Hendrik Quast: Spill your guts | Mar 31 - Apr 01 | SOPHIENSÆLE – Sophiensæle | Independent Theater in Berlin
Hendrik Quast:
Spill your guts

Spill your guts
April 1 | Artist Talk with Hendrik Quast and Robin Rehmann after the show (moderation: Alex Hennig)
A damaged, clap-mouth doll shits as unabashedly as she dines. She has her ventriloquist firmly in her grip. As the embodiment of his chronic inflammatory bowel disease, she has only one thing on her mind: make him bleed! The unequal duo sparks a relationship thriller about undigested leftovers, fires up the stammering about outrageous stories of illness and plunges into a shitstorm about their work in the theater.
For his latest project, performance and action artist Hendrik Quast has learnt the art of ventriloquism in order to approach an underestimated organ – the intestine. In conversation with his sick ventriloquist doll, the intestine is explored in its peculiarities and metaphors, but also its pathologies. Quast's everyday experiences with chronic inflammatory bowel disease open up new ways of speaking and unusual spaces of humor for the sick and healthy audience. Attributions of visibly and invisibly marked chronically ill bodies are renegotiated here. With the means of entertainment art the artist and his team ask the question who actually holds the interpretative sovereignty over the sick body: medicine, the patient or the disease itself.
The themes of disability, ableism, classism and death are addressed. You can find more information on working with content notes on the house here.
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. 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).
Duration
- 105-130 minutes
Language
- German spoken language
Light
- Abrupt light changes
- Stroboscopes
- Blinding light effects
Sound
- There is loud, suddenly starting music. Hearing protection is provided at the entrance.
Other effects
- Fog
Audience
- Seated grandstand
- 4 beanbag seats bookable
- 2 wheelchair seats bookableThe audience area is mostly lit. In some scenes there are no lighting in the audience.
- There will be direct interactions with the audience. Hendrik and the puppet will address the entire audience or single people in the audience in certain scenes. In moments of interaction, the audience can decide for themselves whether they want to participate or not.
- The play is suitable for audiences aged 14 and over.
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.
Relaxed event
- Clapping and laughter during the performance are explicitly welcome.
- It is possible to leave the room at any time during the show and return.
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 here.
TEXT, PERFORMANCE, CONCEPT Hendrik Quast DRAMATURGY Alex Hennig ARTISTIC ASSISTANCE Michel Wagenschütz PUPPET, COSTUME, MASK Christina Neuss STAGE Jonas Droste LIGHT DESIGN Maika Knoblich SOUND Toben Piel CONSULTING VIDEO Rodrik Biersteker DRAMATURGICAL SUPPORT Marcus Dross COACH VENTRILOQUISM Marcus Geuss PR Yven Augustin GRAPHIC DESIGN Christina Mäckelburg SOUND ENGINEERING Tobias Klette TECHNICAL MANAGEMENT Hendrik Borowski PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT Lisa Gehring
A production by Hendrik Quast in co-production with SOPHIENSÆLE Berlin, Kampnagel Hamburg and Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm. Supported by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe of the State of Berlin and by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds. With the support of Akademie Schloss Solitude, Theater Rampe Stuttgart (Kooperationsstipendium) and the residency program of Cima Città (CH). The project was part of the residency program schloss bröllin e.V., supported by the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture of the State of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and the County of Vorpommern-Greifswald. The revival is supported by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media as part of NEUSTART KULTUR. Media partner: taz.
With a processual concept of theater, Hendrik Quast devotes himself to performing techniques such as ventriloquism, pantomime or musical singing and explores the dissolution of boundaries in entertainment culture. He allows these to collide with everyday practices, crafts and cultural techniques such as taxidermy, funeral floristry or nail design. Hendrik Quast's performances play with grotesque and fecal elements and use comedy as a means of interrupting modes of speech, text forms and dramaturgy. Biographical references are fictionalized, theatrically exaggerated and defamiliarized by borrowings from entertainment culture. Through the ambivalences of a humorous approach, violent mechanisms of identity attributions are also questioned. Born 1985 in Celle, the queer action and performance artist studied at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen. Since 2009, he has been working as a solo artist and in artistic cooperations with Maika Knoblich, among others. Quast’s performances have been realized in cooperation with institutions such as Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm (Frankfurt am Main), Gessnerallee (Zurich), FFT Düsseldorf, Theater Rampe (Stuttgart), Sophiensæle and Kampnagel (Hamburg). His works have been shown at international performance and art festivals such as Radikal jung, Impulse Theater Festival, steirischer herbst, Festival a/d Werf (Utrecht) and International Summer Festival Kampnagel (Hamburg). He has adapted several theater works as audio features for WDR Cologne (including Nagelneu, 2021, awarded Audio Feature of the Year 2021 by the Deutsche Akademie für Darstellende Künste). In 2022, he was a fellow at Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart and at Villa Kamogawa in Kyoto, Japan. Since 2023, Quast has been an artistic PhD candidate at Stockholm University of the Arts and is completing a doctorate in cooperation with the Zurich University of the Arts on humor and illness in the performative arts.
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© Florian Krauss -
© Florian Krauss -
© Florian Krauss -
© Florian Krauss -
© Florian Krauss -
© Florian Krauss -
© Florian Krauss