Oliver Zahn: Great Acceleration – Sophiensæle | Independent Theater in Berlin
Oliver Zahn: Great Acceleration
In the fall of 2024, a large-scale, state-organized earthquake drill took place in southern Germany. Experts from across Europe demonstrated, for an audience of journalists and politicians, how to respond to a tectonic disaster.
The performance Great Acceleration by Oliver Zahn takes this multi-day exercise as its point of departure for a journey: it moves along linguistic pathways through devastated infrastructure and human-made tragedies, slipping through the cracks in the fault lines of state security promises. It finds itself in an unstable landscape where the temporalities of unstoppable geological processes prevail – processes that make belief in civilizational progress and technological acceleration appear as desperate attempts to escape one’s own future.
The performer Toni Jessen reenacts this movement as a performative traversal of the stage – an attempt to bring the human body into proximity with inhuman temporal horizons.
The information on accessibility is still in progress and will be updated as soon as possible. If any questions remain unanswered until then, please feel free to contact the communication department at barrierefreiheit@sophiensaele.com or 030 27 89 00 35. Please note that details may change by the day of the event. Therefore, if you find out after you have purchased your ticket that the performance is no longer accessible to you, you can contact us for a ticket return at ticketing@sophiensaele.com or 030 27 89 00 45 until 5 business days after the event (Monday through Friday between 10am and 6pm).
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.
Tickets
- Reservations can be made via the ticket telephone at 030 283 52 66, Monday to Friday from 4pm-6pm
- Via the online ticket shop
- At the box office
You can also find more information about accessibility at the house here.
With: Toni Jessen
Concept, research, text, direction, Set: Oliver Zahn
Dramaturgy: Jutta Wangemann
Artistic production management: Martina Neu
Press and Public Relations: Kerstin Böttcher
A production by Oliver Zahn in co-production with Sophiensæle and HochX Munich. Funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion and the City of Munich – Department of Cultural Affairs. Media partners: Missy Magazine, Siegessäule, taz.
Oliver Zahn is a theatre-maker and performer. His choreographic performance-essays are always rooted in extensive research—ethnographic, archival, and embodied self-experiments. His previous works include Situation mit ausgestrecktem Arm (2015, exploring the cultural history of the “Hitler salute” gesture); the Tanzfonds Erbe production Zweiter Versuch über das Turnen (presented as the main act at HAU Hebbel am Ufer, examining German identity and the notion of belonging to the “Volkskörper” through the history and practice of the German gymnastics movement); and Lob des Vergessens (on forgetting as a productive social practice), along with its online desktop continuation, Lob des Vergessens, Teil II. In December 2024, the solo performance Reinheit (about compulsion, hygiene, and security) premiered in cooperation with Ballhaus Ost. Oliver Zahn’s works have been featured at major festivals in the German-speaking region (including Tanzplattform, steirischer herbst, Donaufestival, SPIELART, Kampnagel Sommerfestival, and multiple editions of IMPULSE) and venues such as HAU, Sophiensæle, Mousonturm, PACT Zollverein, FFT, Tanzhaus NRW, Hellerau, Kaserne Basel, and Münchner Kammerspiele. Internationally, his works have toured Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, the UK, Poland, France, Romania, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Tunisia, the West Bank, and India.