Simone Dede Ayivi & Kompliz*innen: Hä?! – Sophiensæle | Independent Theater in Berlin
Program
Simone Dede Ayivi & Kompliz*innen:
Hä?!
Hä?!
German
10€/15€/20€/25€
Premiere
20.06., following the performance: Artist talk
21.06., 18:15: Scenic Introduction in the Festsaal foyer, meeting point in front of the box office
20./22.06., from 18:15: Pre-Show Access, meeting point at the bar in the Festsaal foyer
The situation is not unexpected and yet remains incomprehensible. Yet we have always tried so hard to understand everything and make ourselves understood. We have expanded our multilingualism or – for the sake of better understanding – we have shed it. We have studied your books and have eaten white asparagus with you. And we told you about our grandparents’ fig trees.
We have written books and climbed stages. We have become migration researchers and diversity agents. And now we stand here and are speechless. Perhaps we have run out of words. While translating in the Afroshop and at the immigration office. Maybe your words simply became too empty for us. Like the promises we made to ourselves. And now we ask ourselves: Was it a misunderstanding, a translation error or did we talk past each other from the start?
Hä?! is an evening about understanding and misunderstanding in the migration society and the question of how we do not lose all the achievements of recent years despite the shift to the extreme right. We dare to take a self-critical look at our concepts of diversity, while at the same time doing everything we can to remain many and become even more. Above all, we should come to an understanding about how we got here, what actually happened and who this “we” we keep talking about actually is. There is a lot to clarify. Before we lose our tongue or they shut us up.
Concept, text, performance: Simone Dede Ayivi
Video: Jones Seitz
Sound, music: Johannes Birlinger
Lighting, technical direction: Lou Oelrich
Stage design: Lea Steinhilber
Dramaturgy: Veronika Gerhard
Artistic collaboration: Clara Tucholski
Project collaboration: Christine Daniels
Costume: Mariama Sow
Production management: ehrliche arbeit - freies Kulturbüro
Press and public relations: Sarah Rosenau
Access support: Aidan Riebensahm
A production by Simone Dede Ayivi & Kompliz*innen in co-production with Sophiensæle. Supported by the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion and the Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. Media partners: Missy Magazine, Siegessäule, taz.
Simone Dede Ayivi's performances discuss questions of representation, resistance and community. Her works are biographically motivated, mostly interview-based research projects. She explores ways of remembering and rediscovering - and shines a spotlight on political struggles and movements, Black history and the present. Using recorded discussions, interviews and political speeches, she seeks to amplify the voices of marginalized communities. With Afrofuturistic narratives, she creates a space in the theater to ponder, translate and reinvent. A space for utopias. Dede Ayivi reveals her research methods and the means of theater, allowing the audience to become part of her content-related and aesthetic search process. The construction of images is also addressed and viewing habits are questioned. Together with her Kompliz*innen, she has developed performances in cooperation with the Sophiensæle, the Pavillon Hannover, the Künstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt and the Festival Theaterformen. She has worked as a director at Schauspielhaus Graz, Theater Oberhausen and Deutsches Theater Berlin, among others. In 2022, Simone Dede Ayivi received the Tabori Award from the Fonds Darstellende Künste. In 2025 Simone Dede Ayivi & Komplizinnen is invited to the Impulse Festival for Performance, Theater & Dance with Autsch – Warum geht es mir so dreckig?
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© Gedvilė Tamošiūnaitė -
© Gedvilė Tamošiūnaitė -
© Gedvilė Tamošiūnaitė -
© Gedvilė Tamošiūnaitė -
© Gedvilė Tamošiūnaitė