Asian mud-dauber Wasp, a relatively new citizen of Organisms Democracy with migrational background, meets Herring, who is visiting from Helsinki to learn about the governmental procedures of a system of Equal Rights for all Living Beings. Humans are invited to accompany the pair on an urban exploration into the wilds of a democratic ecosystem in Berlin Wedding. While fetching water for the notoriously dry state territory, they discuss the meaningfulness of democratization movements in relation to the internet. A mobile screen with autonomous power source serves as channel of participation and communication with another three urban explorations. These will happen simultaneously in the streets and parks of Zurich, Vienna and Amsterdam.

The artists group Club Real was founded in 2000 and is devising and realising participatory site-specific projects: Installations, one-to-one encounters, political role play scenarios and participatory urban development projects invite visitors to help shape alternative concepts of reality. Since 2018, Club Real has been working on the theme of Organisms Democracy – Equal Political Rights for all Living Beings. In 2019, Organisms Democracy Vienna was invited to Impulse Theater Festival.

»Remote Together – Reality Vaccine« is a format that seeks new digital and hybrid forms of shared theatrical experience while bringing together diverse international artists using new digital tools. For the first edition, Transit Productions Zurich is developing a series of simultaneous performances with theater maker Pankaj Tiwari (Amsterdam), the collective Club Real (Berlin) and visual artists Thomas Hörl & Peter Kozek (Vienna) that can be experienced both locally and digitally.

For the second time, the extremely mixed choir is making a guest appearance in Berlin. This time the group of amateurs and professionals explores ways of coexistence in the »Digitalocene«. How are contemporary technologies changing the way we live together? Can we act responsibly and without false anxieties in an environment of omnipresent, constant media exposure? In the midst of audience members, loudspeaker trees and cable groves an installative concert for human and non-human bodies takes place: a song about the loneliness of humans, about the love of the machines and the complexity of the world.

The extremely mixed choir is a multi-professional, diverse and intergenerational singing collective, which was founded in 2018 for the music theater production »Declaration of Dependence«. The artistic direction team consists of composers Lukas Huber and Leo Hofmann, director Benjamin van Bebber and scenographer Zahava Rodrigo. Together they search for possibilities of an integral interaction of space, music and scene in the compositional and staging process.

It is dark. There is nothing to see. Not a breath of air is stirring. Take a seat, sit back and open your nose and ears! Nothing is particularly beautiful, except perhaps the peace of absence. That is the starting point. In the midst of this darkness, Hysterisches Globusgefühl sets out in search of the beauty of collective experience. Between anarcho-flavours and groping bodies hovers the longing for the beautiful in the beautiful. Everyone desires something and we call this desire beautiful. But the beautiful is an imperative, a norm. And a norm is not beautiful. So should we strive for the beautiful, for truth and the good? Or is it all rubbish and we need to find something else? Smells and sounds mix with text and politics and a whiff of Hysterisches Globusgefühl is in the air.

Hysterisches Globusgefühl is a performance collective from Berlin and Vienna consisting of Elisabeth Lindig, Lea-Sophie Schiel, Arne Schirmel, Milena Seidl, Laura Steinl and Melanie Zipf. Since 2011, the collective has been developing performances that operate at the intersection of art and political action. The works focus on the questions of what politics is or could be, when it happens, and what it means to be political. These questions are addressed from a feminist and queer perspective. The collective also works in solidarity and wholeheartedly against heteronormative patriarchy and develops utopias for an anti-racist, classless, queerfeminist and livable future.

Der neue Film von Studio RPK »Als Susan Sontag im Publikum saß« wird mit vier performativen Previews präsentiert: diskursiv unterbrochen, literarisch ergänzt, musikalisch live vertont und mit verwandten Filmen verschnitten. Das Theater wird zum kollektiven Wohnzimmer des gemeinsamen Watchens und der Film kehrt an seinen Ursprung zurück.
»Als Susan Sontag im Publikum saß« basiert auf einer Performance von Studio RPK im Ballhaus Ost. 50 Jahren war es her, dass die berühmte Panel-Diskussion »A Dialogue on Women’s Liberation« in New Yorks Town Hall stattfand: Auf der Bühne stritten, lachten und perfortmen Norman Mailer, Germaine Greer, Jill Johnston, Jacqueline Ceballos und Diana Trilling. Im Publikum Susan Sontag, Cynthia Ozick und Betty Friedan, die intellektuelle Elite New Yorks. Die Filmemacher Hegedus und Pennebaker ikonisieren das Ereignis später mit ihrem Dokumentarfilm »Town Bloody Hall«. Aus dem Reenactment auf der Theaterbühne entstand mit »Als Susan Sontag im Publikum saß« ein filmischer Kommentar der Geschehnisse von 1971, ein tiefgründiger Schlagabtausch im Jetzt, dem Zeitalter von #MeToo.

Link zum Film: als-susan-sontag.de

Ein Paar zieht sich auf einer einsamen Berghütte zurück. Sie fechten, tanzen, singen. Als der Schneefall einsetzt, fangen sie an Ermittler:in zu spielen. Was ist in der Hütte vorgefallen? Sie tun so, als würden sie Zeug:innen befragen und Verdächtigen auflauern. Dieses True Crime Theater verknüpft Selbstfindung mit Spurensuche und Realitätsverlust mit Erkenntnisgewinn. Oder wird hier tatsächlich ein Verbrechen aufgeklärt? »Chalet Utah« nutzt Mittel, die im Lockdown Notwendigkeit waren, aber auch neue Wege eröffneten: Der Laptop als Mitspieler, die Kamera als Verbindungskanal und der Bildschirm als Bühne. Und für Zuschauende im Theatersaal immer auch die Möglichkeit, hinter die Kamera zu schauen.

Schauplatz International wurde 1999 von Anna-Lisa Ellend und Albert Liebl gegründet und hat seitdem über 50 Stücke, Performances, Aktionen, Filme und Hörspiele entwickelt. Im Ballhaus Ost war zuletzt ihre Trilogie (»Idealisten | Fundamentalisten | Egoisten«) sowie »Cap Escape Plaisance Club« zu sehen und als Shutdown Special der Live-Podcast »Le garage de la grande promenade (Part I & II)«, ein erster Entwurf von »Chalet Utah«.

Tremble. Touch. Sense if that rock is a rock or an alien. Harmonize with chemicals. Transform. Vibrate. Breath. Confound the »human« with your smell organs.Aliens embody the threatening – the absolutely different – the foreign, the other, the incomprehensible, the feminine, the wild, the chaotic and the monstrous! Their bodies guard the boundaries of the possible and threaten all order. In »COSMICBODIES« seven alien bodies move from their own inner world into outer space – until outer space and inner space merge.
»COSMICBODIES« is a dance piece for people with and without visual impairments and integrates an artistic audio description. After »Blue Moon« and »Witches«, is it is the third work by Ursina Tossi from »EXCESSIVE SHOWING you can only dismantle the master’s house with the monster’s tools!«, a choreographic series of critical queer-feminist perspectives on the constructions of femininity and monstrous bodies in the context of mythology, history(-ies) and pop culture.

»a woman must have money and a room of her own… hence, enlightened, responsible and sensationalist women have no choice but to overthrow the government… to let hundreds of stories and genders bloom… to embrace masturbation… for Bitches are beautiful… and we have nothing to lose – except our fear.« Manifestos have accompanied feminist movements since the very beginning. Their authors criticize the status quo, imagine new futures, call for the collective solidarity of a »we« and state demands. When Virginia Woolf wrote her manifesto »A Room of One’s Own« in 1929, she could probably not have imagined that almost a hundred years later, people would still be fighting for spaces, access and independence. So many of the feminist manifestos of the last century still read as surprisingly contemporary.In the installation </A “Manifesto” of= {every} One.s Own>, visitors encounter an archive of texts, sounds and images, an ensemble of stage technology and an artificial intelligence with whom they collaborate to assemble the puzzle pieces of past struggles into new contexts. At the same time, the installation explores the encoded space as a place to conceive of collective political action while following the traces of feminist history to engage with possibilities of a utopian future. Swoosh Lieu (Johanna Castell, Katharina Pelosi, Rosa Wernecke) was founded in 2009 at the Institute for Applied Theater Studies and develops performances, installations, radio plays and films. The queerfeminist collective creates temporary spaces and images in real time while addressing their fabrication. </A “Manifesto” of= {every} One.s Own> is their first collaboration with Ballhaus Ost.

Steuerschulden treiben Peisetairos und Euelipides ins Exil zum freien Volk der Vögel. Machthungrig redet Peisetairos den Vögeln ein, einer überlegenen Art anzugehören. Die Manipulation gelingt und als Herrscher über Götter und Menschen organisiert er den neuen Staat Wolkenkuckucksheim, beseitigt unwillige Untertanen und rekrutiert ein sich für ihn und seine Ideen begeisterndes Vogelvolk.
Der 2400 Jahre alte Stoff »Die Vögel« hat nichts von seinem anarchischen Humor und seiner kritischen Aktualität verloren. Possible World lassen nun in ihrer Adaption taube Welt, Taubenkultur und hörende Welt aufeinandertreffen. Was heißt Inklusion in einer Demokratie – und im täglichen Probenprozess? Ein tauber und eine hörende Regisseur:in, zwei taube, zwei hörende Darsteller und ein »child of deaf adults« (Coda) entwickeln für die Bühne inklusive Kommunikationswege in Deutscher Gebärdensprache, Lautsprache und Visual Vernacular. Es wird von Macht und Machtmissbrauch, Grabenkämpfen und vielleicht auch von Lösungen erzählt.

Das inklusive Theaterkollektiv Possible World wurde 2009 gegründet. Ziel ist es, ein inklusives Modell für die Zusammenarbeit von Tauben und Hörenden beständig weiterzuentwickeln und in die Kulturlandschaft einzubringen. In den Jahren 2009-2020 entstanden vier Theaterproduktionen: »Frühling Erwache!« (2009), »ME DEA(F)« (2011), »Die Taube Zeitmaschine – eine Lecture-Performance über die Geschichte der Gehörlosen« (2014) und »Ein Sommernachtstraum« (2018) sowie die Filmproduktion »WIR. I & II« (2013). Alle Produktionen entstanden in Kooperation mit dem Ballhaus Ost. »Vögel« ist die erste Zusammenarbeit von Possible World Regisseurin Michaela Caspar und dem Gebärdensprachpoeten Giuseppe Giuranna.

After a long break, »Dirty Debut« is back at Ballhaus Ost. It is the last time for the time being that Dirty Debüt provides a platform for four emerging performance artists to show their sketchy, unfinished, dirty works on a specific theme or concept. After the performances and as far as hygiene regulations allow, the audience is invited for a drink or dinner with a toast to the artists. »Dirty Debut« #9 will take place at Ballhaus Ost on December 18; the theme is »after life«.

Unlike in dance or acting, there is no university context in Berlin where performance makers can accompany and learn from each other from the very beginning of their careers. Most of them come here only after graduation, and many find it difficult to establish contacts outside their existing circles for years. Björn Pätz and Sandra Umathum therefore launched »Dirty Debut« in 2018 to increase the visibility of emerging performing artists as well as to reflect the spectrum of the performance landscape and to bring them together on one stage. In addition, »Dirty Debut« aims to facilitate an exchange about the presented works that leaves behind the usual logics of judging and criticizing.

Interested artists apply with a project proposal. For each edition of »Dirty Debut«, a jury then selects four submissions whose artistic approach and qualitative standards are considered independent and promising. The invited performance makers receive a small budget for the production, a minimal stage design as well as for materials and transport.