology to invite the audience into a radically alternative sensory world. Marco Donnarumma has created a ritual that reorders our senses. Music and light generate trance-inducing sound waves. Cochlear implants and AI-powered hearing algorithms become biomachines that amplify sounds from the performer’s body to propagate them through the bodies of the audience. These new organs, designed and handcrafted by the artist, amplify a kaleidoscopic soundscape that has always been there. »Ex Silens« offers deaf, hard-of-hearing, and hearing audience members alike an audiovisual experience that completely rethinks concepts such as deafness and cyborgs.  Part of the NO LIMITS Disability & Performing Arts Festival. #disabledleadership #disabledauthorship #alldisabledcast #livedexperience #latedeafened Coproduced by PACT Zollverein and with scientific support by the Intelligent Instruments Lab at the Icelandic University Of Arts in Reykjavík. Funded by the Ministy for Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine Westphalia in context of a media arts scholarship.

Two young women share their authentic, tender, and inclusive truth about love and sexuality live on stage. Based on real-life experiences, this documentary performance raises questions about first kisses, dating, sex, and digital encounters—but above all: Do all bodies have equal access to love? »Bodies we fall for« is an accessible documentary performance about love presented in the Cypriot-Greek dialect and characterized by creative forms of accessibility, such as integrated audio description, sign language interpretation, surtitles, tactile guidance, and multisensory elements. With tenderness, humor, and unvarnished honesty, the evening explores love as a means of access—as a political, deeply personal, and at the same time universal act of resistance. After the show, there will be a 30-minute break, followed by an artist talk (40 minutes), with DGS (German Sign Language) interpretation and whisper interpretation in German. Host: Yulia Yáñez Schmidt Part of the NO LIMITS Disability & Performing Arts Festival. #aestheticsofaccess #disabledauthorship #livedexperience

When MC Hot-Shark-Stephen teams up with beatbox legend Poseidon, Dancing Goddess Lia and Master of Disaster Josh, the stage is sure to shake! With booming beats, witty wordplay and captivating moves, the artists face off in high-energy battles. Here, it’s not just rhythm and rhymes that count, but also courage and self-confidence. What does it really mean to be »cool«? What battles do we face in life? Are we ready to win them? The festival closing party will take place from 9:30 pm onwards, directly following the performance. Presented as part of the NO LIMITS Disability & Performing Arts Festival. #disabledleadership #disabledauthorship #livedexperience

»Sleight of Hand« invites audiences to experience unfamiliar objects, materials and substances through their hands. Combining audio description, tactile design, choreography and an immersive ASMR soundscape, »Sleight of Hand« explores what we might discover when we loosen our grip on the familiar visual world and let our senses wander. Jo Bannon, who was a guest at NO LIMITS in 2019 with two performances, brings a distinctive offbeat humour to her work, alongside a sustained fascination with objects, visual perception and a sense of wonder at the strangeness of the everyday world. Presented as part of the NO LIMITS Disability & Performing Arts Festival. #aestheticsofaccess #disabledauthorship #livedexperience

One stage, one evening, one question: »Are we a thing?«La Quatschouette and Le Lampenfieber join forces for a special edition full of texts, voices and nonsense in all languages. Love, relationship status, misunderstandings, missed chances, WhatsApp messages you rewrote three times, anything that can become “a thing” between people is on the table. Written pieces, performance, lipsync, singing, whatever comes to mind: the stage is yours. Don’t want to go up yourself, but still want to present your texts? Bring a print-out, or send them ahead of time to laquatschouette@gmail.com. Our carrier pigeons will read them out for you! And as the icing on the cake: a surprise from the Network of French-speaking Women Authors. Come by, bring something, someone, or just your ears. Free admission, all languages are welcome. La Quatschouette is part of Le Lampenfieber 2026 festival »Are We A Thing?«.

Can we recognise the moment when we should not cross, consent, or look away? Can we resist, survive, disrupt, or subvert the game of censorship? And when do these strategies begin to sustain the very system they were meant to endure?»The Game We Knew but Didn’t Play« explores censorship as a power struggle that enters artistic processes, relationships, and everyday encounters. It asks how censorship shapes what can be said and shown, but also how it affects institutions, communities, and the ways artists negotiate, adapt, remain silent, take risks, or continue working within restrictive structures.The work grows out of Azadeh Ganjeh’s research into German theatre productions presented in state-controlled venues in the Islamic Republic of Iran after the 1979 Revolution. Shaped by the perspective of exiled artists who have experienced censorship, these cases become a point of departure for examining censorship across different political, cultural, and institutional contexts.Developed by Rebel-IST-hah! members Foad Esfahani and Azadeh Ganjeh, in collaboration with Lisa Lucassen, Jule Flierl, and Philine Rinnert, the performance draws on documentary materials, historical case studies, personal archives, biographies, and performative actions. Together, these materials expand the inquiry into how our lives, choices, and actions become implicated in systems of censorship.Each performance opens a room for questions. How does censorship enter that room? How does it become an invisible part of aesthetic decisions, institutional agreements, or artistic collaborations? And who benefits from the compromises and entanglements that follow?What did we know about the game? And what might we do if we could turn knowledge into action? Rebel-IST-hah! is a performance and research collective founded by Azadeh Ganjeh and Foad Esfahani in Tehran, Iran, in 2006 and based in Berlin since 2022. Through performance art, research, and collaborative processes, the collective engages with social and political questions, examining how people encounter power through bodies, spaces, institutions, and narratives. Over the years, Rebel-IST-hah! has moved between conventional and unconventional spaces and collaborated with interdisciplinary artists, performers, researchers, and diverse communities. It’s work from performance activism, Immersive theatre, Audio plays, Lecture performances and stage-performances brings together documentary and archival materials, embodied practices, memory, and performative experimentation to witness activism, open spaces of appearance, invite participation in the performance and/or reality, and imagine alternative forms of political togetherness.