Sophiensæle

Calendar

Programme

Programme
Claire Vivianne Sobottke
à mort – Ein choreografischer Liederzyklus für drei Stimmen
Claire Vivianne Sobottke-Foto_MayraWallraff_Presse_final-
March 22 23 24 25 | 19.00
Tickets
Dance/Performance
Festsaal | 15/10 €

à mort is a performative-musical exploration of processes of domination, dying and killing. Excessive scenes of destruction emerge in a memento mori inspired installation of natural and artificial materials. The female voice emerges as a powerful physical presence in a dying world, challenging the grotesque human desire for dominance.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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Service

Service

Outreach

Outreach

About

About
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New artistic direction starting with the 2023/24 season is confirmed

Sophiensaele_Neues Leitungsteam_c_Sarah Böhmer
© Sarah Böhmer

The SOPHIENSÆLE are pleased to present their new management team starting with the season 2023/24.

JENS HILLJE and ANDREA NIEDERBUCHNER have been recruited as artistic directors. KERSTIN MÜLLER will remain with the company as commercial director. Together, Jens Hillje, Andrea Niederbuchner and Kerstin Müller will manage the SOPHIENSÆLE as an executive team from July 1, 2023.

Within the framework of an open call for applications and an extended search for suitable candidates, we have succeeded in finding two colleagues, Andrea Niederbuchner and Jens Hillje, who, with their different experiences in the fields of dance, performance and theater, form a perfect complement and bring with them many years of professional experience and leadership competence. Both bring a maximum curiosity for young and diverse developments in the performing arts and are looking forward to continue the outstanding work of the house and to lead the SOPHIENSÆLE into the future as one of the most important independent production houses.

After 12 very successful years at the SOPHIENSÆLE, the artistic direction of FRANZISKA WERNER ends with this season. Together with her team, she has worked extremely successfully during this time to constantly introduce new enriching artistic aspects into the work of the SOPHIENSÆLE and to permanently anchor the house as an indispensable, nationally important venue for the independent scene in Berlin. We would like to thank her for her impulses, her expertise and her outstanding commitment.

Amelie Deuflhard, Sasha Waltz & Jochen Sandig

Shareholders of SOPHIENSÆLE GmbH

"Jens Hillje and Andrea Niederbuchner are known to me from their various fields of work in the Berlin cultural scene and I hold them in high esteem. I wish the new management team a good start and look forward to working with them. This is good news for the SOPHIENSÆLE - we can look forward to exciting artistic times." Klaus Lederer, Senator for Culture and Europe, Berlin, 11.10.2022

 

ANDREA NIEDERBUCHNER is a freelance cultural manager, curator and producer in the field of contemporary dance, performance and visual arts. After graduating in  Cultural Area, Language and Economic Studies at the University of Passau, she worked for Joint Adventures/Tanzwerkstatt Europa, Michael Clark Company, Galerie Sprüth Magers, Wolfgang Tillmans and Tanzkongress 2019 under the artistic direction of Meg Stuart, among others. From 2013-2022 she worked as curator and project director for Tanz im August, a festival of HAU Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin and since 2007 as manager and producer for choreographer Adam Linder. For Tanz im August she developed the retrospective series together with Virve Sutinen and co-curated the retrospectives of Rosemary Butcher (2015), La Ribot (2017), Deborah Hay (2019) and Cristina Caprioli (2022).

JENS HILLJE grew up in Italy and Lower Bavaria. After studying applied cultural sciences in Perugia, Hildesheim and Berlin, he has been working in the independent theater scene as an actor, writer and director since 1990. In 1996, he founded the Baracke at the Deutsches Theater with director Thomas Ostermeier, which was voted "Theater of the Year" in 1998. From 1999 to 2009 he was a member of the artistic management and chief dramaturge of the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz. Together with Thomas Ostermeier, Sasha Waltz and Jochen Sandig, he built up an international acting and dance ensemble there. At the Schaubühne he co-founded the format F.I.N.D. - Festival, which has taken place there annually since 1999/2000. He continued to curate the discourse format Streitraum, which he founded in 1996, during his time as a freelance dramaturge from 2009. In 2010, Jens Hillje collaborated with Nurkan Erpulat on the play Verrücktes Blut at Ballhaus Naunynstraße, which was voted "Play of the Year" by the magazine Theater heute in 2011. In the same year, he curated the performing arts festival Intransit at the HKW. From the 2013/14 season to 2019, Jens Hillje was co-director of the Maxim Gorki Theater. The Maxim Gorki Theater was named "Theater of the Year" by Theater heute magazine in 2014 and 2016. Since 2020, he has worked again as a curator and freelance dramaturg with Falk Richter, Yael Ronen, Mikael Serre/Compagnie Le Fluide Ensemble (Paris), and Zona K (Mailand), among others. In 2022 he curated the program of the festival Radikal Jung at the Munich Volkstheater as artistic director. Together with Shermin Langhoff, the Stiftung Preußische Seehandlung awarded Jens Hillje the "Theaterpreis Berlin 2016". Jens Hillje received the Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale in summer 2019 for his life's work.

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