MEXA: Reality Show – Sophiensæle | Independent Theater in Berlin
MEXA: Reality Show
The artists’ collective MEXA emerged within a public shelter for unhoused people in São Paulo. There, residents lived under constant surveillance in a shared space where newcomers arrived regularly and others were quickly removed for breaking the rules. Over a decade of working together, MEXA has transformed significantly. Yet, the turbulence of its origins continues to shape the group.
In Reality Show, ten performers inhabit a mutable environment that evokes both a home and a television set. Furniture and cameras gradually appear and disappear, while live projections are edited in real time. The familiar grammar of reality TV echoes both their past experience of collective living and their present life in theater, conjuring a visibility without power, glamour intertwined with exhaustion, and intimacy turned into transaction.
The group decided to turn the performance into an actual reality show—in which the winner will be determined through an elimination game and take the prize home at the end of the season. Like this, MEXA reflects on its own trajectory: on working with autobiography and documentary theater and on inventing lives on stage that would not be possible beyond it.
The work exhibits the narratives expected from a group forged in instability, where stories of hardship and scarcity often emerge as the ones most likely to “win the show.” Reality Show powerfully illustrates how we all sometimes perform versions of ourselves to be accepted—and the costs of this constant work on our self. Fiction becomes a strategy for belonging and survival on labor and housing markets that demand constant visibility and self-revelation.
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.
Creation: MEXA
Direction, dramaturgy: João Turchi
Performers, co-creators: Aivan, Ale Tradução, Dourado, Laysa Elias, Lucas Heymanns, Ph Verissima, Podeserdesligado, Suzy Muniz, Tatiane Arcanjo, Veronika Verão
Production coordination: Francesca Tedeschi/Casa do Povo
Research, direction assistance: Lucas Heymanns
Video performer, video creation, technical direction: Laysa Elias
Sound design, original music: Podeserdesligado
Scenography: Vão
Production design: Lu Mugayar
Costume design: Anuro Anuro e Cacau Francisco
Graphic design, visual identity: Margem
Choreography: Alexandre Paulikevitch
Dramaturgical collaboration: Julia Pedreira
Original song: Dourado
Lighting design, video installation: Bio Riff, Juliana Bucaretchi
Video operator: Fagner Lourenço
Lighting operator: Claudi
Acknowledgements: Guilherme Giufrida, Casa do Povo team, Esponja
A production by MEXA in co-production with Sophiensæle, Festival d'Automne à Paris, Kunstenfestivaldesarts and Casa do Povo. The guest performance is made possible by the Goethe Institut. Never Work – International Performance Festival is a festival by Sophiensæle, supported by the Capital Cultural Fund (HKF). Sophiensæle is supported by the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion. Media partners: Berlin Art Link, Missy Magazine, Siegessäule, taz.
MEXA is an artistic collective active since 2015 in São Paulo. Born in the context of homeless shelters, the group researches the borderlands between reality and fiction autobiography, documentary and theater of the real, moving fluidly across performance, theater, video and photography. MEXA has been part of several exhibitions, such as 36th São Paulo Biennal (2025), 38th Panorama of Brazilian Art (2024), Dance Histories at Museu de Arte de São Paulo (2020) and group shows at Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, Museu do Ipiranga, Biblioteca Mario de Andrade, among others. In 2019 MEXA received the Denilto Gomes Dance Award in the category “Perspectives on Black and Gender Aesthetics.” In the scenic and performative realm, they premiered Pumpitopera Transatlântica in 2023 at Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels), later presenting it at HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin), Teatro do Bairro Alto (Lisbon), Kampnagel (Hamburg), Transform Festival (Leeds), São Paulo (Casa do Povo, SESC Ipiranga), Santos (Festival Mirada), Curitiba (Museu Paranaense) and Belém (Pulsa Festival). In 2024 they debuted their new work, The Last Supper, at Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels), Kaserne Theater (Basel), Theaterformen (Braunschweig), Sophiensæle, Festival d’Automne (Paris), Actoral (Marseilles) Take Me Somewhere (Glasgow) and Transform Festival (Leeds). The collective has been an artist-in-residence at Casa do Povo since 2016.
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© MEXA -
© MEXA