Melanie Jame Wolf: TONIGHT – Sophiensæle | Independent Theater in Berlin
Program
Melanie Jame Wolf:
TONIGHT
TONIGHT
From The Stooges to Rihanna, tonight is one of the most frequently used words in pop music, and probably the most powerful. When this word is heard, or sung along to and out loud - a sense can open up that tonight, for real, something momentous might occur. It might take the shape of a romantic event or a total revolution. But either way, this extraordinary event will bring with it a radical transformation of your life as you have lived it up til now.
As a lyric, tonight functions as a powerful talisman or portal to an alternate time and place. As a performance, TONIGHT critically explores the potency of this popularly shared poetic of the tonight space. It looks at tonight as a complicated tension between being a place of queer becoming – where we imagine and stage other possibilities of ourselves – and a vehicle of exploitation of desire via the pop machine.
tonight is the sensual world. tonight is the promise of an imminent magic moment - the ancient Greek notion of Kairos. tonight is an uncontainable temporality, a sticky speculation of desire that spills over. It is an act of cultural edging that is both a sanctuary for rehearsing our ideal selves and a cruel fiction running on an engine of nostalgia for a space and time that is yet to be.
TONIGHT explores the pleasures and perils of the erotics, the poetics, and the politics of a shared pop imaginary of exquisite anticipation.
Forever's gonna start tonight...
A companion TONIGHT video installation will screen in the Festsaal-foyer during the run of the performance.
Concept, Text, Video, Direction Melanie Jame Wolf Performed by Melanie Jame Wolf, Sheena McGrandles, Rodrigo Garcia Alves SoundDesign Mieko Suzuki LIGHT DESIGN Ariel Efraim Ashbel CostumeDesign Josa Marx STAGEDESIGN Jonas Maria Droste Outside Eyes Sharon Smith, Peaches Assistant Evan Loxton Photo Ashton Green Press & Production björn & björn
A production by Melanie Jame Wolf in co-production with SOPHIENSÆLE. Funded by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds. With support by the Australia Council for the Arts, Cité Internationales des Arts, The Substation - Melbourne, and MAKE artist development programme and residency - Theatre Forum Ireland. Media partner: Missy, taz. die tageszeitung, Ask Helmut
Melanie Jame Wolf makes artworks, performances, and texts about power, persona and the phenomenon of “show business”: the liminal, the persuasive, the deceptive, the staged, and the performed in the political, theatrical and everyday. Her work explores the vulnerability of the live moment and the body as an unruly political riddle. These investigations are expressed through shape-shifting and play with language in surprising and humorous ways.
Spaces that have presented her work include Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Kunstmuseum Basel – Gegenwart, KW – Institute of Contemporary Art, HAU – Hebbel am Ufer, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, nGbK, The National 2019: New Australian Art biennial, VAEFF – Film Festival NYC, Arts Santa Monica, Schwules Museum, Sophiensæle, Münchner Kammerspiele, Arts House Melbourne, Kasseler Dokfest, Bärenzwinger Berlin, SOPHIE TAPPEINER and Institute of Modern Art Brisbane. Wolf was one of 8 nominees for the 2022 Berlin Art Prize.