Queer Family Album: Volume 2 – With Juliana Piquero, Dylan Spencer-Davidson, Joy Mariama Smith, project by Katie Lee Dunbar – Sophiensæle | Independent Theater in Berlin
Queer Family Album:
Volume 2 – With Juliana Piquero, Dylan Spencer-Davidson, Joy Mariama Smith, project by Katie Lee Dunbar
Queer Family Album is an ongoing transdisciplinary performance series by Katie Lee Dunbar, bringing together an ever-changing collective of diverse queer artists to explore queer futurities through performance, storytelling, and collaborative practice. We actively call in our trans, BIPOC, Neurodivergent, Krip, Introvert, Refugee, Elder, Migrant, Wayward, Outcast, kin you are most welcome.
Volume 2 features collaborations by Juliana Piquero, Dylan Spencer-Davidson and Joy Mariama Smith and is a relaxed, two-hour performance. Our program starts at 8pm and will run with breaks and food until 10 pm. Kein Stress, whether you’re early, on time, or late – you have arrived perfectly just as you are, in a space where what you want is possible: if you’ve been looking for an excuse to dress up, go for it; dress down? Pyjamas and bedhead.
The evening begins on the ground floor in the Kantine of Sophiensæle with soup or tea, which becomes the hub for the night. Take your time and settle in at our listening station streaming episodes of Queer Frequency, our internal podcast archiving family history, conflict and process within our artistic collaboration.
Joy Mariama Smith and Dylan Spencer-Davidson present Fam Jam, a performance installation examining relationality beyond traditional constructs of “family.” Starting from the premise of family abolition, the work moves through kinship, intimacy, and connection, attempting – and failing – to create a real-time, decolonial, anti-capitalist space for alternative forms of relation.
Upstairs in the Hochzeitssaal, Juliana Piquero presents Rice with Tomato and Balls, a performance inspired by her daughter’s favorite childhood meal that reimagines belonging and togetherness beyond fixed structures. The work reflects family as fluid, conflicted, chosen, and sometimes shared, expanding the idea of family to groups of friends, phrases, animals, colours, numbers, words, concepts, and feelings – families that are alike, yet never the same.
Audience members will be guided between floors by the Queer Family Album team, while initiating conversations to re-imagine and deconstruct traditional ideas of family.
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.
Queer Family Album – Collaborating artists: Katie Lee Dunbar, KAy Garnellen, Juliana Piquero, Yvonne Sembene, Joy Mariama Smith, Dylan Spencer-Davidson
Costumes, stage: Hagar Ophir
Costumes, stage assistance: Antonia Eckardt
Dramaturgy assistance: Maya Weinerg
Light design: Catalina Fernandez, Shun Perrotta
Sound tech: Lena Marcus
Graphics: Andy Elkanani
Press, marketing, social media: Apricot Productions – Angela Fegers
Production, marketing assistance: Apricot Productions – Nadine Freisleben
Accessibility consultation, access friend: Agnieszka Habraschka
Accessibility: Angela Fegers / Apricot Productions
Assistance to accessibility: Miles Wendt
A production by Katie Lee Dunbar in co-production with Ballhaus Ost and Sophiensæle. Funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion. Funded by the Performing Arts Fund from funds provided by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. Media partners: Missy Magazine, Siegessäule, taz.
Juliana Piquero (she/they) was born in Buenos Aires, and lives in Berlin and Madrid. She is a mother, choreographer, dancer, and yoga asana instructor. In her choreographic works, she articulates socio-political issues, archival material, and biographical experiences. She is interested in themes such as Latin American queer feminism; issues related to her identity and to functional diversity and body language. She seeks the efficacy of the undefined and tries to blur the boundaries between dichotomous concepts such as the natural and the artificial, aiming to grasp the complexity of the body as technology. Parallel to her artistic path, since 2024, she has also worked as an IT consultant and analyst.
Katie Lee Dunbar, a queer feminist performance maker, activist, and researcher residing in Berlin, delves into themes of disparity, intimacy, and the intricate relationship between the personal and political in their artistic pursuits encompassing dance, voice, memory, sound, text, and installation. Their collaborative efforts are dedicated to fostering inclusive and non-oppressive environments for dialogue and creativity, reflected in projects like arted, mitkollektiv, and currently, the Queer Family Album.
Dylan Spencer-Davidson (he/they) is an artist, performer, and educator based in Berlin, DE. Their practice spans performance, workshops, video, sound, and writing, and continually orbits around the question of how to be together. Challenging normative, violent forms of relation, their works hold space for collective emotional processing while proposing alternative forms of communication and collaboration rooted in listening, consent, embodiment, difference, and vulnerability.
Joy Mariama Smith (1976, United States) is an installation and performance artist, activist, dramaturg, and architectural designer. A native Philadelphian currently based in Amsterdam, their work primarily addresses the conundrum of projected identities in various contexts. An ongoing question in their work is: What is the interplay between the body and its physical environment? They have a multi-modal improvisational practice spanning over 25 years. When teaching, they actively strive to uphold inclusive spaces.