Sophiensæle

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Programme
Hendrik Quast
Spill your guts
HendrikQuast_SYG_Foto_Florian_Krauss-0644
March 31 | 19.00
April 01 | 19.00
Tickets
Performance
Festsaal | 15/10 €

A ventriloquist’s show of a different kind: In a dialogue with a chronically ill clap-mouthed puppet, Hendrik Quast explores the stubbornness of intestines. A relationship drama with scatalogical humor, parody therapy and ventriloquism unfolds between the ventriloquist and the sick doll. With tools of the performing arts, the events of chronic illnesses that often remain invisible are staged; opening up new humor spaces in which illness is no longer a taboo.

» more
April 01 02 | 17.00
April 04 | 20.00
Tickets
Hochzeitssaal | 15/10 €

Milliarden Jahre Widerhall was created after Naoko Tanaka’s travels to the contaminated area of Fukushima – a place where people’s connection to their habitat is forever destroyed. In a performative installation, Tanaka negotiates the ambivalent and conflicted relationship between humans and the earth, inviting us on a journey into inner landscapes.

» more

April 03 04 | 19.00
April 03 04 | 21.00
Tickets
Kantine | 15/10 €

Montag Modus: archive of futures presents a performance-installation set at the liminal space between film, dance and theater. Inspired by an encounter with three elderly dancers who were part of modern dance in Hungary in the 1930s, Figuring Age is a choreography of memories that explores how resilience, silences and traumas are inscribed in the body and in the movement.

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April 06 07 08 09 | 20.00
Tickets
Festsaal | 15/10 €

The choreographic concert We are going to Mars is dedicated to the history of the first African space program in Zambia. Created from video works by local artists in Uganda and the USA, it is being performed with live music by Mourning [A] BLKstar. 

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April 14 15
Tickets
Film/Video

The film version of The Making of Pinocchio is also available online as video on demand - for those who can't or don't want to come to the theater. The Making of Pinocchio is a queer re-appropriation of the tale of the lying wooden puppet who wants to be a “real boy”. Artists and lovers Cade & MacAskill reflect on MacAskill’s gender transition and their relationship. With their characteristic playful humour, The Making of Pinocchio moves skillfully between reality and fiction, fairytale and autobiography, the personal and the political. >> GO TO THE VIDEO VERSION

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April 14 15 | 19.00
Tickets
Festsaal | 15/10 €

The Making of Pinocchio is a queer re-appropriation of the tale of the lying wooden puppet who wants to be a “real boy”. In a technically innovative live film shoot, artists and lovers Cade & MacAskill reflect on MacAskill’s gender transition and their relationship. With their characteristic playful humour, The Making of Pinocchio moves skillfully between reality and fiction, fairytale and autobiography, the personal and the political.

» more

April 14 15 | 21.30
Tickets
Kantine | 15/10 €

The concert-performance accompanies the release of Astrit Ismaili’s first solo pop music album, produced by The Performance Agency in collaboration with Obsequeen, Lotic, Katu, Colin Self, Nömak, Europa and Mykki Blanco. The lyrics tell the story of a plant undertaking a physical and spiritual transformation to become the world’s First Flower. The project queers contemporary pop aesthetics and manifests how creativity can be a strategy to overcome existential limitations, echoing the artist’s own path.

» more

April 17 18 | 20.00
Tickets
Festsaal | 15/10 €

Sorour Darabi’s work engages with potentials of re-appropriation to uncover what is hidden by binary thinking. In a kind of futuristic mythology with roots in both visible and invisible, preserved and lost dance traditions, Natural Drama questions the concept of “nature”, exploring representations and constructions of the so-called female body.

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April 20 21 | 20.00
April 22 23 | 18.00
Tickets
Hochzeitssaal | 15/10 €

In this immersive work between performance and film, Liz Rosenfeld and their international, intergenerational team explore moments of change and transition. Through the story of the main protagonist, URSA, an unfillable hole, they reference the Greek myth of the constellations Ursa Major and Minor (the Big and Little Bear), while they consider their own bodies in transition.

» more

April 22 23 | 20.30
Tickets
Festsaal | 15/10 €

Untitled (Holding Horizon) is a choreography that continues Alex Baczyński-Jenkins’ engagement with negotiations of desire, the materiality of gestures, and affections of a queer commons. Through sensual, alienated gestures and the box step – a movement used in several social dances – synchronization, pleasure and alliance coexist with disorientation, limitation, and loss.

» more

April 27 28 29 | 20.00
April 30 | 18.00
Tickets
Festsaal | 15/10 €

There’s no business like show business. Melanie Jame Wolf and Teresa Vittucci ask: What does it take to make a show great? Both known for their intense solo work and powerful stage presence, the artists take a close look at popular entertainment, theater and the politics of spectacle. As a double act, they explore its tender intimacies, its power dynamics and the impact of audience and stage space on the show.

» more

April 28 29 30
May 01-08

Philosophiermaschine Online is an artificial intelligence that brings dead thinkers back to life. At the click of a button, the online audience enters into dialogue with Hannah Arendt, Karl Jaspers, Ernst Bloch and others, and can renegotiate their themes for the present: Freedom, dissidence, otherness, censorship, social utopia, hope - central concepts of postwar European philosophy.

» more

May 10 12 13 | 19.00
Tickets
Festsaal | 15/10 €

Every successful blockbuster needs a second part. For the Markus&Markus theater collective, that’s why TITANIC II has to take the stage. The sequel starts where the film left off: at the bottom of the sea. So, it needs sand, really a lot of sand. Every year, mankind consumes twice as much sand as all the rivers supply. The consequences of this overexploitation are tangible. TITANIC II is a collision course, a melodrama, a telegram from a sinking ship.

» more

May 11 12 13 14 | 21.00
Tickets
Hochzeitssaal | 15/10 €

Inspired by the made-up creatures and mythological figures of Acâibü’l-mahlûkat, Göksu Kunak explores notions of camouflage and self-censorship. This Persian cosmology book from the 13th century was translated to Ottoman and later in Turkish with a foreword of the current President. From a speculative perspective on the Middle East, Kunak examines (in)visibility and (in)concealment and the concept of taqiyya from Islam as hypercamoufl age.

» more

Specials

Specials
Festival

Queer Darlings 4

Grafik
© Jan Grygoriew

april 14–23

For the fourth and final time, Sophiensæle presents the popular spring festival series Queer Darlings, bringing old and new favorites to Berlin. The works of local and international artists deal with personal and socio-political moments of change, transformation, crisis and transition(s). To do so, they overwrite folk dances and narratives, fairy tales and myths from a queer perspective to create humorous, immersive, sensual and imaginative stage worlds beyond binary norms – and celebrate the potential of queer imagination for new visions of coexistence.  

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Enad Marouf In My Hand a Word

  • 8U4A4888 landscape
    © Joseph Kadow
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    © Joseph Kadow
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    © Joseph Kadow
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    © Joseph Kadow
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    © Joseph Kadow
  • EnadMarouf_Foto_Joseph Kadow_
    © Joseph Kadow
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    © Joseph Kadow
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Dance/Performance
2022 December 09 10 | 20.00
2022 December 10 | 17.00
2022 December 11 | 18.00
Hochzeitssaal

PREMIERE

in English

Due to the Christmas market in Sophienstraße, the Sophiensaele cannot be accessed by car on 10 and 11 December. 

It is compulsory to wear an FFP2 mask. Exceptions are made for visitors who are unable to wear an FFP2 mask for health/physical reasons and for visitors who communicate in sign language.

For Syrian-German performance and video artist Enad Marouf, body and text act as central elements. His works have a unique poetic language of coexisting media; a temporality which allows to overcome potential boundaries of dance, text, video and installation.

The performance In My Hand a Word is based on the eponymous text by Marouf. In the text we follow a person who is watching their hand. The longer they gaze at their hand, the more the hand loose its meaning. In this context, the hand does not only carry a history of cultural symbolism, but also an embodiment of the self. The loss of meaning is just as mournful as it is liberating, since new understandings can be reconstructed of what is gone, a duality of loss and restoration therein emerges.

In his scenic adaptation of the text, Marouf focuses on loss from a queer perspective: the loss of family, home, and culture, but also the loss of meaning and language. The audience enters a place where fragments of movement, speech and music overlap. This place represents Marouf's fragmented memories of Damascus. Here, two figures move through scenes whose inner coherences are increasingly dissolved by memories, anecdotes and associative references. Offering the audience to find their own narratives within, to reinterpret and put this piece together through their own personal experience and sensibility.

If any questions remain from the following information, please feel free to contact Hannah Aldinger at barrierefreiheit@sophiensaele.com or 030 27 89 00 35. Please note that details may change by the day of the event.

Genral: The performance lasts approx. 50 minutes and uses a small amount of language. A poem is spoken in English. Strobe effects, Black outs, blinding transitions and fading light, loud sounds and fog are used on stage. The audience gets blinded at some point.

Audience area: The lightening situation in the audience is rather dark. The audience area in the grandstand is seated. There are two wheelchair seats and two beanbag seats which can be reserved or purchased from the online ticket shop or box office, subject to availability.

How to get there: Due to the Christmas market in Sophienstraße, the Sophiensaele cannot be accessed by car on 10 and 11 December.

Early Boarding: If, for artistic reasons, the door to the auditorium does not open until very shortly before the performance begins, there is the option of early boarding. This is early admission for all people (especially those with visible or non-visible disabilities) who wish a specific seat or a more relaxed entry. Early Boarding usually starts 10-20 minutes before the performance starts. The meeting point is next to the bar. Five minutes before Early Boarding begins, an on-site announcement will draw your attention to it once again. Our evening staff will be happy to help you find the meeting point.

You can also find more information about accessibility here. 

ENAD MAROUF is a Syrian-German performance and video artist based in Berlin. His work focuses on body and text, using video, dance, language and installation as poetics and articulations of temporalities that affect our physicality and the way we narrate the world around us. He completed his Masters in Choreography and Performance at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Giessen/Frankfurt. His solo works and collaborations have been shown at the Athens Biennale, Kunstenfestivaldesarts Brussels, Sophiensæle Berlin, Centre culturel Francais de Damas, Babel Beirut, Tate Modern London, Art Institute of Chicago, Shedhalle Zurich, among others.

CONCEPT, CHOREOGRAPHY, TEXT Enad Marouf PERFORMANCE BY AND WITH Ewa Dziarnowska, Steph Quinci MUSIC Billy Bultheel INSTALLATIVE SCULPTURES Enad Marouf ARCHITECTURAL SUPERVISION, FABRICATION Jim Scully COSTUME Grzegorz Matlag LIGHT Jacqueline Sobiszewski PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT Florian Greß

A production by Enad Marouf in co-production with SOPHIENSÆLE. Supported by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media as part of NEUSTART KULTUR and by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe. Media partner: taz, die tageszeitung.