Colleen Ndemeh Fitzgerald: After Work Tours #3 – Sophiensæle | Independent Theater in Berlin
Colleen Ndemeh Fitzgerald: After Work Tours #3
Sophiensæle is located in a building rich in history—a history told by the ceiling decorations, cracks in the walls, and drawings on old doors, as well as by the intangible spirits and memories that inhabit this building. The walls, stairwells, and columns also reveal much about the evolution of labor over the 120 years of its existence—and about emancipation, resistance, democratization, and self-organization, as well as the violence, coercion, and exploitation that manifested within and alongside it.
Building on the format of the Historical house tours regularly offered at Sophiensæle, three Berlin-based artists are developing new site-specific performances as commissioned works for the festival. The After Work Tours take individual moments between past and present, personal memory and political history as a starting point for artistic explorations of the building—and tell the story of how work shapes bodies, biographies, and ideas.
Following the success of her production at Tanztage Berlin 2026, which explored the colonial ties between Germany and Liberia, multidisciplinary performance artist, activist and cultural worker Colleen Ndemeh Fitzgerald is offering an After Work Tour for the festival’s finale.
Concept, performance: Colleen Ndemeh Fitzgerald
Sound design: NANCLA
After Work Tours #3 is being produced in co-operation with Sophiensæle as part of the festival Never Work.Never Work—International Performance Festival is a festival by Sophiensæle, supported by the Capital Cultural Fund (HKF). Sophiensæle is supported by the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion. Media partners: Berlin Art Link, Missy Magazine, Siegessäule, taz.
Colleen Ndemeh Fitzgerald is a multidisciplinary performance artist, activist, and cultural worker of Kpelle (Liberian) and Irish-American descent. Her movement-based practice is rooted in Afro-diasporic, West African, and contemporary dance techniques, centering her feminist, antiracist, and anticolonial politics. She received her BA in Dance and Anthropology from Bates College (USA) and her MA with distinction in Performance at the University of the Arts Berlin – HZT (Germany). She has performed and taught in the Americas, West Africa and Europe. From 2014 to 2019, she lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she was artistically and politically active with Afro-diasporic communities. There, she co-founded Kukily, an Afro-feminist arts collective working across borders in performance, audiovisual media, installation, and community-centered projects. In 2024, Kukily was invited to the Lagos Biennial.