Musiktheaterkollektiv Hauen & Stechen: Ignorance is Bliss – Sophiensæle | Independent Theater in Berlin
Program
Musiktheaterkollektiv Hauen & Stechen:
Ignorance is Bliss
Ignorance is Bliss
German, English, Ukranian
10€/15€/20€/25€
Premiere
With intermission (ca. 20 min.)
A dystopian comedy of errors that does not believe in historical progress: a failed experiment opens a time portal in Sophiensæle and thoroughly upends the order of things. Ignorance is Bliss is an opera parcours in complete cluelessness, full of the pitfalls of knowledge and the temptations of ignorance. What can we know, and what would we rather never have learned?
The scenario: Berlin’s theaters fall victim to the Senate’s budget cuts and are transformed into luxurious condominiums. In the Sophiensæle Festsaal, real estate agents and interior designers bustle about, extolling the virtues of exclusive rooms where Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht once spoke. Only one resists: a scientist whose life’s work – a time machine – is threatened by this sellout, and who refuses to leave. During the eviction, a struggle ensues, accidentally activating the machine and opening a time portal.
With Ignorance is Bliss, Hauen & Stechen travel back in time: a historical dictator and his entourage wreak havoc in Berlin-Mitte, while the theater’s janitor is taking up the usurper’s throne in past times. The incoherences of the present and the secrets of the past soon blow up in everyone’s faces.
In this music-theater comedy, the longing for knowledge collides with alternative forms of knowing and the thin line between knowledge and power. Hauen & Stechen defy propaganda and dig their way through escapist dreams and anachronistic fantasies.
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.
By and with: Musiktheaterkollektiv Hauen & Stechen, Ensemble Trisolde
Director: Julia Lwowski
Dramaturgy: Maria Buzhor
Stage design: Yassu Yabara
Costumes: Christina Schmitt
Video: Martin Mallon
Lighting: Konrad Dietze
Vocals, performance: Angela Braun, Thorbjörn Björnsson, Gina Lisa Maiwald, David Ristau, Peter Pankow, Julia Lwowski, Maria Buzhor
Piano, accordion, musical direction, performance: Roman Lemberg
Trombone, electronics: Vasil Ratmansky
Artistic production management: Jasna Witkoski
A production by Musiktheaterkollektiv Hauen & Stechen in co-production with Sophiensæle. Funded by the Capital Cultural Fund (HKF) and the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion. With the kind support of Theater Thikwa. Media partners: Missy Magazine, Siegessäule, taz.
Hauen & Stechen was founded as a laboratory for moving, cross-border, and cross-genre musical theater. It initially worked in the cellars of Galerina Steiner, where the collective attracted attention with a special series of performances: a staging course was performed for different groups on one evening until they were completely exhausted. Here it developed its style, which blends influences from opera, visual arts and film with performative elements to create an idiosyncratic and opulent theatrical language. The pieces deliberately leave space for impulses and interaction with the audience and take place in an intensely intimate setting.