How much are you willing to give for love? »True Romance« takes the audience deep into the heart of pig butchering — the most brutal form of digital romance scam. It is a billion-dollar business built on perfectly engineered emotional scripts: through endless messages, a real and beautiful relationship is sold to you, the damn best relationship you will ever have! And of course, that comes at a price. Until your bank account is empty. Until everything you have is gone.Up to 15 audience members per performance experience the work of three characters inside a scam center. The immersive performance unfolds live in an office setting, somewhere between karaoke to Lana Del Rey’s »Video Games« and beer pong, while also taking place through smartphones handed out at the beginning. Using an app specially developed for the performance, parts of the story are delivered directly to the audience’s devices through personal chats and videos.»True Romance« — a play about the promise of love in the digital age. A play like a message from the person you love. A play just for you. Stefan Mießeler is an author and director. He creates performances and theatrical works that combine spoken theater with immersive settings and trash aesthetics.

The drag theater play LINEAGE explores queer heritage, a lineage that defies the norms of logic and blood, connecting individuals through their experiences. Corazón, AzulySuave, Bala BimBamBum, Na Fallera Fatal and Papi Pistola embark on an emotional journey in which they explore the lives of various icons and figures who form the backbone of LGBT+ culture(s). Over the course of the play’s hour and a half, Corazón takes the audience, through musical and visual numbers, to different milestones that make up a constellation of queer relationships. Starting with the ghostly presence of her grandmother, she traverses a trail of icons such as Rampova, Almodóvar and Grace Jones, discussing topics of LGBT+ exile, subversion in the nightlife, folklore and the influence of religion as culture. Corazón is a Valencian drag artist and stage designer based in Berlin, bringing together an ensemble of drag artists from the plurality of the Spanish drag scene. From punk to glamour, and always subversive, the artists from Valencia, Barcelona, Cuenca and Madrid show the reality of the city they inhabit.

The first chance encounter: Beatriz arrives at Friedrichstraße Station in East Germany; Laura, who is pregnant, throws up. The second: Laura sees Beatriz’s circus performance and writes a feminist critique. In the High Middle Ages of the 12th century, disillusioned by the patriarchal structures of her time, the professional minstrel Beatriz de Dia asks Persephone to put her into an 810-year-long slumber. She awakens in 1968, just as her castle in southern France is about to be demolished to make way for a highway and the student protests are raging in Paris. Beatriz had hoped to land in an era of social progress and the realization of third-wave feminism—she rejoiced too soon. From a France that fails to keep its revolutionary promises, Beatriz flies to the GDR on the back of the beautiful Melusine. There she meets Laura Salman, a philology graduate and S-Bahn train conductor, who becomes the playmate Beatriz has longed for…Inspired by the writer Irmtraud Morgner, SANCHA LAURA brings together two dissimilar women from seemingly long-gone eras—the Middle Ages and the GDR—who grapple with the unfulfilled promise of an emancipatory future and set off together on a poetic and wild Aventüre. The Musiktheaterkollektiv Hauen und Stechen develops its productions in basements and on opera stages and has been creating radically accessible music theater since 2012. Its work blends prominent and obscure music from various genres with influences from theater, opera, film, philosophy, visual arts, and performance.www.hauen-und-stechen.com

»It is, after all, an unshakable conviction that love is, remains, and will always be terrene—for death cannot kiss.«– Liddy Bacroff The interdisciplinary performance begins by tracing the footsteps of the trans* artist and sex worker Liddy Bacroff, who was murdered under the National Socialist regime. The Hamburg-based choreographer René*e Reith follows those ghosts that take possession of a person, those one leaves behind oneself, and those that return restlessly because something has remained unfinished. »Dances of Almost Forgotten Ghosts« opens a space for the audience in which their own bodies and movements become carriers of memory and imagination. In an interactive performance, René*e Reith and her team combine contemporary dance with biographical performance. René*e Reith is pursuing a practice-based artistic PhD at the MUK (Music and Arts Private University of the City of Vienna), focusing on the staging of transness in contemporary dance and performance. On stage are Heinrich Horwitz, Géraldine Schabraque, Tubi Malcharzik, and Alexander Hahne, whose distinct performative approaches combine dance, singing, and performance into a multilayered space of remembrance. All of them are experts in their artistic fields and, through their own trans perspectives, have for several years been engaged in activism, education, and performance aimed at critically addressing patriarchal and hegemonic structures while simultaneously strengthening the visibility and rights of trans people.

So many adventures couldn’t happen todaySo many songs we forgot to playSo many dreams swinging out of the blueWe’ll let them come true    - Alphaville It’s gotten late, and suddenly a song comes on—your song! A dam bursts in your head, and feelings and euphoria flood over you. Finally! You’re taking off! Hardly any other cultural product can stir up such emotions as music. Whether at a concert, on a car ride, or alone in your bedroom—the shared and deeply personal feelings we’ve experienced through music are etched into our souls. At the same time, pop music in particular is often perceived as superficial art, and when an emotionally charged hit is played in the theater, it’s not uncommon for it to be ironic. vorschlag:hammer have been telling stories at the stage’s front for 16 years, and now it’s time for a break: Gesine, Stephan, and Kristofer are treating themselves to the emotions of pop for a production. In the dance school of their youth, they set up the show stairs and stage a concert featuring some of the biggest hits. Through at least 10 songs—from System of a Down and Adele to Rondo Venziano—the three explore the question of how and when good entertainment succeeds. Will they manage to create an evening that is magical? They draw on grand moments and small gestures from the canon of pop culture or a personal, late-night drive. They try to move the audience and indulge in the theater of embarrassment. The ultimate goal: catharsis. With pathos and melancholy, they celebrate what is, what was, and what could have been. They sing power ballads and play devil’s violins, perform standard dances, sit at the drums, and play Power Metal. Somewhere between a concert and a music video, a TV show, dance theater, and the gentle exuberance of rocking out in your own living room, they strive to connect with themselves and the audience in a genuine and honest way, while also allowing themselves moments of awkwardness. A pop evening brimming with emotion, seeking infinity and shared moments of freedom and detachment. vorschlag:hammer have been developing theater productions as a collective since 2009. In recent years, their performative narrative theater has opened up to a wide variety of aesthetic strategies, to visual-atmospheric or body-oriented works. They freely adapt existing material or develop research-based productions on ever new topics.

An overgrown urban forest in Wedding has been the home of Organisms Democracy since 2019. In this political system all living beings are citizens with equal rights and equal access to political participation. On June 6, Organisms Parliament will convene and decide on the future of the multi species habitat. Come by and join the discussion!Later: Drinks at the Selva-Bar. The artist group Club Real has been developing site-specific projects since 2000. Installations, political multispecies formats, and participatory urban development projects invite visitors to help shape alternative visions of reality.

Helmi finally takes on »Little House on the Prairie«, based on Laura Ingalls’ book and the iconic 1970s TV series! It’s wild to start a farm in the middle of nature, with a bunch of little kids and hardly any experience. There’s been so little trust in our lives, but here it’s all different. Nature is blooming profusely, the pig’s grown huge, and there are two young donkeys – unfortunately, both male. Lots of fresh air, peace and quiet. Then there’s family life and the strangers—that is, the neighbors—though to the neighbors, we’re the strangers—and there are different kinds of strangers, too; some seem to have been here for quite a while. We don’t know exactly where we are. It could be Wyoming or the Uckermark. Why are all these people here? What were they fleeing from? This new Helmi project is also going to be a radical confrontation. Watch dreams collide with reality, facts with fiction, Germany with itself. The beautiful with the ugly. We have enough dolls and songs to see us through. Joining the expedition this time is a team of people with extensive experience in extreme situations: Cora Peter Frost, Tania Elstermeyer, Silke Schönfleisch, and John-Boy, the dog. We’re approaching the walnut grove with a completely open mind! For many years, the Helmi Puppet Theater has been putting on shows at Ballhaus Ost in the Helmholtzkiez, as well as in many other (public) spaces. Joining the expedition this time is a team of people with extensive experience in extreme situations: Cora Peter Frost, Tania Elstermeyer, Silke Schönfleisch, and John-Boy, the dog.

»Epiclogue« presents beginnings, tales, histories and forms new myths. The dancers Jonathan Ibsen og Bjørk-Mynte Paulse carve out space for the queer body to be strong, visible, and dominant. The performance examines what it requires—or perhaps costs—to take up space that is granted to others. Through the perspectives of a trans woman of colour and a white gay man, they scrutinize the world they live in and put problems concerning gender, sexuality and identity into context. By rejecting the role of the vulnerable, Kjøteren og Terrieren fantasize about a speculative reality where dominant norms no longer exist. They search for possibilities in the interface between what is and what could have been. In »Epiclogue«, intimate encounters emerge, where bodies find courage and will through love, care, and trust in one another.  Kjøteren og Terrieren‘s artistic interest lies in challenging and questioning societal norms. With curiosity and an unfiltered aesthetic, they approach questions that concern us all in an untamed way. Their ambition is to engage, challenge, and create dialogue through choreography and the staging of the reality we inhabit. The show on 29.5. will be followed by an artist talk. The talk will take place in English.

Iocasta is feeling uneasy. Her son Oedipus, who has been trying to sleep with her for millennia, has multiplied, and now the whole world wants to fuck her. The father’s law no longer exists (the bastard just took off), and the Young Liberals have been challenging the incest ban since 2020. But no one has ever asked whether Iocasta actually wants to sleep with her son. Frustrated, Iocasta sets out in search of her own subject position, but instead encounters: a group of cheerleaders who no longer know who they’re actually cheering for. A polycule that desperately wants to include her. And a few young men who believe the biological body is the solution.ANTISEX explores the theme of desire in late capitalism and specifically examines the role of women: What are the downsides of a (dating) market where everyone hast to be constantly available? Why is the sex industry booming with fetishized portrayals of »MILFs«, while the real work of mothers is beind rendered invisible and devalued? And what kind of desire lies behind the anti-feminist backlash? Do we all want our daddy back? Hampel / Helbig / Kießling create theater against grand gestures. With a feminist agenda and their 4-meter-high stage set, the newly founded GbR—a type of German legal entity—enters the independent theater scene and begins by… talking about sex. Or: by challenging its status quo.

In their trilogy »Open Water«, Glitch AG explores the utopian potential of water in relation to our social coexistence across three works over three years. The relaxed performance »Liquid Bodies« marks the beginning of this series, in which four performers from Glitch AG form an aquatic community together with the audience, focusing on the theme of care. For water connects all bodies that carry water within them. Water remembers, stores, forgets, migrates, and circulates. With percussion and piano, aquaphone and liquids in and around us, we experience our watery connectedness. Water touches, bathes, permeates. We eat algae popcorn and linger, carry other bodies of water and responsibility for each other, become singing sirens, move together through space like oceanic swirls flexible in our identities, changeable, interpermeating, and empathetic. Raha Emami Khansari, Eva-Maria Glitsch, Anna Hubner, and Christine Kristmann make up the Hamburg-based performance collective Glitch AG. Since 2016, they have been producing theater and dance performances, radio plays, participatory formats, and interventions in public spaces.